“The AI algorithm, developed by Chinese retail giant Alibaba, outscored humans in the Stanford Question Answering Dataset—a global reading test consisting of more than 100,000 questions. Using natural-language processing, the machine-learning model developed by Alibaba’s Institute of Data Science of Technologies beat rival humans with a score of 82.44 versus 82.305, the company said.”
Tag: 01.15.18
Study: Broadway Is Becoming More Diverse
“The study, released Monday, examined the 2015-16 season and found it to be the most diverse the group has reviewed so far, with 35 percent of all roles going to minority actors, up from 30 percent the previous season and 24 percent the year before that. The coalition has now compiled 10 years of data on diversity on New York stages.”
Ocean Vuong Wins £25,000 T.S. Eliot Prize For Poetry
“Reflecting on the aftermath of war over three generations, 29-year-old Vuong’s first collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, has already landed the Forward prize for best first collection, as well as the Whiting and the Thom Gunn awards.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.15.18
Museum Admissions, Deaccessions: Let’s Get Real
I have not waded into either of the debates that are raging across the art museum world at the moment. So far, I’ve avoided commenting on … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2018-01-15
Michael Gordon’s Acquanetta: Backstage carnage amid on-screen horror
Mystery is the canny substitute for substance. The less that is known, the more implication can spin grandeur out of the mundane. And that explains Acquanetta, the single-named Hollywood star of 1940s B-movies like Captive Wild Woman … read more
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2018-01-15
Watching (And Listening) To The Maria Callas Hologram Might Be A Bit Creepy
“It was amazing, yet also absurd; strangely captivating, yet also campy and ridiculous. And in a way, it made the most sense of any of the musical holograms produced so far. More than rock or hip-hop fans — and even more, you could say, than fans of instrumental classical music — opera lovers dwell in the past. We are known for our obsessive devotion to dead divas and old recordings; it can sometimes seem like an element of necrophilia, even, drives the most fanatical buffs.”
Brain Scientists Think They’re Figuring Out Creativity
“Not so long ago, it was commonly believed that the right hemisphere is the exclusive generator of creative thought. Later on, researchers’ focus shifted to connectivity between the two hemispheres. That model has been refined in recent years, as scientists have begun mapping not just regions of the brain, but the neural networks that spring into action as needed. Now, researchers have identified a brain network that is strongly associated with creativity.”
Soundtrack For “The Greatest Showman” Is #1 On Billboard Charts
The soundtrack “is No. 1 on the Billboard album chart for a second week, with the equivalent of 104,000 sales in the United States, according to Nielsen. The album, released by Atlantic, was helped by the Golden Globes on Jan. 7, where it won best original song for “This Is Me.” It’s the first time a soundtrack has been No. 1 for two weeks in a year and a half, since “Suicide Squad” reached the top in August 2016.
Most Of The Pathology Around Poverty Comes From Feeling Poor, Not Being Poor
“People who see themselves as poor make different decisions, and, generally, worse ones. … One explanation for this is that poor people engage in riskier behavior, which is why they are poor in the first place. By [research psychologist Keith] Payne’s account, this way of thinking gets things backward.”
We Get The Self-Help Gurus To Suit Our Time (What We Can Learn)
“In our current era of non-stop technological innovation, fuzzy wishful thinking has yielded to the hard doctrine of personal optimization. Self-help gurus need not be charlatans peddling snake oil. Many are psychologists with impressive academic pedigrees and a commitment to scientific methodologies, or tech entrepreneurs with enviable records of success in life and business. What they’re selling is metrics. It’s no longer enough to imagine our way to a better state of body or mind. We must now chart our progress, count our steps, log our sleep rhythms, tweak our diets, record our negative thoughts—then analyze the data, recalibrate, and repeat.”