Technology

Just imagine you are in your favorite pizza parlor and your taste buds are all set for that perfect pepperoni slice. You look over the menu, decide what you want, and pass the word to the waiter. You do not walk to the kitchen to cut your pizza yourself. Rather, the waiter takes your order,

Just imagine a world in which one could make an agreement with a person in another part of the world, and it would happen automatically without there being any need for trust in that person or even for someone to meet that person. Sounds like something from a sci-fi movie, doesn’t it? But this is

You return home after a long day at school or work. Obviously, you’re going to be tired, maybe a bit peckish, and all you’ll want to do is chill. The moment you walk through your door, your lights turn on, your thermostat is set to the perfect temperature, and your favorite playlist begins to play

Have you ever visited a website, and a little chat window pops up that is typeable, instantly saying, “How may I help you today?” You put in your question, and voilà, you have an answer in no time. Pretty neat, huh? There is just one catch: you are not speaking with a human; you’re speaking

Did you ever realize that you said “Play my favorite song” to Siri, and you were amazed that she knows exactly what you want? Or maybe you typed something into Google and—voilà.—it knows just what you’re looking for, even though you’re not really sure? That’s the magic of Natural Language Processing—a technology silently working behind

Think of teaching a robot to recognize your face or to pick that show on Netflix that you would probably find most interesting to watch next. Exactly how is that supposed to happen? This is where neural networks come into play. In a way, it can be thought of: they are the brains behind most

Just imagine a library where all the books you need for research are located in various rooms, some even in different buildings. Now, how annoying would that be? In fact, take all those thousands of similarly arranged and stored books, and place them in a single big room accessible at any given time. Well, basically,

Now, imagine sitting in a room which is fully carpeted on the floor and every inch of the furniture with thousands of jigsaw puzzle pieces. Each piece is symbolic of an information piece—bright colors, dull, untouched, with many feeling like they just can’t fit. Now, what if I tell you there is a way you

Imagine you’re digging through a pile of old toys, trying to find that special action figure which you lost years ago. Well, that’s more or less what data mining is all about; however, instead of toys, we’re really just sifting through mountains of data to find useful information. It’s what businesses, scientists, and even governments