http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/13/large-study-shows-little-difference-between-human-and-robot-essay-graders/large-study-shows-little-difference-between-human-and-robot-essay-graders-inside-higher-ed Large study shows little difference between human and robot essay graders: http://t.co/W7pku7mG #x ]]> Fri, 13 Apr 2012 07:30:19 -0700 http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/13/large-study-shows-little-difference-between-human-and-robot-essay-graders/large-study-shows-little-difference-between-human-and-robot-essay-graders-inside-higher-ed http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/commentary/roar-so-wildly-spam-technology-and-language This is the raw text output of a chat session with a bot I modified to act as an interlocutor. I use our conversation, which revolves around the history of spam, particularly algorithmic filtering, litspam, and the theories of Wiener and Turing, as a way of putting forward the outlines of new, machine-driven forms of language for which spam was the testing ground. ]]> Thu, 16 Feb 2012 06:20:28 -0700 http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/commentary/roar-so-wildly-spam-technology-and-language http://www.american.com/archive/2011/february/i-for-one-welcome-our-new-robot-overlords In case you haven’t heard, the newest champion of "Jeopardy!," the popular TV game show, is a computer. Watson, an enormous computer developed by researchers at IBM, was pitted against the two previous human champions, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. At the end of the first round, aired on Valentine’s Day, Jennings and Watson were tied for first place. But Watson trounced both humans in the next round, despite making some odd mistakes. And he won the second game, aired on February 16, suggesting the first victory was more than just beginner’s luck. When the IBM computer Deep Blue beat… ]]> Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:15:04 -0700 http://www.american.com/archive/2011/february/i-for-one-welcome-our-new-robot-overlords http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior Pac-Man is one of the most iconic video games of all time, and most people (even non-gamers) have at least a passing familiarity with it. The purpose of the game is very simple — the player is placed in a maze filled with food (depicted as pellets or dots) and needs to eat all of it to advance to the next level. This task is made difficult by four ghosts that pursue Pac-Man through the maze. If Pac-Man makes contact with any of the ghosts, the player loses a life and the positions of Pac-Man and the ghosts are reset… ]]> Sun, 05 Dec 2010 05:10:00 -0700 http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/all/1 The story of Google’s algorithm begins with PageRank, the system invented in 1997 by cofounder Larry Page while he was a grad student at Stanford. Page’s now legendary insight was to rate pages based on the number and importance of links that pointed to them — to use the collective intelligence of the Web itself to determine which sites were most relevant. It was a simple and powerful concept, and — as Google quickly became the most successful search engine on the Web — Page and cofounder Sergey Brin credited PageRank as their company’s fundamental innovation. But that wasn’t the… ]]> Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:56:00 -0700 http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/all/1