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Impress the Algorithm. Get $250,000

Carroll, 35, isn’t quite an outsider. She has three degrees from Stanford and a career that includes stints at Amazon.com Inc. and two unicorn-tier startups. She joined Social Capital’s Palo Alto office in 2015, and last year she began building an automated system that would allow the fund to invest in startups that its partners had never met.

The economics of artificial intelligence

When looking at artificial intelligence from the perspective of economics, we ask the same, single question that we ask with any technology: What does it reduce the cost of? Economists are good at taking the fun and wizardry out of technology and leaving us with this dry but illuminating question. The answer reveals why AI is so important relative to many other exciting technologies.

A lightning strike shut off a woman’s brain implant

DBS devices, such as the woman’s, are increasingly used to help treat neurological conditionslikeParkinson’s, tremors, muscle spasms, epilepsy, and obsessive compulsive disorders. The devices work by placing electrodes in specific areas of the brain to deliver electrical impulses that are thought to help regulate aberrant electrical signals there—although it’s still unclear how exactly this works. The devices’ electrical impulses are generated by a pacemaker-like pulse generator implanted in the chest or torso, connected by wiring and powered by a battery.

Troubled Times for Alternatives to Einstein’s Theory of Gravity

Zumalacárregui, a theoretical physicist at the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics, had been studying how the discovery of a neutron-star collision would affect so-called “alternative” theories of gravity. These theories attempt to overcome what many researchers consider to be two enormous problems with our understanding of the universe. Observations going back decades have shown that the universe appears to be filled with unseen particles — dark matter — as well as an anti-gravitational force called dark energy.

Debtors in China Shamed on Highway Billboard Featuring Their Faces and Names

Things I’ve learned using serverless

After the tour-de-force of Serverlessconf in October, I decided my entire company would be going serverless. I spent the first couple of months beating my head against the wall trying to migrate a Python Flask app to Lambda—these efforts helped me find a better way.

16-year-old on finding primes with neural networks

Inspired by the triumphs of the “AlphaGo” project by DeepMind, I focused my research into the extensions and optimisation techniques that are so common in neural network design. There are many useful packages in machine learning, such as tensor flow, which can generate complex neural networks which work well, very quickly, but for this project I really wanted to develop an understanding of the inner workings of modern neural networks. So I went through the arduous calculus myself giving a much less efficient but more rewarding program.

Breakthrough pushes Quantum Key Distribution beyond 500km

Cambridge physicists have come up with a new way to build a secure Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) network that could extend the technology’s range beyond 500km for the first time.

Having AI systems try to outwit one another could help judge their intentions

NASA’s Launching a Lander That Will Dig on Mars

InSight will accomplish this feat with its Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3), nicknamed “the mole” because it can burrow through regolith (the loose rocky surface layer on Mars and many other terrestrial planets). The instrument consists of a tube with a spring-loaded mechanism that will hammer out a hole in half-meter increments. Every 50 centimeters, it will stop for several hours or days to take thermal measurements and cool down from the frictional and operational heat generated by the dig process.