In our work, we bridge deep neural network design with numerical differential equations. We show that many effective networks, such as ResNet, PolyNet, FractalNet and RevNet, can be interpreted as different numerical discretizations of differential equations. This finding brings us a brand new perspective on the design of effective deep architectures. We can take advantage of the rich knowledge in numerical analysis to guide us in designing new and potentially more effective deep networks. As an example, we propose a linear multi-step architecture (LM-architecture) which is inspired by the linear multi-step method solving ordinary differential equations. The LM-architecture is an effective structure that can be used on any ResNet-like networks. In particular, we demonstrate that LM-ResNet and LM-ResNeXt (i.e. the networks obtained by applying the LM-architecture on ResNet and ResNeXt respectively) can achieve noticeably higher accuracy than ResNet and ResNeXt on both CIFAR and ImageNet with comparable numbers of trainable parameters. In particular, on both CIFAR and ImageNet, LM-ResNet/LM-ResNeXt can significantly compress ($>50$\%) the original networks while maintaining a similar performance. This can be explained mathematically using the concept of modified equation from numerical analysis. Last but not least, we also establish a connection between stochastic control and noise injection in the training process which helps to improve generalization of the networks. Furthermore, by relating stochastic training strategy with stochastic dynamic system, we can easily apply stochastic training to the networks with the LM-architecture. As an example, we introduced stochastic depth to LM-ResNet and achieve significant improvement over the original LM-ResNet on CIFAR10.

Monotonic policy improvement and off-policy learning are two main desirable properties for reinforcement learning algorithms. In this paper, by lower bounding the performance difference of two policies, we show that the monotonic policy improvement is guaranteed from on- and off-policy mixture samples. An optimization procedure which applies the proposed bound can be regarded as an off-policy natural policy gradient method. In order to support the theoretical result, we provide a trust region policy optimization method using experience replay as a naive application of our bound, and evaluate its performance in two classical benchmark problems.

A four-legged, canine-like robot has been introduced to the mass market by a robotics company in China. Unitree Robotics said the initial price for their scary-looking'Laikago' would be around $25,000 (£18,900), but it's set to drop in the future. Previously, US-based Boston Dynamics had developed two dog-like robots, called'Big Dog' and'Spot', but this is the first time such technology has been made available to the general public, according to the creator of'Laikago'. Meet'Laikago': Chinese firm Unitree Robotics has unveiled a four-legged machine (pictured) Unitree Robotics' 'Laikago' has been compared to Cujo, also known as'Big Dog', developed by US-based Boston Dynamics. 'Big Dog' (pictured) took £1.6 million and four years to create Boston Dynamics has also released'Spot', a complex machine that can walk and trot on four legs like a dog.

Update: We've had the iPhone X on test for over a day now, and we've got a video with our early thoughts thus far in our iPhone X 24 hour diary. Early findings show a strong Face ID performance and an impressive screen - does it do enough for iPhone fans though? Apple's long-awaited iPhone X pre-orders are now live, which means the official release date is next week: Friday November 3. You may not be able to buy Apple's highly anticipated smartphone right away. Finding it in stock on launch day is going to be extremely difficult, though we are tracking iPhone X pre-orders in the US, and the best iPhone X deals in the UK. Apple claims that the iPhone X, which is pronounced'iPhone 10', is worth your money and any extra wait time due to its revolutionary new features. The iPhone X wasn't the only smartphone announced by CEO Tim Cook at Apple's recent September 12 launch event.

Artificial intelligence (AI) gives machines the ability to "think" and accomplish tasks. AI already is a big part of our lives in areas such as banking, shopping, security and healthcare. Soon it will help us get around in automated vehicles. By 2025, the global enterprise AI market is predicted to be worth more than $30 billion. Israeli industry can expect a nice piece of that pie due to its world-class capabilities in AI and its subsets: big-data analysis, natural-language processing, computer vision, machine learning and deep learning.

The fight against Cancer has been seeing a lot of developments with the increasing improvements in technology. However, it seems like the people from Yokohama, Japan have perfected a new development in Cancer Research. This Artificial Intelligence could help detect colorectal cancer even before benign tumors become malignant. The way this works is the AI observes a colorectal polyp magnified by 500 times in order to spot its variations. Afterwards, the program cross-references these variations against a database of over 30,000 images of pre-cancerous and cancerous cells that were used to train the machine-learning program.

India is looking forward to transform into a digitized country and taking key initiatives to achieve it. The recent Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Microsoft India proves their willingness to develop the digitalization in all aspects.The Karnataka Government is taking technologies like Cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics to farmers for active promotion of Agriculture. According to the MoU, Microsoft would develop a multi-variant agricultural commodity price forecasting model with Inputs from Karnataka Agricultural Price Commission (KAPC), and Department of Agriculture.The forecasting model will be developed basing on the factors like historical sowing area, production, yield, weather data-sets and other related datasets. Anil Bhansali, Corporate VP, Cloud & Enterprise, Microsoft India (R&D), in a statement said that "This MoU will help enable the use of intelligent technologies to deliver solutions in the agriculture sector. AI in agriculture can play a major role in the digital transformation of India," The primary motive of association with Microsoft is to help poor farmers get higher crop yields with the help of digital tools and Artificial Intelligence that have the potential to deliver cutting-edge innovations in the state.

The website did not host any pirated publications but the police believe it reduced profits for authors as it enabled visitors to read pirated works for free. The annual loss for the publishing industry was estimated at around ¥73 billion ($643 million). The Haruka Yume no Ato website contained links to other sites hosting pirated popular comics such as "Dragon Ball" and "One Piece." Launched in 2011, it once boasted around 30 million visitors per month but has been shut down. One of the nine suspects, Makoto Wauke, 22, said before his arrest, "I didn't intend to make money."

HYDERABAD: As Saudi Arabia's decision to grant citizenship to a robot makes international headlines, a top official of the Indian IT industry body says it signifies that artificial intelligence (AI) has come of age. The AI is fast reaching a stage where many of the tasks performed by humans can be done by robots, Nasscom president R Chandrashekhar told. Riyadh's recent move to give citizenship to an AI humanoid robot is more of a "symbolic gesture" meant to draw the attention to the use of technology and willingness to give technology a free play, he said. "Obviously it (granting citizenship to a human robot, named Sophia) was not required; it's given more as a symbolic gesture," Chandrashekhar said, adding that, however, "there are lot of ethical questions which come up". He said: "But essentially, the grant of citizenship (to a bot) is only a sort of symbolic thing. I don't think we should read too much into it. "But I think it also signifies that AI has come of age and reached a level comparable to human beings in performance of many tasks." On the impact of AI on human jobs, he recalled that the advent of machines had a significant impact on how people performed physical labour and eventually they did away with some jobs. "But actually machines created many more jobs than they eliminated," Chandrashekhar said. Similarly, according to him, the advent of IT and software eliminated some jobs involving repetitive work but a large number of functions did not get impacted. But now with AI, the number of jobs and performance getting impacted has increased, he said. "In some way or the other, it impacts many if not most of the jobs that we see because AI is moving into the mental work space." He added: "But I think, again, while certain jobs are getting eliminated, certain other jobs get created and may be it will take a while for full range of new jobs to mature and for these (new job) numbers to expand (as a fall out of AI)." He noted that e-commerce, for example, eliminated a lot of retail jobs but a lot of courier jobs were created, while there is no doubt that jobs are getting eliminated, new category and kinds of jobs are being created. The kind of skills required for existing jobs are increasing dramatically. Taxi drivers have now been using GPS to find location, an increase in their skill level compared to the past, but once autonomous self-driven vehicles come, the "whole profession of drivers could get significantly reduced", he said. While such shifts influenced by technology are already taking place globally, what has changed is the pace at which it's happening. "In five years, there has been a dramatic change.

In Nintendo's financial briefing, the Japanese multinational consumer electronics and video game company revealed that it has sold about two million copies of "Super Mario Odyssey" just three days after the game was released. According to Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima, the estimated sales of the company's newest Super Mario installment have already exceeded 2 million units. This is an impressive feat considering the 3D platform video game was released on Oct. 27. Kimishima also expects the figure to go up when the holiday season goes into full swing. "Last Friday saw the release of'Super Mario Odyssey' in Japan and in overseas markets. This newest title in the Super Mario series received many awards this year at the largest game shows in Western markets, such as E3 and gamescom, and consumers had high expectations leading to its release," Kimishima said.