Karthik Kannan, Purdue University. Photo courtesy: Pixabay. Using machines to augment human activity is nothing new. Egyptian hieroglyphs show the use of horse-drawn carriages even before 300 B.C. Ancient Indian literature such as “Silapadikaram” has described animals being used for farming. And one glance outside shows that today people use motorized vehicles to get around. Where in the past human
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This article was written for theconversation.com by Juan Mateos-Garcia, Director of Innovation Mapping, Nesta and Joysy John Director of Education, Nesta. It has been republished in full under a creative commons license. Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are becoming smarter every day, beating world champions in games like Go, identifying tumours in medical scans better than human radiologists, and increasing the
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This article was written by Scott F. Latham, Associate Professor of Strategic Management, University of Massachusetts Lowell It originally appeared on theconversation.com and has been republished in full under a creative commons/public domain license. Amazon’s announcement that it will invest US$700 million to retrain 100,000 employees – a third of its U.S. workforce – in new technologies is the latest
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Women and minority candidates with 4.0 GPAs who apply for jobs in STEM fields are treated the same as white male candidates with 3.75 GPAs, according to new research from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Researchers say it is just one of several examples of unconscious bias in the interview process. For their paper, business economics and
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Earlier this week, a debate erupted on Twitter surrounding the qualities and traits of a “good” engineer. RELATED: Study suggests girls’ reading skills may be contributing to the gender gap in math The now-viral discussion was started by Twitter user @skirani. In it, he describes his version of the “perfect” employee, which he calls a “10X engineer.” This is a
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In its latest diversity report, Facebook has announced plans to have 50% of its STEM workforce consist of under-represented groups by 2024. The company is specifically looking to recruit talented people who are: Black, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islanders, have two or more ethnicities, live with disabilities, and/or are veterans. To meet its goal Facebook will have to double its
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A new study published on arXiv suggests it could be 118 years before women computer scientists are annually publishing as many research papers as men. The data represents a significant lag behind the biomedical sector, where women-led research is expected to be on par by 2050 if current trends continue. For their study, a team at the Allen Institute for
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