Teaching robots right from wrong

The cover story on The Economist 1843. "Artificial intelligence is outperforming the human sort in a growing range of fields – but how do we make sure it behaves morally? Simon Parkin meets the men trying to teach ethics to computers":

In 2017, this is an urgent question. Self-driving cars have clocked up millions of miles on our roads while making autonomous decisions that might affect the safety of other human road-users. Roboticists in Japan, Europe and the United States are developing service robots to provide care for the elderly and disabled. One such robot carer, which was launched in 2015 and dubbed Robear (it sports the face of a polar-bear cub), is strong enough to lift frail patients from their beds; if it can do that, it can also, conceivably, crush them. Since 2000 the US Army has deployed thousands of robots equipped with machineguns, each one able to locate targets and aim at them without the need for human involvement (they are not, however, permitted to pull the trigger unsupervised).

Public figures have also stoked the sense of dread surrounding the idea of autonomous machines. Elon Musk, a tech entrepreneur, claimed that artificial intelligence is the greatest existential threat to mankind. Last summer the White House commissioned four workshops for experts to discuss this moral dimension to robotics. As Rosalind Picard, director of the Affective Computing Group at MIT puts it: “The greater the freedom of a machine, the more it will need moral standards.”

Indexers are the unsung heroes of the publishing world

Sam Leigh in The Guardian:

It would be a cliche to say that indexers are the unsung heroes of the publishing world. But unsung they generally are: no indexer usually expects or receives credit by name in books where everyone from the font designer to the snapper of the author photograph tends to get a solemn shout-out. And heroes they are, too: the index is, in any nonfiction book, more useful than almost anything else in the apparatus. It is a map of the text; a cunningly devised series of magical shortcuts that can in the good case save a scholar many hours of work, and in the bad one save a bookshop-browsing cabinet minister from having to buy a former colleague’s memoirs.

Graphic Design Legend Milton Glaser on Design & Art

Anne Quito for Quartz: 

Design is not art. It’s a distinction understood by practicing designers, but it still eludes many. In an Oct. 29 talk at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the 87-year-old graphic design legend Milton Glaser gave the best definition of the practice of design.

“Design is the process of going from an existing condition to a preferred one,” said the 2010 National Medal of Arts recipient. “Observe that there’s no relationship to art.”

This confusion is not just a matter of semantics. In businesses, schools, offices, even newspapers, design is often associated with the art department. That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the aim of design. When art and design are confused, the designers’ domain becomes limited to style and appearance.

So You Think You're Creative?

Studio 360 revisits an episode that explores the source of creativity: 

We're always talking about creativity, but what do we mean? Can we find creativity, can we measure it, can we encourage it? Kurt talks with Gary Marcus, a psychology professor about what science tells us about creativity. A researcher puts jazz musicians into an fMRI machine and has them improvise; an intrepid reporter gets her creativity tested and scored; and a little girl introduces us to her imaginary friends (all of them).

The Evolution of Stop-Motion

 Vugar Efendi:
With the release of Kubo and the Two Strings, it is a perfect moment to go back in time and see the evolution of stop-motion animation throughout the years.

The films included are:
- The Enchanted Drawing (1900)
-Fun at the Bakery Shop (1902)
-El Hotel Electrico (1905)
-Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906)
-The Cameraman's Revenge (1912)
-The Night before Christmas (1913)
-Häxan (1922)
-The Lost World (1925)
-The Tale of Fox (1930 version)
-King Kong (1933)
-The New Gulliver (1935)
-The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
-It Came Beneath The Sea (1955)
-Earth vs Flying Saucers (1956)
-The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958)
-Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
-Closed Mondays (1975)
-Star wars IV: A New Hope (1977)
-Star Wars V: Empire Strikes Back (1980)
-Clash of the Titans (1981)
-The Terminator (1984)
-Robocop (1987)
-Beetlejuice (1988)
-Wallace and Gromit: A grand day out (1990)
-The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb (1993)
-The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
-James and the Giant Peach (1996)
-Chicken Run (2000)
-Corpse Bride (2005)
-Coraline (2009)
-Mary and Max (2009)
-Fantastic Mr.Fox (2009)
-The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012)
-Paranorman (2012)
-Frankenweenie (2012)
-Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
-The Little Prince (2015)
-Anomalisa (2015)
-Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)