Fantastic (AI) bots and how to catch them

Fantastic species and where to find them

Fantastic beasts are not only found in the imaginary worlds of authors like J.K. Rowling. The oceans are full of them. Michael Gross rounds up some unusual suspects.

Fantastic DNimals and where to find them

The introduction of deep neural networks (DNNs, Krizhevsky et al., 2012; Lecun et al., 1998) has altered the fields of computer vision and machine learning and these networks are starting to have an impact on the field of biological vision. Kendrick Kay's paper in this issue is therefore timely in addressing two important questions in this area, namely: i) how DNNs can be used to study vision, ...

AI-Powered Social Bots

This paper gives an overview of impersonation bots that generate output in one or possibly, multiple modalities. We also discuss rapidly advancing areas of machine learning and artificial intelligence that could lead to frighteningly powerful new multi-modal social bots. Our main conclusion is that most commonly known bots are one dimensional (i.e., chatterbot), and far from deceiving serious i...

Fantastic Beasts and How To Sequence Them: Ecological Genomics for Obscure Model Organisms.

The application of genomic approaches to 'obscure model organisms' (OMOs), meaning species with no prior genomic resources, enables increasingly sophisticated studies of the genomic basis of evolution, acclimatization, and adaptation in real ecological contexts. I consider here ecological questions that can be addressed using OMOs, and indicate optimal sequencing and data-handling solutions for...

Fantastic beasts and how to sequence them: genomic approaches for obscure model organisms