A bigger Silicon Valley Comic Con searches for Planet B

Silicon Valley: Season 4 Episode 1: Fly To Moffet (HBO)

Environmental protection. Funding for science and education. advocating for diversity. silicon valley comic Con 2017 wasn"t just about escapism; people were looking to get to grips with this world today.

In its second year, Steve Wozniak"s local con was again a relatively small, homey place where people of all ages could share geeky interests and get closer to celebrities than at a big show like San Diego Comic-Con. The Silicon Valley theme meant things like a STEM section for kids, a NASA booth and free VR demonstrations outdoors.

There were actors ("Star Trek: The Next Generation" cast members and Grant Gustin and Tom Felton of "The Flash," among others), comics legend Trina Robbins, writers, artists, former MythBusters and so on. Reportedly, even William Shatner was talking about climate change.

You also had your comics, collectibles and a nice range of cosplay, from professional-looking teams to those people who would have been wearing unicorn onesies anyway. Last year"s big costume was Deadpool; this year there were several Negans (from "The Walking Dead") and at least three women dressed as Captain America, one in a NASA backpack. (Plus I found myself dodging "eye contact" with more than one Deathstroke. Or was it just one really creepy Deathstroke circling?)

But where the theme of SVCC 2016 was imagination and empathy -- the ways sci-fi and comic books help us see potential in the future and ourselves-- this year the recurring question was, what can people like us do right now?

Jessica c**n, linguistics consultant for last year"s "Arrival" (which, she cited a headline saying, made linguistics "almost cool"), gave a fun talk on syntax and universal grammar, while explaining that it helps children to have a connection to their indigenous language and the importance of cataloging these languages. At the end of the talk, she brought up ways that types of people you"d expect at the con could help, such as working on free, open-source language app platforms, promoting indigenous artists, donating translation rights to comics and -- the easy one -- supporting the Endangered Language Fund.

At the NASA panel on Mars, where panelists talked about glaciers, methane, the NASA research plane Sofia and possible drone exploration, the audience cheered at a mention of the March for Science. Attendees asked about the state of funding for space exploration and many questions about colonizing Mars, often seen as an escape option, aka "Planet B."

The panelists had their own takes on how to get involved; scientists encouraged those able to pursue a passion in astronomy, astrobiology or geology (as the geology booster pointed out, any astronaut who lands on Mars is guaranteed to be collecting a lot of rocks).

Closer to home -- and something you can do tonight without a degree -- is taking a look at Mars Trek, where NASA posts high-res images. "We don"t have time to look at them all," one panelist explained. (The SVCC schedule doesn"t give much information, so I can"t identify him beyond "man with fine head of hair.") He encouraged everyone to "help us out" by combing through them and reporting anything interesting.

A casual panel discussion of "women in gaming" dodged most of the collective trauma around those three words, but still raised the question of how to advocate for change in video games given the inertia of the industry systems by which they"re made.

So while some people came home with autographs and photos, I scored a list of book recommendations and websites to look up. But also the memory of seeing a guy dressed as The Flash helping a guy in a NASA polo shirt get his photo taken with a live, giant snake.

Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&ct2=us&usg=AFQjCNGEBj3ErmK1AZXQGNLOP6mbzf65rQ&clid=c3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331&cid=52779466923583&ei=E0v-WJjRDMLfpwetlJToBQ&url=https://www.cnet.com/news/bigger-silicon-valley-comic-con-2017-searches-for-planet-b/

Continue Reading ..

Alum author advocates value of "fuzzies" in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley: Season 4: Opening Credits (HBO)

Walking among Google lovers and Facebook diehards, coding junkies and tech enthusiasts, you might not think that Silicon Valley is a welcoming place for your liberal arts major. But Scott Hartley 05 begs to differ.

In his new book, The Fuzzie and the Techie: Why the Liberals Arts Will Rule the Digital World listed as one of the best business books of the month by the Financial Times Hartley argues that Silicon Valley and the tech industry can be home to the humanities lover, or the so-called fuzzie.

Scott Hartley 05 just published a book on the role of both the techie and the fuzzie in Silicon Valley (Courtesy of Scott Hartley).

Techie and fuzzie are Stanford-speak for certain types of majors. A techie is anyone who majors in STEM fields, such as computer science or bioengineering. A fuzzie is someone who majors in the arts, humanities or social sciences.

[There is a] false narrative of Silicon Valley that everyone must be a CS major and have dropped out, Hartley said. But I want to bust the myth that you need to be a techie to work in silicon valley because you can major in anything.

Hartley graduated from Stanford in 2005 with a B.A. in Political Science. Despite his liberal arts background, he went on to work for Google and Facebook before finding a home in venture capitalism, where he helps entrepreneurs transform their ideas into reality. A big believer in the liberal arts, Hartley advocates that there is no clear distinction between a techie and fuzzie.

I think its false dichotomy because if you look around campus, were all techies and fuzzies, Hartley explained. There are elements of ethics in CS and psychology in ME classes. The title [of my book] is fuzzie and a techie its not an either or.

Hartley believes that this false fuzzy-techie dichotomy exists partly due to the financial downturnin 2008 and what he calls a triple threat. He suggested that after 2008, people were concerned about, first, the scarcity of jobs and, second, the rise of automation and artificial intelligence (AI). Third, he said, the risingcost of educationmeant more difficulty paying off student debt.

This triple threat [forces] people to think about the relevance of their degree rather than learning for learnings sake, instead of being experimental with what youre exposed to, Hartley explained.

According to Hartley, taking classes outside of your major on the opposite side of the fuzzie-techie divide can be beneficial.

If you have CS background, [there is] no reason why you cant take a great literature class or build [your] writing skills, Hartley argued. And fuzzies can definitely gain fluency in CS too.

There are many examples of crossovers between the fuzzie and techie worlds. The CEO of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki, studied history and literature at Harvard University. Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann studied political science at Yale, and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman 89 studied philosophy at Oxford after majoring in symbolic systems at Stanford.

But the fuzzie-techie crossover can go the other way as well. As Harley mentions in his press kit, Stitch Fix, an online personal styling platform for women, uses machine learning algorithms to analyze consumer clothing preferences.

These algorithms give highly informed options to human stylists who make final determinations, Hartley said. Its very much a fuzzie-techie approach of using the best in computing and human intuition.

Fashion isnt the only place where people use the fuzzie-techie approach. Software company Palantir whose CEO is incidentally a Ph.D. in neoclassical social theory takes the power of data science to surface patterns and the judgment of human analysts to interpret them, Hartley said.

[Palantir is a] mixture of data and human, and thats where fuzzies need to be, Hartley argued.

Another prominent field where fuzzies may not be expected to be in need is artificial intelligence, the domain of gadgets and robots. But Harley believes that AI, too, requires people from all sorts of backgrounds. Product development, he said, needs people with diverse perspectives deciding how tech should be applied to billions of people around the planet.

So within the tech worlds crowd of CS geeks and engineering buffs, you can find economics majors, English majors, history majors and even fine arts majors. You dont necessarily need to be a mathematical genius to fit into Silicon Valley or have advanced coding skills to build the next Snapchat, Harley said; all you need is a great idea.

You have to really find a problem that youre passionate about, Hartley advised. Then its about finding the right team, taking technology and applying it to your passion. Thats what makes a great company.

ContactAparna Verma at averma2 at stanford.edu.

Source: http://www.stanforddaily.com/2017/04/23/alum-author-talks-blending-techie-and-fuzzy-in-silicon-valley/

Continue Reading ..

Someone built chatbots that talk like the characters from HBO"s "Silicon Valley"

Welcome to Silicon Valley

Long live Pied Piper.

Luka, a messaging app that builds all kinds of chatbots that dothings like makerestaurant reservations, rolled out three new bots this weekend, each mimicking a different character from HBOs Silicon Valley.

That means you can finally get advice from top-notch investors and entrepreneurs like Russ Three Commas Hanneman or Erlich Bachman, the coattail-riding co-founder of the shows main startup, Pied Piper.

Luka built the bots by analyzing all of the characters lines from the first two seasons of the show, said Luka CEO Eugenia Kuyda. The language is then dumped into a neural network dialogue model that learns the characters language patterns.

In other words, the bots are meant to feel like real people. They arent limited to a dozen canned responses, but can actually say things the character might say in any given situation, even if theyve never said that sentence or phrase before. At least thats the idea.

It sorta works, too. When I asked Bachman for a pizza recommendation this weekend, he replied, I dont give a f*ck, man. Go ask Yelp. Sounds about right!

Luka

The bots are a well-timed gimmick Silicon Valleys season 3 premiere airs on HBO tonight but the idea and the tech behind them are worth taking more seriously than Bachmans trash talk. Thats because Luka (and presumably other bot makers) want to make bots that mimic real-life people, not just fictitious television characters.

Imagine a bot that can pick up your conversational habits and personality and then talk to someone else on your behalf. Luka built these Silicon Valley bots on a relatively small amount of conversational data. In Hannemans, case it was just over 1,000 lines of text.

Think about those who tweet, speak and write every day, Kuyda wrote on Lukas blog. Their AIs will be significantly more powerful.

So watch out. Your bot is coming to replace you.

If you want to chat with the Silicon Valley characters, you can download Luka from the App Store for free and test them out for yourself.

• Contact Kurt Wagner:
• |
• EMAIL

Source: http://recode.net/2016/04/24/silicon-valley-hbo-chatbots-for-season-3-premier/

Continue Reading ..