Communications of the ACM
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How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been billed as the next frontier of humanity: the newly available expanse whose exploration …
From The Noisy Channel
Daniel Tunkelang: Secrecy Doesn't Scale
A little bit of math explains why.Consider a model where each individual in an organization of n people leaks a particular piece of sensitive information withless...
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Daniel Tunkelang: How to Interview a Data Scientist
The O'Reilly Strata Conference brings together an incredible community of people working on big data. This year, I decided to do something different for my presentation...
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Daniel Tunkelang: Are We Too Afraid of Firing?
If you work in the software industry, your employer can probably fire you at any time, for any or no reason. That's because most software companies offer at-will...
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Daniel Tunkelang: Data Science: What's in a Name?
Explore. Hypothesize. Test. Repeat.That's what scientists do. We explore the world around us, come up with hypotheses that generalize our observations, and then...
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Daniel Tunkelang: Brevity is the Soul of Relevance
Mark Twain famously apologized for writing a long letter, saying that "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." Actually, it was Blaise Pascal...
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Daniel Tunkelang: Let's Invert the Performance Review!
Most professionals dread performance reviews. And who can blame them? Some employees fear being judged and found wanting; others see the process as pointless bureaucracy...
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Daniel Tunkelang: Ants, Brains and Politics: Computational Social Science at Stanford
Earlier this month, I had the privilege to participate in Stanford's second annual conference on computational social science. Held by the Institute for Research...
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Daniel Tunkelang: Facebook, Welcome to the HCIR Club!
If you follow technology news, then you've surely heard about the new "graph search" tool that Facebook unveiled today. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet...
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Daniel Tunkelang: R.I.P, Aaron Swartz: Defender of the Freedom to Connect
On Friday, January 11th, digital activist Aaron Swartz was found dead in his New York apartment, an apparent suicide. Suicide is always tragic, but especially in...
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Daniel Tunkelang: Optimizing for the Speed of Learning
Many people trumpet the virtue of "failing fast" as a recipe for success, especially in the pursuit of innovation. But, as Stanford entrepreneurship professorSteve...
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Daniel Tunkelang: Information, Attention, and Trust
In 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow analyzed human motivation as a hierarchy of needs: physiological needs, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization...
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Daniel Tunkelang: Please Give Me A 5-Star Review!
A recent New York Times article highlights the latest episode in the debate over online reviews: apparently Amazon is quietly cracking down on reviews it viewsopenly...
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Daniel Tunkelang: Science as a Strategy
Earlier this year, I had the pleasure to deliver the keynote address at a CIO Summit in Atlanta. It was an honor to address an assembly of CIOs, CTOs, and technology...
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Daniel Tunkelang: Relevance is Complicated
Thanks to everyone for the feedback about my previous post about understanding relevance. It's great having such engaged readers!Some of you felt that I glossed...
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