The ScaleR package provides functions for performing scalable and extremely high performance data management, analysis, and visualization in R. It was only available to those who had a Microsoft R Server license---until now. With the introduction of the free Microsoft R Client for Windows tool you can now work with the full set of ScaleR functions without having to part with a cent. Of course, … [Read more...]
Campaign to Stop Killer Robots
There's an international coalition that is [...] working to preemptively ban fully autonomous weapons. To be clear, this isn't the type of robot used to kill a sniper recently. We are talking about systems designed to make a kill decision without human intervention. What really drew my attention to the (serious) campaign, however, was the name---Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. If only all … [Read more...]
Robot kills person?
I noticed some headlines in the last few days about the "unprecedented" use of a robot to kill a person. At first, I was worried that, as we prepare to have robots move among us, one of our faithful servants had already broken Asimov's first law of robotics A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. However, it turns out that the Dallas … [Read more...]
Self-driving car dilemmas
ScienceDaily has an interesting article on the moral dilemmas that could face autonomous cars. Iyad Rahwan of MIT's Media Lab surveyed people on how safety rules should be programmed in these cars. People generally held a utilitarian view. For example, in a situation where a car could either career into a group of schoolchildren or smash into a wall, killing it's occupants, most people believed … [Read more...]
Microsoft announces major commitment to Apache Spark
Microsoft have just announced an extensive commitment for Spark to power Microsoft’s big data and analytics offerings including Cortana Intelligence Suite, Power BI, and Microsoft R Server Spark 1.6.1 is available on Azure HDInsight and integration with R Server is following. This will allow R functions to be run at scale over thousands of Spark nodes. … [Read more...]