In the Artificial Intelligence Bulletin – Journalism’s Robo-writers we see robo-writers invading journalism, AI that debates us, changes in America’s heartland, advertising, and building solutions in the bubble.
The rise of robo-writers
As of September 2017, The Washington Post had relied on its artificial intelligence to generate an astounding 850 pieces of content over the previous year. The robo-writer made its debut by auto-publishing reports on the Rio Olympics. Many of Heliograf’s stories were on D.C.-area high school football games, while others were tweets or Election Day reporting on congressional and gubernatorial races.
The Washington Post certainly isn’t the only news outlet taking advantage of artificial intelligence. The Associated Press has relied on robo-writers to generate earnings coverage and niche sports stories, while USA Today has turned to video software to make short videos complete with narration by a synthesized voice, Digiday reports. Last summer, Google gave a British news agency an $805,000 grant to develop software capable of creating more than 30,000 local news stories each month
Read more at The Week

IBM’s new AI supercomputer can argue, rebut and debate humans

The company known for building supercomputers that can defeat grand master chess players and champion Jeopardy contestants, hosted another Man vs. Machine contest in San Francisco on Monday. A system that IBM calls Project Debater faced off against two humans in two separate debates.
The verdict: Humans are still ahead, but the gap is closing.
Who won was almost beside the point. What mattered most is that this is the first artificial intelligence system to demonstrate the ability to argue. According to IBM, the technology represents a breakthrough in equipping computers with the ability to ” truly understand language” and then be “expressive.”
Read more at Business Insider

From rust belt to robot belt: Turning AI into jobs in the US heartland

The symbolism of robots moving into a former steelworks is lost on few people in the city. Pittsburgh is reinventing itself, using the advances in automation, robots, and artificial intelligence coming out of its schools—particularly Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)—to try to create a high-tech economy. Lawrenceville, five miles from Hazelwood, has become a center for US development of self-driving cars. Uber Advanced Technologies occupies a handful of industrial buildings; self-driving startups Argo AI and Aurora Innovation are nearby. Even Caterpillar has set up shop, working on autonomous backhoes and other heavy machines that could one day operate themselves.
Read more at MIT Technology Review

A Crossroads: Artificial Intelligence And Advertising

Read more at Forbes

Artificial intelligence is in a bubble: Here’s why we should build it anyway

So what’s the best way to forge ahead? From my perspective, the answer lies in thinking big, but starting small. Renowned systems thinker John Gall once wrote, “A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.” Mr. Gall’s got a good point: Until we get the basics right, we can’t move onto the things that will either meet or surpass our expectations.

This ultimately requires both the startups and big businesses developing AI systems to take a long-term view, swapping out the promise of shiny things for an appreciation of realistic timelines. Through collaboration, technology and business experts can keep expectations high while still iterating step-by-step toward an organization’s long-term AI vision.

Read more at Globe and Mail

Nikolas Badminton is a world-leading Futurist Speaker and is available to speak at your event. Contact him to discuss how to engage and inspire your audience. You can also see more of Nikolas’ thoughts on my Futurist Speaker VLOGs as he published them in this Youtube playlist. Please SUBSCRIBE to my Youtube channel so that you don’t miss any as they come up. You can see more of his thoughts on Instagram, Twitter, and bookmarked research on Tumblr.