Talking to machines is becoming commonplace. We routinely tell our smart speakers what to play next, we tell our satnavs where we want to go, we ask our phones general knowledge questions, we dictate messages to friends directly from our smartwatches, and much more. Slowly but surely the conversational agents that recognise and respond to […]
Read MoreJust a few years ago, who would have thought that algorithms would be regularly making important decisions once made by humans, and they would be so complex that we would not be able to fully understand how they made their decisions (even though we rely on their decisions in life-threatening situations). And further, that algorithms […]
Read MoreAlgorithms are sometimes compared to cathedrals, in that they share the same ambition, and the same folly. Some algorithms, such as telephone operating systems, data management systems, or search engines, are huge objects involving the contributions of thousands of people. With algorithms, Homo sapiens has finally created a tool equal to its aspirations. Why do […]
Read MoreAuthors, Carol Frieze and Jeria L. Quesenberry debunk five common myths on the Gender Gap in Computing
Read MoreA professor of Business Innovation and an experienced entrepreneur, Dick Whittington reflects on a weakness of STEM degree programmes in the modern world – and how he’s addressing it with his textbook Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Read MoreFor the 100th anniversary of Richard Feynman's birth Tony Hey author of The New Quantum Universe 2nd Edition, 2003 looks at the accomplishments and legacy of this infamous physicist as well as his personal and professional history with Richard Feynman
Read MoreEsther Klein (later Esther Szekeres) famously observed that five points in the plane with no three in line must contain the vertices of a convex quadrilateral. Similarly, nine points in the plane with no three in line must contain the vertices of a convex pentagon, and more generally for every n there exists a larger […]
Read MoreIn days of 8-bit computers, one would sometimes encounter individuals who knew everything about a particular device or piece of software. Single programmers wrote entire applications or games, and some could debug their work by looking directly at a core dump (a printout of the numbers stored in the computer’s memory). Some even managed to […]
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