Knowing how to write high quality software -- the days of one team writing throwaway models and another team implementing them in production are slowly coming to an end. With programming languages like Python and R and their packages making it easy to work with data and models, it is reasonable to expect a data scientist or machine learning engineer to attain a high level of programming proficiency and understand the basics of system design. While "big data" is a term used way too often, it is true that the cost of data storage is on a dramatic downward trend. This means that there are more and more data sets from different domains to work with and apply models to. And yes, knowing something about at least one of the popular areas of the field that have gotten traction lately -- deep learning for computer vision and perception, recommendation engines, NLP -- would be a great thing once you have the fundamental understanding and technical proficiency.

In June 2017 Apple released its Core ML API designed to make AI faster on its iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch products. The API covers all sorts of ML operations such as image and face recognition, object detection, NLP (natural language processing) and NLG (natural language generation). Core ML supports popular ML tools and models, including neural networks (deep, convolutional, recurrent), linear models and decision trees. It may be easily integrated into an Xcode development environment and become a part of your iOS app functionality. By making pre-trained ML models available for iOS developers, Apple's Core ML promises to increase the scope of iOS applications with core AI/ML functionality available to users of Apple products.

Pete Warden wants you to throw your voice-recognition hardware in the trash. And then buy more--and more, and more. This Google engineer is on a quest to make voice recognition dirt cheap. His idea is simple enough: cut down the neural networks that are usually used to process sound until they're efficient enough to run on cheap, lightweight chips. "What I want is a 50-cent chip that can do simple voice recognition and run for a year on a coin battery," he explained during last week's Arm Research Summit in Cambridge, U.K. "We're not there yet … but I really think this is doable with even the current technology that we have now." At such a low price, the hardware would effectively become disposable, opening up uses that have previously been unimaginable.

I'm standing in what is soon to be the center of the world, or is perhaps just a very large room on the seventh floor of a gleaming tower in downtown Toronto. Showing me around is Jordan Jacobs, who cofounded this place: the nascent Vector Institute, which opens its doors this fall and which is aiming to become the global epicenter of artificial intelligence. We're in Toronto because Geoffrey Hinton is in Toronto, and Geoffrey Hinton is the father of "deep learning," the technique behind the current excitement about AI. "In 30 years we're going to look back and say Geoff is Einstein--of AI, deep learning, the thing that we're calling AI," Jacobs says. Of the AI researchers at the top of the field, Hinton has more citations than the next three combined. His students and postdocs have gone on to run the AI labs at Apple, Facebook, and OpenAI; Hinton himself is a lead scientist on the Google Brain AI team. The Vector Institute, this monument to the ascent of Hinton's ideas, is a research center where companies from around the U.S. and Canada--like Google, and Uber, and Nvidia--will sponsor efforts to commercialize AI technologies. Money has poured in faster than Jacobs could ask for it; two of his cofounders surveyed companies in the Toronto area, and the demand for AI experts ended up being 10 times what Canada produces every year. Vector is in a sense ground zero for the now-worldwide attempt to mobilize around deep learning: to cash in on the technique, to teach it, to refine and apply it. Data centers are being built, towers are being filled with startups, a whole generation of students is going into the field.

Google is expected to announce some new devices next week on Oct. 4, including a smaller Google Home Mini. However, it looks like Google is also working on a different type of Google Home speaker that will apparently offer a high-end audio experience. Google is said to be developing a "premium" Google Home smart speaker. This version of the device will apparently be equipped with a set of stereo speakers and has the tentative name of Google Home "Max," according to 9To5Google. The idea behind the Google Home Max is that it will be the company's way of competing with the likes of the Sonos Play:3, which is able to deliver stereo sound with deeper bass for an immersive listening experience.

U.S. airstrikes across eastern Syria have hobbled Islamic State's deadly drone program, U.S. officials say, but commanders warn that proliferation of the inexpensive technology may allow terrorist groups to launch other aerial attacks around the globe. U.S.-backed fighters have reported small drones flown by the militants seven times this month in Iraq and Syria as Islamic State struggles to maintain the crumbling borders of its self-declared caliphate, according to the U.S. military task force in Baghdad. That's down from more than 60 drone sightings earlier this year, especially during the battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul, which was liberated in early July. Dozens of Iraqis were killed or wounded by 40-millimeter grenades and light explosives dropped from remote-controlled devices that one U.S. commander likened to killer bees. The use of camera-equipped quadcopters and model-plane-sized drones, sometimes flying in swarms, had become a signature tactic of Islamic State, much as the growing U.S. fleet of large missile firing Predator and Reaper drones have changed the face of modern warfare.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said on Wednesday the company's search engine, Bing, will focus on expanding in the PC search market after losing its deal with Apple Inc's Siri.

Roboticists worldwide are spending an obscene amount of time and effort trying to teach large humanoid robots how to not fall over. We rejoice every time there is even the smallest incremental bit of progress towards success, because not falling over is super hard, especially if you want your robot to be doing something useful. And even though some large humanoid robots can occasionally survive falling over, most of them don't enjoy it very much. Led by Kei Okada and Masayuki Inaba, a team from the University of Tokyo and Kawasaki Heavy Industries is working on their own life-sized humanoid robot, and they've come up with a new strategy for not worrying about falls: not worrying about falls. Instead, they've built their robot from the ground up with an armored structure that makes it totally okay with falling over and getting right back up again. The concept behind Robust Humanoid Robot (RHP2) is, as the title of the paper suggests, that it should be able to work for a long time in hazardous situations like "a disaster site, a fire site or a wet environment."

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - AUGUST 03: Isuru Fernando of IBM speaks during the TILT / Fresh Directions In Healthcare Marketing seminar on August 3, 2017 in Auckland, New Zealand. TILT is an interactive seminar designed to inspire healthcare marketers to use digital tools to communicate with their customers. In May 2014, IBM announced the acquisition of an AI startup, Cognea, that developed a cognitive computing and conversational artificial intelligence platform. IBM aimed to integrate it with Watson, the company's question-answering supercomputer, for more real conversations with users. Since then, it's been a wave of sorts with technology companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and others investing in their own AI efforts while acquiring several startups in the space.

Come January, the "Westworld" concept of lifelike sex robots will get one step closer. That's when a San Marcos company will unveil Harmony, an anatomically correct sex doll with a patented animatronic talking head with programmable personality and memory. News of creator Matt McMullen's latest invention -- he's been making lifelike silicone sex dolls for 20 years -- has created international media interest and a firestorm of criticism from ethicists and futurists who see a dark side to a sex doll that becomes more "human" with each technological innovation. One critic worries that the doll's artificial intelligence app could be hacked to make it kill its owner (like the vengeance meted out by sex robots in the film "Ex Machina" and TV show "Westworld"). And women's advocates say owners could realistically rehearse plans for violent sexual acts with the interactive dolls.