We study the underdamped Langevin diffusion when the log of the target distribution is smooth and strongly concave. We present a MCMC algorithm based on its discretization and show that it achieves $\varepsilon$ error (in 2-Wasserstein distance) in $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{d}/\varepsilon)$ steps. This is a significant improvement over the best known rate for overdamped Langevin MCMC, which is $\mathcal{O}(d/\varepsilon^2)$ steps under the same smoothness/concavity assumptions. The underdamped Langevin MCMC scheme can be viewed as a version of Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) which has been observed to outperform overdamped Langevin MCMC methods in a number of application areas. We provide quantitative rates that support this empirical wisdom.

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan's claim that the U.S. hit an Afghan refugee camp in a drone strike is "false," a U.S. spokesman said Thursday, as tensions between the uneasy allies ratchet higher over Islamabad's alleged support for militants. The apparent strike took place roughly 50 km (30 miles) inside Pakistani territory on Wednesday, according to local authorities. It killed a midlevel commander from the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network, officials and a source close to the Islamist group have told AFP. The incident comes just weeks after Washington froze nearly $2 billion in aid to Pakistan over its alleged support for militants, a move that had sparked speculation that the U.S. could resume drone strikes or launch operations along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. Local officials have told AFP that the predawn strike took place more than 50 km (30 miles) from the Afghan border, in the village of Mamuzai in Kurram agency, one of the districts in the country's semi-autonomous tribal region.

Advances in robotics and artificial intelligence in China are expected to create more employment opportunities than job losses, a report by the British recruitment company Michael Page says. The report was based on responses from 1,026 employees in the manufacturing, sales, marketing, finance and accounting industries. About 84 per cent of the respondents said they are not anxious about being replaced by robots, and 58 per cent said robots and AI will create more opportunities in the labour market. Peter Smith, managing director of Michael Page China, said such technology advances will allow people to take on more innovative jobs. This is especially true for hi-tech projects such as driverless cars propelled by new technologies as more highly skilled people would be needed to invent and develop allied products.

One day after an American drone strike killed a leader of the militant Haqqani network in northwestern Pakistan, United States officials on Thursday rejected a claim by Pakistan that the strike had targeted an Afghan refugee camp. There were also conflicting accounts of the location of the drone strike and the number of people killed. A statement by Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday condemned the strike and maintained that it had "targeted an Afghan refugee camp in Kurram Agency" -- an assertion that the United States rejected on Thursday. "The claim in an M.F.A. statement yesterday that U.S. forces struck an Afghan refugee camp in Kurram Agency yesterday is false," said Richard W. Snelsire, the United States Embassy spokesman in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. American officials said that there were no Afghan refugee camps in Kurram, a remote tribal region straddling the border with Afghanistan, where they said Wednesday's drone strike had taken place.

An Israeli startup specializing in neurological disorders is the winner of Henry Ford Health System's first-ever artificial intelligence (AI) challenge. Montfort (Mon4T)'s real-time brain monitor leverages smartphone technology to conduct, record and analyze data from a set of digital tests from patients with conditions like Parkinson's disease and normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH). Henry Ford Innovations, established in 2011 to support the health system's technologies, issued the challenge last fall as part of a program in Israel designed to bring Israeli technologies to the US healthcare market. Montfort was chosen winner out of a pool of 50 applicants. With more than one billion people suffering from neurological diseases worldwide and several thousand patients per neurologist, Montfort's solution developed out of a need for more personal care and feedback.

Above the Trend Line: your industry rumor central is a recurring feature of insideBIGDATA. In this column, we present a variety of short time-critical news items grouped by category such as people movements, funding news, financial results, industry alignments, rumors and general scuttlebutt floating around the big data, data science and machine learning industries including behind-the-scenes anecdotes and curious buzz. Our intent is to provide you a one-stop source of late-breaking news to help you keep abreast of this fast-paced ecosystem. We're working hard on your behalf with our extensive vendor network to give you all the latest happenings. Be sure to Tweet Above the Trend Line articles using the hashtag: #abovethetrendline.

Artificial intelligence (AI), the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. The term is frequently applied to the project of developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience. AI was coined by John McCarthy, an American computer scientist, in 1956 at The Dartmouth Conference where the discipline was born. Today, it is an umbrella term that encompasses everything from robotic process automation to actual robotics. AI is accomplished by studying how human brain thinks, and how humans learn, decide, and work while trying to solve a problem, and then using the outcomes of this study as a basis of developing intelligent software and systems.

With her stylish bob and camera-ready stare, Sophia looks much like any other striking model gracing the cover of a fashion magazine. But take a closer look and you will see there is something distinctly different about this blonde beauty. For Sophia is not a genetically blessed woman, but an eerily human-like robot - one who has just landed her first ever British fashion magazine cover with Stylist. However readers were left divided over what it meant about the future of fashion, with several saying it left them feeling'freaked out'. Sophia was created by Hong Kong firm Hanson Robotics two years ago.

Startup Gyrfalcon is moving fast with a chip for inferencing on deep neural networks, but it faces an increasingly crowded market in AI silicon. A year after it got its first funding, the company is showing a working chip and claiming design wins in smartphones, security cameras and industrial automation equipment. Data centers typically train deep neural networks and run inference tasks on them using banks of servers. Increasingly, client and embedded systems from cars to handsets are adopting accelerators to speed the inferencing jobs. Apple, Google and Huawei are already shipping smartphones with inferencing blocks in their custom SoCs.

Japan, home of the "kawaii" cult of cute, has always had a soft spot for companion robots, in contrast to the more industrial or mechanical types used for assembly lines, surgeries and military missions. The Associated Press spent some time recently with three relatively affordable home robots from Japanese makers that target the elderly, kids and hard-working salarymen pressed for time. Unlike real children or pets, they have off switches and don't need constant attention, dog food or cat litter. Toyota Motor Corp.'s Kirobo Mini is small enough to fit in your hand and looks like a child clad in a space outfit. It's apt to repeat phrases like, "I missed that; can you say that again?" and "Hmmmmm ....." Its name combines the word for "hope," or "kibo," and "robot."