Technology aimed at education could really benefit an incredible number of students by making classes and learning (potentially) a more pleasant and efficient experience. Computers can't replace a really good human teacher, but they can make it easier for good human teachers to reach a vast audience of students. Massively open online courses (MOOCs) promise to change how education works, but there are some technological tools that might be missing. It's pretty straightforward to test students on math problems in an automated way, but grading essays is a much more daunting problem. There have been some calls for automated grading software from various organizations (like the Hewlett Foundation). But at the same time, the National Council of Teachers of English argues that computers simply can't grade essays. Here are just a few more links on this debate over the use of algorithms over English professors (or grad students).

• EdX, the non-profit started by Harvard and MIT, is releasing some software to automagically grade human-written essays. Some see this software as just another tool for educators to use for more immediate feedback to students, while others are worried that these algorithms will be used incorrectly and lead to disastrous educational policies and outcomes. [url]
• There are studies that show algorithms are statistically comparable to humans when it comes to ranking essays on a 5 point scale. There are things machines can do better and things humans do better -- just make sure you know the differences and automated essay grading can be done productively in the right context. [url]
• Automated essay readers can grade 16,000 essays in 20 seconds. The Educational Testing Service is testing out automation, so students may soon be facing algorithmic grading for their college entrance exams. [url]
• Grading a few sentences can be harder than it might look. Professional (human) teachers are obviously better at interpreting the insights and ideas behind the words a student writes, but computers scale much better and never tire of horrible spelling mistakes or misplaced modifiers.... [url]

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The field of artificial intelligence is steadily making progress and developing software that can perform some pretty impressive tasks. Still, most AI projects aren't quite ready to convince everyone that computers can be good at general intelligence. But to some folks, it's only a matter of time before robots are going to take over -- driving cars better than us, beating us at chess/poker/go, stealing all the manufacturing jobs. Here are just a few more examples of artificial intelligence getting smarter.

• Algorithms deep inside the secretive Google X lab have been watching millions of YouTube videos -- and have learned to identify cat faces. This feat was accomplished with unsupervised learning -- so no one explicitly programmed anything to look for cat faces. Maybe those computers figured out for themselves that kittens are good for productivity... [url]
• Eugene Goostman is a chatbot that has come very close to passing the Turing Test by fooling a panel of human judges into thinking it was a real boy 29% of time (Passing the Turing Test requires a 30% fooling rate). This chatbot was given the fake personality of a 13yo boy living in Odessa, Ukraine -- so expect next year's competition to include a lot of fake teenagers with strange idiosyncrasies. [url]
• DeeChee the iCub robot is learning how to talk like a human baby by listening to adults speaking and babbling until recognizable words form. DeeChee is a project in the field of embodied cognition -- which asserts that cognitive processes are shaped by the bodies in which they occur. This robot doesn't think like a human baby, but it could help understand how biological brains create language. [url]

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Artificial intelligence projects have come a long way with algorithms that can beat some of the best humans at poker and chess and a whole bunch of other games. There are still a few games that people can clearly play better than computers, but that list is getting shorter all the time. Here are just a few bots that are learning how to beat us at our own games.

• French researchers are working on software that can learn how to play a game just by watching humans play -- and their software has mastered games like tic-tac-toe and connect4. More complex games like chess are a bit too difficult, but maybe someday learning algorithms will be able to take on arbitrary games. [url]
• Playing Rock-Paper-Scissors with a robot hand doesn't sound like a particularly winnable game -- especially when the robot cheats all the time. This robot only takes about a millisecond to detect what a human hand will play, so the only winning strategy for humans is to try to come up with deceptive ways to play RPS. [url]
• A panel of judges couldn't tell the difference between a computer player and a human player in an Unreal tournament (in a strange kind of Turing test). Non-player characters controlled by algorithms are getting more and more human-like, and pretty soon humans won't even need to play video games anymore.... [url]

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The amount of music in the world is growing every minute -- it's not even possible for a single person to listen to every song within a normal lifespan. Luckily, no one would really want to listen to every song, but technology is accelerating the process of creating music with algorithms that can compose songs faster than any human musician and robots that can play non-stop. If virtual monkeys can re-create Shakespeare (albeit in short snippets), it's only a matter of time before virtual musicians are churning out pop hits. Here are just a few recent accomplishments of our new robot musician overlords.

• "Evolution of Music by Public Choice" is the title of a paper that describes how a genetic algorithm -- along with input from volunteers -- made some not-unpleasant-sounding music. Check out Darwin Tunes to participate in the project and become part of the evolutionary record for this. [url]
• If you really want to surround yourself with your favorite music, there's some software that'll turn your tunes into a carpet pattern for you. But for some practical reasons (and copyright law?), only 5 carpet patterns from this algorithm have been manufactured: classical, ambient, jazz, electronic and silence. [url]
• Sound Machines 2.0 (a robotic string quintet) listens to whatever music you play for it, re-interprets your musical choice, and then plays its own musical composition based on what it heard. However, it might be better to wait for Sound Machines 3.0 for all the bugs to be worked out.... [url]

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Artificial intelligence projects are getting better and better at playing games against humans. Pretty soon, we'll just let computers play games for us -- because they'll be better at them. Here are just a few more interesting links on AI research playing with games.

• Space Station Invaders is a video game created by a computer program named Angelina -- a piece of software meant to help human game designers. Angelina's creator says, "In theory there is nothing to stop an artist sitting down with Angelina, creating a game every 12 hours and feeding that into the Apple App Store." [url]
• A machine-learning system from MIT has "understood" the meanings of some words only by playing Civilization and having access to the player's manual for the game. This algorithm plays better if it has read the manual -- just like human players? [url]
• Dr. Fill is a crossword-player program that performed better than a lot of humans at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Brooklyn. It finished 141st out of 600 (if it had been ranked officially with human players), and after losing, it said bluntly, "I'll be back." [url]
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People are usually pretty quick to admit that artificial intelligence programs are better than most humans at solving a lot of math problems. Human scientists have generally been needed to interpret data and make conclusions, but AI software could be catching up with scientists by coming up with their own hypotheses and conclusions. Here are just a few examples of programs that might be writing up their own PhD dissertations someday.

• Robot mathematicians like Graffiti have been around for a very long time, generating far more interesting conjectures than any human could. Interesting mathematical conjectures should be surprising, not too closely related to an existing conjecture, and not too specific. [url]
• Software dubbed Eureqa is analyzing (without help from humans) experimental data from biological systems to derive mathematical models for processes like glycolysis -- and could potentially find new biological discoveries. And I'm sure we'll see stories of robots found cheating by plagiarizing from Wikipedia soon. [url]
• Adam is the first automated scientist -- successfully developing a hypothesis, performing experiments, refining its hypothesis into a novel discovery. Adam found three yeast genes that coded for an orphan enzyme. [url]
• A newer version of Adam, called Eve, is sifting through some of Adam's data and looking to find her own discoveries about yeast genetics. Unfortunately, some intellectual property issues are delaying some of Adam and Eve's latest publications. [url]
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Software is getting better and better at mimicking human behavior on the internet. People are fooled every day by automated messages that seem like they come from actual humans, and sometimes real human messages are mistakenly thought to be composed by computers. Here are just a few more examples of internet bots getting smarter.

• Software called Decaptcha is getting better at solving CAPTCHA challenges. Decaptcha can't foil CAPTCHAs from Google and reCAPTCHA, so it's not going to help digitize books (but maybe someday it will). [url]
• Google's indexing spider, GoogleBot, can now execute AJAX or JavaScript to get into dynamic commenting systems from Facebook and Disqus. When GoogleBot achieves self-awareness, hopefully it won't judge the human race from what it's read in blog comments... [url]
• Socialbots are infiltrating social networks and collecting as much personal information as they can, using fake accounts with attractive profile pictures to befriend unsuspecting people. If a man you've never met before suddenly gives you flowers... (or pokes you on Facebook) Guess what? It's probably spam or an ad for something. [url]
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One of the complaints for artificial intelligence advocates is that the goal posts for strong AI seem to be constantly pushed forward -- so that chess-playing programs are no longer considered a valid demonstration of intelligence and none of the achievements of AI so far are regarded as progress towards a silicon-based analog of human intelligence. But the field of artificial intelligence has made significant progress, and here are just a few examples of some interesting AI projects.

• Google is sponsoring an AI project to develop an algorithm for minimizing regret in decision-making. So basically, it'll spit out advice like: "the only way to win is not to play" and "liquor before beer." [url]
• Researchers from New Jersey have a gender-analysis algorithm that tries to determine an author's gender (male/female/neuter) from just 50 words of text he/she writes. And the researchers are preparing to set this algorithm loose on Twitter and Facebook updates. [url]
• DARPA is looking to create a C3PO-like robot to translate various languages for soldiers. It won't actually walk around, but it will be annoying and cowardly... [url]
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Robots are becoming more and more advanced every day. And as their software improves, they're also becoming more useful for tasks that humans can't do. They can seal off deep sea oil wells at extreme depths. They'll fight dangerous fires. And someday, in the distant future, we might have to debate whether or not it's ethical to send robots to their deaths -- after we grant personhood to artificial intelligence. (And also deal with crazy folks who'll want to marry their laptops....) Progress, FTW!

• Remote-controlled, radiation-proof robots are preparing to enter the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in order to scope out the most dangerous parts of the facility. These robots will hopefully be able to inspect the containment systems and help keep any more nuclear materials from escaping. [url]
• Other robots are being used to help find survivors (or casualties) and to assess the damage of hard-to-access infrastructure. This may be one of the few non-creepy-looking applications of "snake-like" robots... [url]
• For fire-fighting missions, the US Navy is building some humanoid robots. The Navy will be spending about $2M a year to develop these Terminator precursors. [url]
• As always, there's also humanoid robots just waiting to take over manufacturing jobs, and the newest models will even look bored if you don't give them enough work to do. These bots will smile happily as they replace human workers. Great UX! [url]
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Artificial intelligence is a fun topic -- especially when it's applied to playing games with humans. The classic "man vs. machine" battles are always entertaining... until we hit the Singularity, and computer AI just consistently trounces humans in everything. Here are a few more examples of cool AI projects.

• Microsoft Research is working on AI that can play the ancient game of Go -- and incorporating it into an XBox Live game called The Path of Go. This is a pretty cool project to try to get more people playing go, but adding avatars and some storyline about finding your missing twin doesn't sound like a more fun way to play Go to me. [url]
• Starcraft is another AI challenge that requires more than fast reflexes and a pulse. Instead of creating supercomputers that play MMORPGs perfectly, I'd settle for AI that just happily mines gold for me all day. [url]
• Computers can also beat us at really simple games that you wouldn't think need any intelligence to play. So don't play Rock-Paper-Scissors to the death, and never wage a land war in Asia. [url]
• Maybe football coaches should be replaced by computers, too. When your fantasy league is short human players, try a few bots as competitive players. [url]
• If only the neural nets that play 20 questions were a bit more useful... These kinds of programs were supposed to help diagnose medical diseases, but now they just play trivial games and advertise for Whoppers. [url]
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