Killer robots already exist, and they've been here a very long time | Robotics - Phys.Org

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 
Read the original article.

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Humans will always make the final decision on whether armed robots can shoot, according to a statement by the US Department of Defense, says Mike Ryder,  Associate Lecturer, Lancaster University. 
 

Photo: Mykola Holyutyak/Shutterstock

Their clarification comes amid fears about a new advanced targeting system, known as ATLAS, that will use artificial intelligence in combat vehicles to target and execute threats. While the public may feel uneasy about so-called "killer robots", the concept is nothing new – machine-gun wielding "SWORDS" robots were deployed in Iraq as early as 2007. 

Our relationship with military robots goes back even further than that. This is because when people say "robot," they can mean any technology with some form of "autonomous" element that allows it to perform a task without the need for direct human intervention.
These technologies have existed for a very long time. During World War II, the proximity fuse was developed to explode artillery shells at a predetermined distance from their target...

The birth of cybernetics
My research explores the philosophy of human-machine relations, with a particular focus on military ethics, and the way we distinguish between humans and machines. During World War II, mathematician Norbert Wiener laid the groundwork of cybernetics – the study of the interface between humans, animals and machines – in his work on the control of anti-aircraft fire. By studying the deviations between an aircraft's predicted motion, and its actual motion, Wiener and his colleague Julian Bigelow came up with the concept of the "feedback loop," where deviations could be fed back into the system in order to correct further predictions.
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Source: Phys.Org

The ‘godfathers of AI’ just won this year’s Turing Award | Tech - BGR

Andy Meek, reporter in Memphis inform, Facebook’s director of artificial intelligence research is one of three AI leaders who’ve won this year’s Turing Award, sometimes referred to as the Nobel Prize of computing.

Photo: Cultura/REX/Shutterstock

This year’s winners include Yann LeCun, a New York University professor who also works on AI at Facebook; Geoffrey Hinton, a University of Toronto computer science professor; and Yoshua Bengio, a computer scientist and professor at the University of Montreal. The award, announced by the Association of Computing Machinery, carries a $1 million prize, with financial support from Google, and it’s named for famed British mathematician Alan Turing...

This year’s three winners have worked both independently, as well as together. Per the ACM, Hinton, LeCun and Bengio developed “conceptual foundations for the field, identified surprising phenomena through experiments, and contributed engineering advances that demonstrated the practical advantages of deep neural networks.” LeCun performed postdoctoral work under Hinton’s supervision, and LeCun and Bengio also worked together at Bell Labs in the early 1990s.

The ACM will present the award to this year’s recipients at a banquet on June 15 in San Francisco.
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Source: BGR

Sum-of-Three-Cubes Problem Solved for ‘Stubborn’ Number 33 | Mathematics - Quanta Magazine

A number theorist with programming prowess has found a solution to 33 = x³ + y³ + z³, a much-studied equation that went unsolved for 64 years, according to John Pavlus, writer and filmmaker.

Photo: Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Quanta Magazine

Mathematicians long wondered whether it’s possible to express the number 33 as the sum of three cubes — that is, whether the equation 33 = x³+ y³+ z³ has a solution. They knew that 29 could be written as 3³ + 1³ + 1³, for instance, whereas 32 is not expressible as the sum of three integers each raised to the third power. But the case of 33 went unsolved for 64 years.

Now, Andrew Booker, a mathematician at the University of Bristol, has finally cracked it: He discovered that (8,866,128,975,287,528)³ + (–8,778,405,442,862,239)³ + (–2,736,111,468,807,040)³ = 33.

Booker found this odd trio of 16-digit integers by devising a new search algorithm to sift them out of quadrillions of possibilities. The algorithm ran on a university supercomputer for three weeks straight. (He says he thought it would take six months, but a solution “popped out before I expected it.”) When the news of his solution hit the internet earlier this month, fellow number theorists and math enthusiasts were feverish with excitement...

With 33’s winning ticket now in hand, Booker plans to look next for a solution for 42. (He already determined that none exist in the ten-quadrillion range; he’ll have to look further out on the number line, to at least 10¹⁷.) But even when he or another number theorist has identified sum-of-three-cubes solutions for every eligible integer up to 100, they’ll then face 11 more “stubborn” integers without sum-of-three-cubes solutions between 101 and 1,000, and an infinitude of them beyond that. What’s more, Booker and other experts say, each new solution found for one of these holdouts sheds no theoretical light on where, or how, to find the next one. “I don’t think these are sufficiently interesting research goals in their own right to justify large amounts of money to arbitrarily hog a supercomputer,” Booker said.

So why bother with 33 or 42 at all?
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Source: Quanta Magazine

The College Majors With The Highest Salaries - And The Best Prospects | Education - Forbes

Nick Morrison, freelance journalist specializing in education observes, Students choose their college majors based on a many factors - but with student debt at an all-time high, there is a growing emphasis on not just future salaries but also the long-term prospects in their chosen field.

Not surprisingly, STEM students can expect to earn high salaries when they graduate
Photo: Getty

Now new analysis can help them make a more informed choice, highlighting potential earnings across different areas of study...

Not surprisingly, STEM graduates come out as the best rewarded, with an average mid-career salary of $103,408. Engineering graduates are particularly well remunerated, with a mid-career average of $114,670.

The five highest paying STEM majors, by mid-career average, were:  
1.  Petroleum engineering ($183,600) 
2.  Actuarial engineering ($158,100)    
3.  Building science ($135,000)
4.  System engineering ($131,200)
5.  Chemical engineering ($126,900)

Mid-career average salaries (Source: OneClass).

Other STEM majors included computer science ($113,900), statistics ($111,300), software engineering ($109,600) and biotechnology ($94,700)...

Among other humanities majors were philosophy ($86,000), English literature ($78,300), history ($77,200) and music ($65,500).  
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Source: Forbes 

Score 300+ tech courses for life with a $60 StoneRiver membership | TNW Deals - The Next Web

Each year, a plethora of professionals turn to online learning to pick up a new skill or brush up on an old one, continues The Next Web. 

Photo: TNW Deals

Meanwhile, there are plenty more who just enjoy having a wealth of useable information at their fingertips whenever they need it.

For both of those groups, services like Stone River eLearning are a godsend. You can take advantage of this sprawling repository of training and knowledge now and keep it forever for just $59 right now from TNW Deals.

This jam-packed online academy has a roster of courses so vast that it’ll satisfy students looking to train up on a particular subject as well as anyone who finds they need to pick up new skills regularly.  Stone River offers more than 300 tech training courses — that’s over 2,000 hours of online learning — on topics covering all manner of digital work.

Need to know web and mobile programming? It’s here. Web design, game app creation, 3D animation? Yep, those too. How to use popular web tools like Bootstrap, Unity 3D, Java, Python, MySQL and node.js? Also covered.
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Source: The Next Web

A podcast a day makes you wise at the workplace | Livemint

Millennials are enhancing their learning skills by listening to podcasts despite busy workday schedules, reports Shweta Taneja, SF/Fantasy Novelist. Technology Journalist. Brand Storyteller.

(L to R) Mayank Dhingra finds podcasts more updated than books; Jayant Paleti uses transit time to listen to them; Ami Sata seeks inspiration from podcasts.

For a busy startup founder, who has to learn a lot about every aspect of business, every little minute of a day counts. That’s the reason Ami Sata, founder, Amouve, an organic bed and bath brand based out of Mumbai, has turned to podcasts to learn. “Since listening is non-intrusive," says Sata, “podcasts can be heard when you’re multi-tasking, convey an idea in 20 minutes and allows you to gain immense know-how while doing mundane everyday things like travelling to work."

It was listening to a podcast about Sarah Blakeley, the founder of Spanx, that Sata discovered the power of cold-calling. Sata tried cold-calling prospective retailers for her brand in Mumbai and found leads, follow-ups and clients. Since then, she’s hooked to kernels of knowledge offered by podcasts, constantly on the lookout for new ideas. Other than listening to podcasts while commuting, Sata has even added other podcasts on entrepreneurial journeys (How I Built This by Guy Raz, Masters of Scale, The Tim Ferriss Show and Freakonomics) to her bedtime routine so she can learn and get inspiration before she sleeps.

Like Sata, Jayant Paleti, co-founder, Darwinbox, a software services startup, also prefers podcasts to learn and get inspired from. “I’m leading business development for Darwinbox, which means I spend a significant amount of time on the road, heading to meet clients all day," says Paleti. Most of his transit time is spent on calls with sales team and on podcasts about other entrepreneurs’ experiences. His current favourites are Masters of Scale and The Joe Rogan Experience, which is his “daily dose of inspiration wrapped in good humour"...

The listening format is perfect to comprehend other people’s experiences and learn from them, says Amit Somani, managing partner, Prime Venture Partners, early stage venture capitalists based in Bengaluru. “It’s a great starting point to learn about new thoughts, ideas and trends, essential for me since I work in investing in early stage startups," he says.
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Source: Livemint

Math — not computer science — was Grace Hopper’s first language | Science & Technology - Yale News

Kendall Teare, Assistant Communications Officer at Yale University summarizes, For her pioneering work in computer science, Grace Murray Hopper ’30 M.A., ’34 Ph.D. has been dubbed the “queen of code” by her biographers.  

Yet, beneath that crown was the brain of a mathematician, according to an article in Notices of the American Mathematical Society (PDF) by Gibbs Assistant Professor of Mathematics Asher Auel that makes the details of Hopper’s doctoral training in mathematics public for the first time.

Hopper standing behind a car parked near Cruft Lab, Harvard University, ca. 1945–1947, where she worked on the Mark I computer. 
Photo: courtesy of Grace Murray Hopper Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

“In some sense, you could think of mathematics as the liberal arts of the sciences,” said Auel. “It is the language that you will be using in all scientific disciplines. It’s a way of knowing, a way of thinking, a way of understanding truth.” Studying math is studying problem solving — the necessary skill for anyone who wants to be able to approach a future problem that doesn’t exist now, he explained — for example, building the first computer...

Adams has invited Auel to discuss his paper on Hopper’s lesser-known “mathematical origins” at a college tea in the Hopper Head of College House (189 Elm St.) on Wed., April 3 at 4 p.m. This event is free and open to the Yale community...

“Pioneering Women in Mathematics: 
The Pre-1940 Ph.D.’s.”, 
and supplementary material 
on the 228 mathematicians profiled.

Prior to Auel, the only scholars who’d examined the particulars of Hopper’s mathematical training were Judy Green ’66 M.A. and Jeanne LaDuke, two mathematicians who co-authored a comprehensive math history book, “Pioneering Women in Mathematics: The Pre-1940 Ph.D.’s.”, and supplementary material on the 228 mathematicians profiled. According to Green and LaDuke’s count, Hopper was actually the twelfth woman to receive a math Ph.D. from Yale. The first was Charlotte Barnum in 1895 for a dissertation on “functions having lines or surfaces of discontinuity.”

In 2019-2020, Yale will celebrate the achievements of its trailblazing female scholars like Barnum and Hopper while marking the 150th anniversary of women in Yale’s graduate and professional programs and the 50th anniversary of women in Yale College. 
For more information about this upcoming dual anniversary, visit the Celebrating Women at Yale website. 
Read more.. 

Source: Yale News

Philosopher of the Month - March | Oxford University Press

Philippa Foot
Photo: 
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This March, in honour of Women's History Month, the OUP philosophy team honors Philippa Foot as our Philosopher of the Month. Foot was considered one of the most distinguished moral philosophers and the pioneer of virtue ethics.

To celebrate women's contributions to the field of philosophy, we have also created a reading list of books and online resources that explore significant philosophers and feminist philosophy in general.  
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Source: Oxford University Press

Women in mathematics aim for an equals sign | Around Campus - MIT News

Female graduate students in the Department of Mathematics unite to encourage community and to extend an invitation to prospective MIT students, inform Laura Carter, Communications and Project Administrator at  School of Science.

Students and faculty share a pizza dinner in the Department of Mathematics to kick-off the Spring 2019 semester.
Photo: Boya Song

Ten years had passed since 2008's Women in Mathematics: A Celebration when a few graduate students in the Department of Mathematics approached a female faculty mentor to revitalize a Women in Mathematics group.

The group designed and relaunched the MIT Women in Mathematics website last fall. It became both a resource and a starting point of their efforts to organize and build a supportive community in mathematics at MIT and beyond. Graduate student Juncal Arbelaiz Mugica, a third-year doctoral student in mathematics, said she realized more was needed to promote and enable peer support.

“A doctoral program is a long and convoluted journey,” Arbelaiz says. “Graduate students can be greatly impacted by a sense of a belonging to a community, which can be more difficult for minority students to find. As a result, I wanted to make the women in mathematics aware that a network of peers is available to them, which the department has been very supportive of.”

Her idea: Form an active, student-led group for students already present and provide resources for women in mathematics who are interested in applying to MIT...

Oscillating progress
Although their efforts are rapidly building a close-knit family of women in mathematics, there remains a lot of work ahead to establish equality for women in mathematics.

"Currently about 35 percent of our math majors at MIT are women, but unfortunately the percentage among our graduate students is only 18, comparable to the national average for similar universities," Goemans says. The most recent data released earlier this year from the National Science Foundation showed 28.5 percent of the doctoral recipients in mathematics and statistics were awarded to women.
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Source: MIT News 

The Best Books to Read This Spring | Entertainment - Esquire

The weather is starting to turn for the better, so go ahead and take a book outside with you.

There’s no time like spring to read. After all, as the days grow longer and you itch to get outside, why not take a book (or two) along with you? From engrossing fiction to informative nonfiction, literary heavyweights to debut authors, here’s what we’re reading this spring. 
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Source: Esquire