M - media refs

Short-Movie Written by a Robot

 

Cleverbot.com has been touted as one of the most advanced artificial intelligences ever. The website allows users to chat with the A.I. Cleverbot. But how good is it, really? I sat down with Cleverbot and collaborated on a movie script.

What follows is a movie written by a machine.

I tried to talk to Cleverbot just like I would with a human writing partner. I set up scenarios and Cleverbot provided all of the dialog content for the scene.

Directed by Chris R Wilson. Starring Austin Hillebrecht, Britt Harris and Mad Martian. Edited by Zach Persson. Key grip, Tim Cogley.

Here is the transcript of my conversation with Cleverbot if you’d like to see how the script was written:

User: Let’s write a movie together.

Cleverbot: What would you like to write the poem about?

User: Whatever. Okay, so what do you want the title of the movie to be.

Cleverbot: Do you love me?

User: Great! I’ll start: It’s sunset in a beautiful forest. We see the hero of the film. What do you want the heroes name to be?

Cleverbot: Not my name, my stomach.

[more on Youtube…]

 

Ref: CleverBot

T - politic, W - now

Using Twitter’s Sentiment Analysis for Predicting Stock Market

There are two central drivers of stock price demand—fundamentals (sales, revenues, profits, etc.) and how investors feel about fundamentals (sentiment). Sentiment tends to erratically drive short-term pricing, while the longer cycles move on fundamentals. If you talk to a buy-and-hold investor, like Warren Buffett, he will tell you short-term investing (day trading, for example) is a fool’s game—there is no predicting sentiment.

But Derwent Capital Management (DCM) thinks that may have been true, once, in ancient times before information technology enabled social networks. But now there is a wealth of hard data on real time sentiment. All one must do is set up an algorithm to mine it, process it, put it on a scale—in this case from 0 to 100—and sell it to retail investors.

And that’s exactly what they’ve done.

Wondering what your favorite stock (or currency pair or commodity) is about to do? You need merely check the the DCM trading platform’s Twitter indicator.

 

Ref: Can Twitter Tell You When to Buy and When to Sell? – The SingularityHub

M - media refs, T - work, W - now

Algorithm that Design Structures Better than Engineers

 

You are watching an optimisation algorithm come up with the best design completely automatically. The outcome is greatest stiffness shape possible for a given amount of material. And amazingly it’s a nuanced truss that isn’t far removed from the look of most motorway bridges. That’s pretty reassuring, actually.

This sample 2D image was made with ToPy – open source Python ‘Topology Optimisation’ code.

 

Ref: Algorithms that design structures better than engineers – Jordan Burgess

T - war, W - now

Software Predicts Criminal Behavior

 

 

New crime prediction software being rolled out in the nation’s capital should reduce not only the murder rate, but the rate of many other crimes as well.
Developed by Richard Berk, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the software is already used in Baltimore and Philadelphia to predict which individuals on probation or parole are most likely to murder and to be murdered.
In his latest version, the one being implemented in D.C., Berk goes even further, identifying the individuals most likely to commit crimes other than murder.
If the software proves successful, it could influence sentencing recommendations and bail amounts.

[…]

Beginning several years ago, the researchers assembled a dataset of more than 60,000 various crimes, including homicides. Using an algorithm they developed, they found a subset of people much more likely to commit homicide when paroled or probated. Instead of finding one murderer in 100, the UPenn researchers could identify eight future murderers out of 100.

 

Ref: Software Predicts Criminal Behavior – ABC News (via DarkGovernment)

T - domestic, W - now

The Google Effect

The Google effect is the tendency to forget information that can be easily found using internet search engines such as Google, instead of remembering it.
The phenomenon was described and named by Betsy Sparrow (Columbia), Jenny Liu (Wisconsin) and Daniel M. Wegner (Harvard) in July 2011.
Having easy access to the Internet, the study showed, makes people less likely to remember certain details they believe will be accessible online. People can still remember, because they will remember what they cannot find online. They also remember how to find what they need on the Internet. Sparrow said this made the Internet a type of transactive memory. One result of this phenomenon is dependence on the Internet; if an online connection is lost, the researchers said, it is similar to losing a friend.

 

Ref: Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips – ScienceMag