Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 11
Posts 1 - 10

«Genève veut être une référence»

("Geneva wants to be a reference")

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Newspaper | La Tribune de Genève
Date | 11.9.2017
Language | French
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | computer programming, digitized education, school
Summary | Some cantons introduced computer programming as part of their school curricula, but Geneva is not one of them. It seems that they're focusing on digital equipment. Introducing digital culture to students is not enough; what about teaching them to be "critical" and talking to them about the dangers that they can face? Anne Emery- Torracinta and Marie- Claude Sawerschel answer some questions.
Image Description | Photograph of a teacher and a student working on an interactive board.
Image Tags | male(s), school

Schnauze, Bot!

(Shut up, bot!)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 3.9.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, computer programming, Facebook, threat
Summary | News broke that two artificially intelligent Facebook chatbots, Bob and Alice, began communicating with one another using a language that not even their programmers could understand. The programmers then proceeded to kill the chatbots. Some may see this as a threat that artificial intelligence could overpower humans but the messages between the chatbots just operated on a different logic than human linguistic logic and did not seem very threatening at all.
Image Description | N/A

Der Herr der Smileys

(The Lord of Smileys)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 29.7.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | computer programming, emojis, misunderstanding, translation
Summary | The Unicode chief, Mark Davis, assesses which new emojis make it into the Unicode which all major tech firms use. Anyone can propose an emoji but they have to argue why it is a globally significant symbol. They are then written into the Unicode which is a computer code that works for all languages. Tech firms then choose the font for the letters and emojis in which these symbols appear on their devices. Tech companies have chosen more similar emoji fonts over the last years to avoid misunderstandings between devices of different providers if the emojis are displayed differently.
Image Description | Portrait of the interviewee Mark Davis.
Image Tags | male(s)

The Secret to a Good Robot Teacher

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 26.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | computer programming, research/study
Summary | Digitized education as it is usually designed today makes a fatal omission. It ignores the fact that human learning requires not only language as information but also language as social cues. Evolution has designed our minds so that we learn best from other human testimony. Studies with children show that they trust robotic teachers more when they display some kind of emotional range and social cues.
Image Description | Illustration of a robot teaching children.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), school

Teaching Kids Coding, by the Book

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 21.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | computer programming, gender, school
Summary | A non-profit organization called "Girls Who Code" provides after-school coding classes and coding camps to girls all over the country. It started as an attempt to recruit more girls to computer programming and now the demand is far larger than the available spots. The organization is now publishing a series of books of entertaining nature whose protagonists are girls who code so as to make girls relate to computer programming and imagine themselves as coders.
Image Description | Women/girls huddled over a laptop together.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, female(s), school

How Silicon Valley Pushed Coding Into American Classrooms

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 27.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | computer programming, marketing, school
Summary | The Partovi brothers who are early investors in some major tech companies have started inversting in computer programming teaching. They advocate that all public schools in the US should teach students coding. Of course tehy have a personal interest: the more skilled coders there are, the better their field wil develop.
Image Description | Illustration of a man in front of a computer screen and a man teaching little children.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, female(s), male(s)

As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 29.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | computer programming, threat
Summary | Computer programming classes are increasingly in demand at universities across the country. Reports of students plagiarizing and copying code from each other are however also increasing. It is difficult to find out whether students have cheated but identical mistakes are a dead giveaway. One programming professor has also written a programm to compare codes and find how similar they are indicating the likelihood that the two codes were collaboratively written.
Image Description | Image of a lecture hall showing the lecturer's laptop and an image of a female student walking on campus.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, female(s), male(s)

Is China Outsmarting America in A.I.?

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 27.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, computer programming, politics
Summary | China is surpassing the US in artificial intelligence research. They succeeded in getting to human-level language recognition a year before Microsoft did. China is also increasing funding for artificial intelligence research massively while President Trump is cutting research funding. The Chinese interent giant Baidu has succeeded in understanding very subtle differences between Chinese dialects.
Image Description | Images of a German AI researcher in China with his machines and students, a Tweet, and an auditorium watching a human playing a board game against Google AI.
Image Tags | female(s), Google, male(s), Twitter

In Europe’s Election Season, Tech Vies to Fight Fake News

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 1.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | computer programming, Facebook, fake news, Google, law, politics
Summary | In light of recent elections, many people are eager to combat misinformation online. Major tech companies like Facebook and Google are being pressured to purdue solutions to stop the spread of fake news on their platforms. Germany even demands fines from Facebook for not complying with federal laws targeted at keeping hate speech and fake news controled. Competitions with rewards of several thousand dollars are asking for programmers to come up with fact-checking software which can weed out false news.
Image Description | Image of a computer programmer working on solutions to flag fake news and a Reuters image of election posters from France.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Where Non-Techies Can Get With the Programming

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 4.4.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | computer programming, digitized education, research/study
Summary | Computer programming is the new lingua franca of modern economy. Introductory classes are increasingly popular at universities with 90% of Standford students taking an introductory computer programming class. Coding can be useful for lawyers, doctors, historians, and even students from the humanities because learning to code entails learning computational thinking.
Image Description | Illustration with a diverse group of faces connexted to written computer code.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), text

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