The latest Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers turns the spotlight on China, which overtook the United States in the total number of ranked systems and which scored the top two fastest installations on the list. Rather than target systems that test well on the Top500's distributed-memory version of the Linpack benchmarks (High Performance Linpack), the companies aim to render those measurements irrelevant on their way to beating China to exascale computing. China captured not only first and second place in the ranking of the fastest installed systems, but also won the majority share of ranked installations and took the aggregate performance lead, according to the November 2017 Top500 list, which was the 50th one to be published since the ranking debuted in June 1993. According to the Top500 organization, "There is no system from the USA under the Top3. The number of systems installed in China increased to a new record high of 202, compared to 160 on the last list. China now clearly shows a substantially larger number of installations than the USA. China now is also pulling ahead of the USA in the performance category, with China holding 35.4% of the overall installed performance, while the USA is second, with 29.6%."

Who knew AI could be such fun? A Kuka AG LBR iiwa robotic arm pours a bottle of beer into a glass during a demonstration at the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, Japan, on Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2017. Next week I'll be joining 180,000 of my closest friends in the media, tech and marketing industry at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. In preparing for my own panel moderating, I can't ignore a number of "hot topics" that seem sure to be in the mix in almost any meeting, tour, presentation, or panel discussion there. As part of your personal CES welcome guide, I've prepared a scorecard to help you succeed at CES Buzzword Bingo.

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 285 million people are visually impaired, with 39 million living with blindness and the other 246 million having low vision. In a world of modern technological advancements, visual impairment has been the subject of much medical research. Perhaps the most notable among these are those that use artificial intelligence (AI), specifically through machine learning. Google's DeepMind has been working with the UK's National Health Service to do ophthalmology research. Microsoft has also joined in on the fight to give humanity better eyesight, recently launching the Microsoft Intelligent Network for Eyecare (MINE) in India.

About 4,000 companies - many of them start-ups - are arriving in town this weekend. Over the coming days, they will reveal new products, secure orders and hopefully provide a taste of the future at the trade fair. The event has its roots in consumer gadgets, but now sprawls into fields including artificial intelligence, automobiles, medicine, marketing and even agriculture. Most of the big technology brands in attendance will have something new to brag about. But increasingly, they hold flagship products back for stand-alone events.

In this paper, we consider the problem of recovering a sparse signal based on penalized least squares. We develop an algorithm of primal-dual active set type for a class of nonconvex sparsity-promoting penalties, which includes $\ell^0$, bridge, smoothly clipped absolute deviation, capped $\ell^1$ and minimax concavity penalty. First we establish the existence of a global minimizer for the class of optimization problems. Then we derive a novel necessary optimality condition for the global minimizer using the associated thresholding operator. The solutions to the optimality system are coordinate-wise minimizers, and under minor conditions, they are also local minimizers. Upon introducing the dual variable, the active set can be determined from the primal and dual variables. This relation lends itself to an iterative algorithm of active set type which at each step involves updating the primal variable only on the active set and then updating the dual variable explicitly. When combined with a continuation strategy on the regularization parameter, the primal dual active set method converges globally to the underlying regression target under some regularity conditions. Extensive numerical experiments demonstrate its superior performance in efficiency and accuracy compared with the existing methods.

Over the past year, more nations have come to realize the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in shaping the economics of the future. With Russia, the United States, and the United Emirates all funding serious efforts to advance AI tech, China has established a three-year program to secure AI as a major economic driver by 2020. This is part of the nation's overarching plan to become an industry leader in AI by 2030. As a first step towards this goal, the Chinese government is preparing to build a technology park in Beijing dedicated to AI development research. The government is investing some $2.12 billion (13.8 billion yuan) to build the industrial park, located in west Beijing, according to state press agency Xinhua and as first reported by Reuters.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. You won't want to miss the 2028 Pan-Asian Deep Learning Conference in Kuala Lumpur: Call me a hater if you want, but at least for now, pretty sure that's fake. What's funny, though, is that those first five demos are straight out of the standardized humanoid robot demo handbook (which doesn't exist).

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will likely be achieved in less than 50 years, according to latest KDnuggets Poll. The median estimate from all regions was 21-50 years, except in Asia where AGI is expected in 11-20 years.

China's National Development and Reform Commission recently announced subsidies to 56 artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics companies. This was in line with its goal to become an'innovation nation' by 2020.

BlackBerry signed a deal with Chinese internet giant Baidu to jointly develop self-driving vehicle technology, in what is seen as a shot in the arm for BlackBerry's automotive ambitions. BlackBerry's stock rose by about 13% in Wednesday's trading following the announcement. While BlackBerry has been partnering with several companies that intend to use QNX for their autonomous driving systems, the Baidu deal is notable as it could give the company greater traction in China, the world's largest automotive market. We have a $9 price estimate for BlackBerry which is below the current market price. Baidu's Approach To Autonomous Cars Is Focused On Scale Baidu, which is primarily known for its search engine, it is also a leader in the development of deep learning and artificial intelligence.