Career in Transition Consider Volunteer Work

Career in Transition Consider Volunteer Work Career in Transition Consider Volunteer Work But volunteering is rarely a 40 hour a week commitment, and typically theres time for both regular job hunting and additional pro-bono efforts on the side. The benefits of volunteer work go far beyond doing a good deed, and often your commitment will lead to increased job opportunities, or at the very least some additional experience to put on your resume. Here are a few ways volunteer work can jump-start your careerExpand your network Job seekers have a daily grind, just like everyone else. Their work is often tied to the computer sourcing new job leads, pouring over social media channels, sending out resumes, emails, etc. While these repetitive activities are essential to the search process, they often leave the job seeker isolated. Volunteering at various non-profits can break up your week and enhance your professional network at the same time, getting you out in front of new people (peopl e of influence such as board of directors, committees, and associations) who will be able to vouch for you as a reference or pass along your name to someone thats hiring. Its bedrngnis uncommon for a non-profit to end up recruiting a volunteer into paid position if they did a good job.Fills in time gaps on your resume Volunteering also can help cover unsightly periods of unemployment on your resume. If you were recently laid off or youve been looking for work, volunteering or consulting is a professional outlet for your career path in transition. Most recruiters dont even mind or care that you were lending your abilities free-of-charge Hiring managers and recruiters just like to see that youre working and staying productive. You dont have to let the stigma of unemployment keep you down if you refuse to accept the negative label.Keeps your expertise fresh One of the best ways to stay relevant and on top of your game is through volunteer work. The experience you gain will improve the skills you already have and give you the chance to learn new abilities increasing your value as a prospective job candidate. Youll perform better on job interviews and youll be able to point to your volunteer work as an achievement and a valuable exercise for your abilities.Volunteer work gets you up from the computer, improves your professional network, keeps you on your feet, and adds a lively and personal touch to your job search. Take a few hours out of your standard search week and challenge yourself with a new experience. The work will pay for itself in new opportunities, experience, and relationships. Good luck out there

When the line between machine and artist becomes blurred

When the line between machine and speciesist becomes blurredWhen the line between machine and akrobat becomes blurredWith AI becoming incorporated into more aspects of our daily lives, from writing to driving, its only natural that akrobats would also start to experiment with artificial intelligence.In fact, Christies will be selling its first piece of AI art later this month a blurred face titled Portrait of Edmond Belamy.The piece being sold at Christies is part of a new wave of AI art created via machine learning. Paris-based artists Hugo Caselles-Dupr, Pierre Fautrel and Gauthier Vernier fed thousands of portraits into an algorithm, teaching it the aesthetics of past examples of portraiture. The algorithm then created Portrait of Edmond Belamy.The painting is not the product of a human mind, Christies noted in its preview. It welches created by artificial intelligence, an algorithm defined by an algebraic formula.If artificial intelligence is used to create images, can the final product really be thought of as art? Should there be a threshold of influence over the final product that an artist needs to wield?As the director of the Art AI Lab at Rutgers University, Ive been wrestling with behauptung questions specifically, the point at which the artist should cede credit to the machine.The machines enroll in art classOver the last 50 years, several artists have written computer programs to generate art what I call algorithmic art. It requires the artist to write detailed code with an actual visual outcome in mind.One of the earliest practitioners of this form is Harold Cohen, who wrote the program AARON to produce drawings that followed a platzdeckchen of rules Cohen had created.But the AI art that has emerged over the past couple of years incorporates machine learning technology.Artists create algorithms not to follow a set of rules, but to learn a specific aesthetic by analyzing thousands of images. The algorithm then tries to generate new images in adh erence to the aesthetics it has learned.To begin, the artist chooses a collection of images to feed the algorithm, a step I call pre-curation.For the purpose of this example, lets say the artist chooses traditional portraits from the past 500 years.Most of the AI artworks that have emerged over the past few years have used a class of algorithms called generative adversarial networks. First introduced by computer scientist Ian Goodfellow in 2014, these algorithms are called adversarial because there are two sides to them One generates random images the other has been taught, via the input, how to judge these images and deem which best align with the input.So the portraits from the past 500 years are fed into a generative AI algorithm that tries to imitate these inputs. The algorithms then come back with a range of output images, and the artist must sift through them and select those he or she wishes to use, a step I call post-curation.So there is an element of creativity The artist i s very involved in pre- and post-curation. The artist might also tweak the algorithm as needed to generate the desired outputs.When creating AI art, the artists hand is involved in the selection of input images, tweaking the algorithm and then choosing from those that have been generated. Ahmed Elgammal, Author providedSerendipity or malfunction?The generative algorithm can produce images that surprise even the artist presiding over the process.For example, a generative adversarial network being fed portraits could end up producing a series of deformed faces.What should we make of this?Psychologist Daniel E. Berlyne has studied the psychology of aesthetics for several decades. He found that novelty, surprise, complexity, ambiguity and eccentricity tend to be the most powerful stimuli in works of art.When fed portraits from the last five centuries, an AI generative model can spit out deformed faces. Ahmed Elgammal, Author providedThe generated portraits from the generative adversaria l network with all of the deformed faces are certainly novel, surprising and bizarre.They also evoke British figurative painter Francis Bacons famous deformed portraits, such as Three Studies for a Portrait of Henrietta Moraes.Three Studies for the Portrait of Henrietta Moraes, Francis Bacon, 1963. MoMABut theres something missing in the deformed, machine-made faces intent.While it was Bacons intent to make his faces deformed, the deformed faces we see in the example of AI art arent necessarily the goal of the artist nor the machine. What we are looking at are instances in which the machine has failed to properly imitate a human face, and has instead spit out some surprising deformities.Yet this is exactly the sort of image that Christies is auctioning.A form of conceptual artDoes this outcome really indicate a lack of intent?I would argue that the intent lies in the process, even if it doesnt appear in the final image.For example, to create The Fall of the House of Usher, artist Anna Ridler took stills from a 1929 film version of the Edgar Allen Poe short story The Fall of the House of Usher. She made ink drawings from the still frames and fed them into a generative model, which produced a series of new images that she then arranged into a short film.Another example is Mario Klingemanns The Butchers Son, a nude portrait that was generated by feeding the algorithm images of stick figures and images of pornography.On the left A still from The Fall of the House of Usher by Anna Ridler. On the right The Butchers Son by Mario Klingemann.I use these two examples to show how artists can really play with these AI tools in any number of ways. While the final images might have surprised the artists, they didnt come out of nowhere There was a process behind them, and there was certainly an element of intent.Nonetheless, many are skeptical of AI art. Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Jerry Saltz has said he finds the art produced by AI artist boring and dull, including The Butchers Son.Perhaps theyre correct in some cases. In the deformed portraits, for example, you could argue that the resulting images arent all that interesting Theyre really just imitations with a twist of pre-curated inputs.But its not just about the final image. Its about the creative process one that involves an artist and a machine collaborating to explore new visual forms in revolutionary ways.For this reason, I have no doubt that this is conceptual art, a form that dates back to the 1960s, in which the idea behind the work and the process is more important than the outcome.As for The Butchers Son, one of the pieces Saltz derided as boring?It recently won the einheit des lichtstromes Prize, a prize dedicated for art created with technology.As much as some critics might decry the trend, it seems that AI art is here to stay.Ahmed Elgammal, Professor of Computer Vision, Rutgers UniversityThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Re ad the original article.

FREE Webinar Learn to Use Social Media in Your Job Search!

FREE Webinar Learn to Use Social Media in Your Job SearchFREE Webinar Learn to Use Social Media in Your Job Search1 is pleased to host a webinar with best selling author and social media expert Joshua WaldmanSocial media and job searching now go hand-in-hand, but most job seekers arent sure how to combine them. If youd like to learn more about how to use social media in your job search (and mistakes to avoid), this is the webinar for you**********************This webinar has ended, but you can view a recording of the full webinar hereVideo How to Use Social Media in Your Job Search**********************PresenterJoshua Waldman is the author of Job Searching with Social Media for Dummies is recognized as one of the nations top authorities in Social Media Career Advancement. Learn more at his website, CareerEnlightenment.com.Read Joshuas recent guest post on the blog, 5 Big Differences in Job Searching Today.Topics will include Avoiding pitfalls of finding a job online that scream unpro fessional Becoming a job magnet using LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Getting found faster by recruiters who use social media to find talent (which is most of them) Gaining clarity about personal brand and how that translates onlineDont miss this free opportunity to advance your job search to the next levelDate and Time Tuesday, April 16, 2013 100 PM 200 PM EDTRegister for How to Use Social Media in Your Job Search here