So for his Ignite NYC talk, he performed a series of experiments to find just what sorts of obscuring techniques can defeat a common facial recognition algorithm known as Eigenfaces, testing an off-the-shelf implementation of that algorithm in a program called Neurotechnology.

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Adam Cahan, a Yahoo senior vice president, said in an interview on Monday that Mr. D'Aloisio was an "exceptional" talent and that Yahoo did "extensive" testing of Summly's algorithm, or mathematical formula, for condensing news articles.

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Courts have previously rejected patents on diagnostic methods that involve testing a patient and then running the results through an algorithm to come up with a diagnosis.

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For the past year, eBay has been testing a tool called Discover that serves up unexpected results through a sophisticated algorithm.

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By creating a mathematical algorithm, the charity hopes to predict whether someone could be a good match using the information gathering in initial testing.

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