Day's Headlines: Week Missiles; Erdogan Expands; Getting Kids to Vote; AI Master; M; and Required Editing

Monday, April 17, 2017

Week Missiles; Erdogan Expands; Getting Kids to Vote; AI Master; M; and Required Editing

North Korea

North Korea 'will test missiles weekly', senior official tells BBC bbc

"We'll be conducting more missile tests on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis," Vice Foreign Minister Han Song-Ryol told the BBC's John Sudworth. He said that an "all-out war" would result if the US took military action.

[OPINION] America Can’t Do Much About North Korea theatlantic

Turkey

Turkey leader’s extraordinary power play theaustralian.au

Remarkably, Recep Tayyip Erdogan manages at the one time to present a warm face to the world while enforcing a hardline and sometimes brutal government at home. As someone who already had enormous powers, Erdogan has just managed to convince his public to give him even more powers — making him the most powerful Turkish president in history.

Also see Erdogan Claims Vast Powers in Turkey After Narrow Victory in Referendum nytimes

Politics

16- and 17-Year-Olds Can Now Pre-Register to Vote Online sos.ca.gov

“California’s 16- and 17-year-olds can now pre-register to vote online at registertovote.ca.gov,” said Secretary Padilla. “Online pre-registration will help more young people vote as soon as they are eligible. Whether they’re at school or at home or hanging out with friends, young Californians can pre-register to vote in just minutes in their smartphone, tablet or laptop.”

AI

[OPINION] It's Time To Embrace AI's Superior Prediction Powers forbes w!

Artificial intelligence is unveiling the mysteries of the future. From the emergence of AI-driven hedge funds and autonomous financial advisory systems to agricultural predictions based on AI analysis of weather forecasts, AI is supplanting humans in the prediction process in ways that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

Chatbots

Facebook’s Perfect, Impossible Chatbot technologyreview

M is so smart because it cheats. It works like Siri in that when you tap out a message to M, algorithms try to figure out what you want. When they can’t, though, M doesn’t fall back on searching the Web or saying “I'm sorry, I don’t understand the question.” Instead, a human being invisibly takes over, responding to your request as if the algorithms were still at the helm. (Facebook declined to say how many of those workers it has, or to make M available to try.)

Genetics

[OPINION] Will Editing Your Baby's Genes Be Mandatory? theatlantic w!

Designing a baby, or editing the genes of an unborn child, strikes many as risky, unseemly, unnatural, unethical, or likely to lead to a dystopian future of one sort or another. Still, I predict that within my lifetime, the United States will arrest, try, and convict some parents for refusing to edit the genes of their child before he or she is born.

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