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Predicting The Status of Waterpoints

@machinelearnbot

He took NYC Data Science Academy 12 week full time Data Science Bootcamp program between Sept 23 to Dec 18, 2015. The post was based on his fourth class project(due at 8th week of the program). Kaggle is the most famous organization dedicated to Data Science competitions, but there are others. One of these is Driven Data. Beyond the difference in visibility, a point of divergence between Kaggle and Driven Data is that the latter's competitions often have a social focus as opposed to the former's usual business leanings.


New study highlights VR, AI and IoT as enterprise spend priorities

#artificialintelligence

The study "Future of IT: Hype vs. Reality" revealed that while these emerging technologies have potential in the workplace, IT professionals are grappling with budget and security concerns as they evaluate the impact these technologies can offer today versus in the future. The results show that among emerging technologies covered in the survey, IT professionals in Europe, the Middle East and Africa expect IoT devices and AI technology to have the biggest impact in the workplace, and VR to have the least impact. In fact, 79 percent of IT professionals in the region said IoT devices will be useful to their business practices in three to five years and 55 percent said the same for AI. Although most IT professionals don't expect mass adoption to take off in the workplace for VR and 3D printers, some industries have significantly higher adoption rates than the industry average. "Despite recent innovations in VR and 3D printing, the majority of IT professionals across EMEA are struggling to find viable use cases for the technology in their organisations," said John Webb, general manager of Europe at Spiceworks. "As a result, many can't justify the investment as opposed to AI and IoT that offer tangible benefits for the workplace today.


Machine Learning and Infrastructure Analytics, Part 1: Principles and Practices

#artificialintelligence

Des Nnochiri has a Master's Degree (MEng) in Civil Engineering with Architecture, and spent several years at the Architectural Association, in London. He views technology with a designer's eye, and is very keen on software and solutions which put a new wrinkle on established ideas and practices. He now writes for markITwrite across the full spectrum of corporate tech and design. In previous lives, he has served as a Web designer, and an IT consultant to The Learning Paper, a UK-based charity extending educational resources to underprivileged youngsters in West Africa. His short thriller, "Trick" was filmed in 2011 by Shooting Incident Productions, who do location work on "Emmerdale".


The Promise of Ethical Machines

#artificialintelligence

But the focus has often been on how we, the creators, can and should use advanced robots. What is missing from the discussion is the need to develop a set of ethics for the machines themselves, together with a means for machines to resolve ethical dilemmas as they arise. Only then can intelligent machines function autonomously, making ethical choices as they fulfill their tasks, without human intervention. There are many activities that we would like to be able to turn over entirely to autonomously functioning machines. Robots can do jobs that are highly dangerous or exceedingly unpleasant.


Report Reveals Consumer Increased Demand for Artificial Intelligence

#artificialintelligence

A study conducted by Ericsson ConsumerLab in October 2016 and published last week, revealed increased demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality among consumers globally. According to the report, consumers expect artificial intelligence to move from assistants to managers, and that virtual reality will be indistinguishable from physical reality in only three years. The Ericsson ConsumerLab report, is the sixth edition of its annual trend report, focused on '10 Hot Consumer Trends for 2017 and beyond.' Analysing the report at a press briefing in Lagos at the weekend, the Country Manager, Ericsson Nigeria, Mr. Johan Jemdahl, said that the insights in the 10 Hot Consumer Trends for 2017 report were based on Ericsson ConsumerLab's global research activities of over 20 years, as well as data points from an online survey of advanced internet users in 14 major cities across the world, performed in October 2016. Although the study only represents 27 million citizens, their early adopter profile makes them important to understand when exploring future trends.


The UN has decided to tackle the issue of killer robots in 2017

#artificialintelligence

The United Nations decided to formally address the issue of killer robots. At the International Convention on Conventional Weapons in Geneva, the 123 participating nations voted to form a group in 2017 of governmental experts to look at lethal autonomous robots that can select targets without human control, which could lead to a ban, reported Human Rights Watch. Many of Silicon Valley's elite, including Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk, have expressed concern over the development of killer robots. Musk and Wozniak both signed on to a letter last year urging the UN to take up the issue, calling for an international ban on the creation of lethal autonomous weapons. Stephen Hawking and leading AI researchers -- including University of California Berkeley computer scientist Stuart Russell, Google Director of Research Peter Norvig and Microsoft Managing Director Eric Horvitz -- were among the over 1,000 scientists who signed the letter calling for a killer robot ban.


7,500 Faceless Coders Paid in Bitcoin Built a Hedge Fund's Brain

#artificialintelligence

Richard Craib is a 29-year-old South African who runs a hedge fund in San Francisco. He leaves that to an artificially intelligent system built by several thousand data scientists whose names he doesn't know. Under the banner of a startup called Numerai, Craib and his team have built technology that masks the fund's trading data before sharing it with a vast community of anonymous data scientists. Using a method similar to homomorphic encryption, this tech works to ensure that the scientists can't see the details of the company's proprietary trades, but also organizes the data so that these scientists can build machine learning models that analyze it and, in theory, learn better ways of trading financial securities. "We give away all our data," says Craib, who studied mathematics at Cornell University in New York before going to work for an asset management firm in South Africa.


Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei finds home too dangerous, but he may go to Syria

Los Angeles Times

It speaks volumes about the plight of rabble-rousers in China today that Ai Weiwei, the country's most famous dissident artist, has decided that working there is too dangerous -- so he wants to go to Syria. Ai, who received his passport back from Chinese authorities last year, is turning his attention to Syrian refugees. For the artist, who spent 81 days in Chinese detention in 2011 and then was blocked from traveling for four years, it is a way of remaining relevant without landing in jail. Ai reflected on his situation during a trip to New York last month. He said he does not want his 7-year-old son to experience the same difficulties as he did as a child when his father, the acclaimed Chinese poet Ai Qing, was purged after he fell out with former leader Mao Tse-tung and was exiled.


Artificial intelligence reveals undiscovered bat carriers of Ebola and other filoviruses

#artificialintelligence

IMAGE: This is a map of known and predicted bat hosts of filoviruses, showing hotspots in Southeast Asia. Findings highlight new potential hosts and geographic hotspots worthy of surveillance. So reports a new paper in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Filoviruses have devastating effects on people and primates, as evidenced by the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. For nearly 40 years, preventing spillover events has been hampered by an inability to pinpoint which wildlife species harbor and spread the viruses.


Data Sciences, ISIS and Predictions for 2016

@machinelearnbot

Do you know what is common between San Bernardino's shooting spree and the terrorist attacks in Paris last month? Jillennials, Jihadis who are Millennials. We mine data worldwide, a lot of it, a ton of it, every day and every night, and we do this for a living at PredictifyMe. We have partnership with the United Nations to protect school-goers in Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan and Lebanon using our proprietary software SecureSim and Soothsayer . When the Paris attacks unfolded, we asked ourselves (and our database), how can we use data sciences to prevent something like this from ever happening again. Can we find out what factors influence an otherwise ordinary citizen to become radicalized?