AI 157 Whyville introduces micro transactions and a new virtual pet service called WhyPets (1)
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Freddie (0)
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The Future of Artificial Intelligence (0)
3 days, 6 hours
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Numedeon announced yesterday a change in the business model of its premiere property, Whyville. "We've had a subscription system for two years. We've consolidated that into a new system we call Pearls," explained CEO Jim Bower."The obvious reason to do this is that we think that the economic viability of virtual worlds, you need to have multiple different ways to get income. We are and remain primarily sponsorship and advertising based. In addition, having income ...
Man and/or machine (1)
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Arno de Natris (0)
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Masters of Media, New Media MA Amsterdam (0)
4 days, 1 hour
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The BBC recently broadcasted ’James May’s Big Ideas’. In this sequence of documentaries May, probably best known as anti superhero in ‘Top Gear’, explores in the episode ‘Man-machine‘ some projects on cyborgs, avatars, artificial intelligence and robots. Unfortunately, the episode isn’t available online (yet), but there are some parts of it on Youtube. Explaining the Asimo robot: The computerization of our own brain, or mediation of it, with a thinking intrument using EEG data from ...
Brute-Force Chatbot Game (1)
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Evan Ackerman (0)
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BotJunkie (0)
4 days, 21 hours
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On Monday we posted about the Loebner Prize, which is awarded every year to the most human piece of chat software. Making a computer seem human is a complex problem, but it doesn’t necessarily require a complex solution: instead of using brains, you can use brawn. The Chatbot Game is an attempt to create a chatbot using brute-force computing, which just looks at the user’s input and then searches through a gigantic database of words ...
Amoral War Robots May Make Better Soldiers (1)
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Sara K. Smith (0)
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Wonkette: The D.C. Gossip (2)
5 days, 16 hours
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Every six months or so you will read something in the paper about a kooky new DARPA project where military scientists have outfitted wasps with nuclear warheads, or invented some kind of mind-reading goo or Cloak of Invisibility or whatever. Your semi-annual installment of freaky War Science News has researchers debating the utility of autonomous robots that could maybe avoid torturing people and bombing cemeteries. Yes, this seems like it could be a relatively benign ...
Center for Future Storytelling (1)
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Jo (0)
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Networked_Performance (0)
5 days, 23 hours
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Storytelling is fundamental to being human: itʼs how we share our experiences, learn from our past, and imagine our future. With the establishment of the Media Labʼs Center for Future Storytelling, the Media Lab, together with Plymouth Rock Studios, is rethinking what “storytelling” will be in the 21st century. The Center will take a dynamic new approach to storytelling, developing new creative methods, technologies, and learning programs that recognize and respond to the changing communications ...
RoboDev: Rubick’s Cube Solving Robot (And Human) (2)
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Evan Ackerman (0)
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1 week, 1 day
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This is probably the most entertaining thing I saw at RoboDev this year. A group of students from UC Berkeley built themselves a Rubik’s Cube solving robot capable of solving as random a cube as you decide to stick it with. A little random, a lot random, it doesn’t matter… The robot (after a few seconds of thought) can typically solve a cube in 23 moves or less (sometimes way less). The robot is not ...
Newell Talks "Procedural Narrative" In Left 4 Dead (2)
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Dawdlehttp://gaygamer.net (0)
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1 week, 1 day
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In a piece for Edge Online, Valve's Gabe Newell talks a bit about his company's newest game, Left 4 Dead, and how the AI Director they built for the game changes the rules of a narrative experience. We set out to create a first-person four-player game in which the action changes each time it's played. We wanted to use procedural narrative to simulate stories because, in a multiplayer environment like this, we felt a more ...
AI 152: Procter and Gamble uses virtualization with major retailers to test product changes (1)
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Freddie (0)
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“Virtualization is a huge area for Procter and Gamble, and we mix the virtual and real worlds a lot. For example, designing a new Hugo Boss perfume bottle uses a fraction of the cost of making physical mock-ups. We also use fully immersive 3D environments such as Caves (computer-augmented virtual environments) to demonstrate ideas to our big customers. “So whereas before we would have to convince Tesco to actually change a store layout to test ...
Elbot The Robot And I Discuss "Chinese Democracy" One Last Time [Artificial Intelligence] (1)
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Lucas Jensen (0)
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Idolator (0)
1 week, 3 days
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Given that Chinese Democracy is streaming and leaking, I decided to seek out opinions on the album from the only people to turn to in these turbulent times: robots. I've already talked to German Artificial Intelligence Elbot, and chatbot nightmare SmarterChild about the prospects of Chinese Democracy actually coming out. As the prospect of talking to SmarterChild again makes me hate my ancestors for their involvement in my birth, I returned to my only marginally ...
User laziness = user smartness, and why this is really important. (1)
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Harry Brignull (0)
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90 Percent of Everything (0)
1 week, 3 days
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User research is a funny thing. When you see users rushing through your user interface without stopping to think, or skipping through huge swathes of your lovingly prepared copy, it’s tempting to think of them as lazy sods. It’s true. Don’t feel guilty about it. That’s exactly what they are. The only thing you are wrong about is the way you are framing it - you are looking at it as a negative thing. It’s ...
TweetValue: Will Selling Your Twitter Account Help You Survive the Recession? (3)
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Svetlana Gladkova (6)
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Profy (6)
1 week, 4 days
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Louis Gray has just published a review of yet another Twitter tool named TweetValue intended to assign value to any Twitter account - this time the value expressed in real money. We have already seen applications calculating all types of ranks for us but TweetValue goes one step further and encourages us to know how much our Twitter accounts are really worth. To find out the value, you simply let the application know your Twitter ...
Bank to Add to Chinese Investment (1)
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NYT > Business (0)
1 week, 5 days
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Bank of America said it would nearly double its stake in China Construction Bank, in spite of the spreading global financial crisis.
'One Laptop' Project Revives Give One, Get One Deal (2)
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Wired: Gadget Lab (0)
1 week, 6 days
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In its effort to put affordable, educational notebooks in the hands of third-world children, One Laptop Per Child is reviving its Give One, Get One promotion on Monday. The deal enables consumers to buy an XO laptop for themselves for $400, which in turn donates a second unit to a child in a developing country. The organization is working with Amazon to offer the deal, according to an Associated Press story. Since 2005, OLPC has ...
Simon Garfield Loses Future Interview Opportunities With Zuckerberg (5)
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Nick O'Neill (6)
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All Facebook (6)
2 weeks
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Any good journalist knows that in order to get close to a company and its executives, there is a fine line when managing your relationship and you need to be careful about just how critical you are publicly. Somebody should of taught that to Simon Garfield who interviews Mark Zuckerberg in an article for the Guardian. Perhaps Simon Garfield doesn’t want to interview Mark Zuckerberg again but if he did, there’s a pretty good chance ...
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Luther said:
I had a dream about Mark Zuckerberg on Friday night. We were roommates on some kind of Web 2.0 retreat at a resort. He confided to me he was worried about click-through rates for their advertising products. As much shit as he gets, I can't help but admire him.
