Artificial Intelligence, Buzzfeed Japan

Media organizations are looking to computer science to improve their services:

• computers already write sports articles better than humans

• articles are suggested using various recommendation engines

• people interact with chatbots to find interesting articles to read

A Ph. D. student in Artificial Life and Artificial Intelligence will give us an introduction, but also a deeper view into this field of study.

What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

No two AI scientists agree on the definition, but the general consensus is that it is not here yet, and will not be for many more years. So how does a field grow and thrive when even its core definitions are subject to debate? There are two schools, and both of them are presented.

The first possibility is to build something that performs well and shows immediate results. The second possibility is to build something that may not immediately give applicable results, but directly tackles issues that are discussed in the field. The first school tries to answer questions like "How do I make a better algorithm to control autonomous drones? How do I make better sound recognition software?"; the second asks questions like "Can a disembodied brain be intelligent? Is intelligence a side effect of the apparition of life?" The two approaches are strongly linked.

How BuzzFeed is adapting content for Japanese audience
BuzzFeed launched in Japan at the beginning of January as a joint partnership with Yahoo Japan. Some content is brought in and localized from other international BuzzFeed editions. We get to know more about the process and challenges of adapting this to a Japanese audience.