LAGOS — Adegunji Kazeem vividly remembers the day his life fell apart. It was December 4, 2019. Kazeem was a final-year student at the University of Lagos and writing his undergraduate thesis, a requirement for graduation.

For 10 years Josephine was a rarity: a female hotshot in the heart of Silicon Valley. Having made her name, she was in demand and looked forward to climbing the corporate ladder at least as fast as her male co-workers.

Photo by Ars Electronica / FlickrLittle Lewis, my son, I see some evidence that you have the ability to learn science, number and proportions, and I recognize your special desire to learn about the astrolabe… — Chaucer’s Astrolabe Treatise, 1391.

German artist Ralf Baecker gives technology a life of its own. His new piece Irrational Computing, which debuts International Triennial of New Media Art, use semiconductor crystals (quartz sand) and connects them to interlinked modules to create a primitive macroscopic signal processor.

At Facebook’s F8 conference in Silicon Valley, David Marcus, the company’s head of messaging, proudly demonstrated its new suite of chatbots. Users can now get in a conversation with the likes of CNN, H&M, and HP, and ask for help shopping, or the latest headlines.

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — At first, Fan Hui thought the move was rather odd. But then he saw its beauty. “It’s not a human move. I’ve never seen a human play this move,” he says. “So beautiful.” It’s a word he keeps repeating. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful.

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — Lee Sedol is rather surprised that Google has fashioned an artificially intelligent system that so skillfully plays the ancient game of Go.

Why has the narrative of computer history come to be defined more by images of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg than by the pioneering work of Ada Lovelace, who is often recognized as the world’s first computer programmer? This question and many others are increasingly being asked by women all acr

Like much of her work, Ashley Zelinskie eludes a one-dimensional definition. She is a Star Trek-obsessed nerd who studies electrical engineering, theoretical physics, and space in her spare time.

When it comes to artificial intelligence, we may all be suffering from the fallacy of availability: thinking that creating intelligence is much easier than it is, because we see examples all around us.

A person sees this soon-to-be pornographic gif as an attractive blonde addressing the camera as she’s about to pull a man’s shorts down. A computer sees it as a portrait of a late-20s female inclining her head, sitting indoors in a room with clothing and a painting.

An historic milestone in artificial intelligence set by Alan Turing - the father of modern computer science - has been achieved at an event organised by the University of Reading.

The following is the full transcript of Alexander R. Galloway’s interview for the forthcoming documentary, #artoffline (2015). Directed by Manuel Correa, the film explores contemporary art and its problematic relationship with information technology.

Keynote with Ryan Bishop (Winchester School of Art), Benjamin H. Bratton and Metahaven At Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin 31.1.2014

Conference stream An Afterglow of The Mediatic

Planetary computation and its geographies can be modeled as a coherent platform, a vertical software/hardware "stack". In his forthcoming book, "The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty", Benjamin Bratton explores this topography as a geopolitical framework, one defined by accidents and contradictions as much as by inventions and efficiencies. The design group Metahaven's forthcoming publication, "Black Transparency", focuses on the political and aesthetic regimes of contemporary transparency, and their coexistence with networks, institutions, and various (dis)organised groups. The latest in their series of ongoing collaborative discussions, Metahaven and Bratton will take turns using the stack's six layers—Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface, and User—offering proposals on the future of each.

How many researchers does it take to change a test of artificial intelligence? Sixty-five years ago, famed mathematician and WWII code-breaker Alan Turing unveiled the “Imitation Game,” a playful scenario designed to test a computer’s ability to disguise itself as a human agent.

I want to compile a list of art works that used chance operations and/or randomness in their creation. I am keen to incorporate pre-20th century, non-Western works, and lots of works by female artists, but anything you can think of will be super helpful. Chance operations doesn't necessarily mean random, for instance, some Oulipo stuff fits. Like Georges Perec using the knight's move in chess to structure 'Life a Users Manual'. And chance doesn't have to mean the generation of a pattern or structure, for instance, Yoko Ono's 'Cut Piece' created the opportunity for chance events to take place that were hugely influential on how the work played out.

Works by John Cage, Alison Knowles, Stan Brakhage, Yoko Ono, Robert Filliou, Brian Eno, Burroughs/Gysin, Ewa Partum, Simone Forti, Nam June Paik, Cildo Meireles, Hans Haacke, Francis Alÿs, Jeremy Hutchinson, Daniel Temkin and others come to mind, as well as tonnes of Dada, Fluxus and computer generated work.

As I say, I am keen to move outside well known 'canonical' stuff, but really influential pre-20th century works would be particularly useful to know about. Also, any very early computer stuff. Thanks in advance!

If it exists in the real world, you can be someone has figured out a way to build it in Minecraft. A Minecraft builder has created a word processor, complete with keyboard and monitor, entirely in the game. And it isn't just for show.

I got no immediate reply; Moxon was apparently intent upon the coals in the grate, touching them deftly here and there with the fire-poker till they signified a sense of his attention by a brighter glow.

I am interested in any writings connecting (Universal) Turing Machines and horror. The idea of computers being able to imitate the behaviour of anything speaks to me of the monsters and doppelgängers from the Gothic tradition onwards. Know any writings on this? Alan Turing's 'Imitation Game' (not the film) plays a part in my hunch, as does the long discourse around biological processes as being 'machine-like'. Artificial Intelligence might come into this, but I am more interested in mimesis itself, and the fear this strikes in us. A machine able to imitate anything and everything surely echoes fears and nightmares that are labelled 'Gothic'.

Critical writings, fiction, articles and otherwise are very welcome indeed. Thanks.

In space exploration, there is the Google Lunar X Prize for placing a rover on the lunar surface. In medicine, there is the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize for developing a Star Trek-like device for diagnosing disease.