Book Cover: " The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power"

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power Read More

The History of Digital Spam

Communications of the ACM, August 2019
By Emilio Ferrara

“In this article, I will briefly review the history of digital spam: starting from its quintessential incarnation, spam emails, to modern-days forms of spam affecting the Web and social media, the survey will close by depicting future risks associated with spam and abuse of new technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (e.g., Digital Humans).”

The History of Digital Spam Read More
Book Cover: "AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order"

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

In AI Superpowers, Kai-fu Lee argues powerfully that because of these unprecedented developments in AI, dramatic changes will be happening much sooner than many of us expected. Indeed, as the US-Sino AI competition begins to heat up, Lee urges the US and China to both accept and to embrace the great responsibilities that come with significant technological power.

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order Read More

Blogging Birds: Telling Informative Stories About the Lives of Birds from Telemetric Data

Communications of the ACM, March 2019
By Advaith Siddharthan, Kapila Ponnamperuma, Chris Mellish, et al.

“The Blogging Birds system shows that raw satellite tag data can be transformed into fluent, engaging, and informative texts directed at members of the public and in support of nature conservation.”

Blogging Birds: Telling Informative Stories About the Lives of Birds from Telemetric Data Read More

Intelligent Systems for Geosciences: An Essential Research Agenda

Communications of the ACM, January 2019
By Yolanda Gil, Suzanne A. Pierce, et al.

“Many aspects of geosciences pose novel problems for intelligent systems research… A recently launched Research Coordination Network on Intelligent Systems for Geosciences followed a workshop at the National Science Foundation on this topic. This expanding network builds on the momentum of the NSF EarthCube initiative for geosciences, and is driven by practical problems in Earth, ocean, atmospheric, polar, and geospace sciences. Based on discussions and activities within this network, this article presents a research agenda for intelligent systems inspired by geosciences challenges.”

Intelligent Systems for Geosciences: An Essential Research Agenda Read More

Speech Emotion Recognition: Two Decades in a Nutshell, Benchmarks, and Ongoing Trends

Communications of the ACM, May 2018
By Björn W. Schuller

“Communication with computing machinery has become increasingly ‘chatty’ these days: Alexa, Cortana, Siri, and many more dialogue systems have hit the consumer market on a broader basis than ever, but do any of them truly notice our emotions and react to them like a human conversational partner would? In fact, the discipline of automatically recognizing human emotion and affective states from speech, usually referred to as Speech Emotion Recognition or SER for short, has by now surpassed the “age of majority,” celebrating the 22nd anniversary after the seminal work of Daellert et al. in 1996—arguably the first research paper on the topic. However, the idea has existed even longer, as the first patent dates back to the late 1970s.”

Speech Emotion Recognition: Two Decades in a Nutshell, Benchmarks, and Ongoing Trends Read More
Alexa, I Want Answers

Amazon Alexa and the Search for the One Perfect Answer

Wired.com, February 18, 2019
By James Vlahos

“Reaching position zero requires a wholly different strategy than conventional SEO. The importance of putting just the right keywords on a web page, for instance, is declining. Instead, SEO gurus try to think of the natural-language phrases that users might say—like “What are the top-rated hybrid cars?”—and incorporate them, along with concise answers, on sites. The hope is to produce the perfect bit of content that the AI will extract and read aloud.”

Amazon Alexa and the Search for the One Perfect Answer Read More