Last week I looked at Singular Value Decomposition unsupervised machine learning technique as part of a four-part series on data science concepts for beginners. Remember that unsupervised machine learning is data driven rather than task driven (supervised machine learning). Today we'll be staying in the dimension reduction part of unsupervised machine learning as shown in the Cheat-sheet below and will talk about principal component analysis or PCA. In a similar manner to SVD, PCA is trying to reduce the number of dimensions for data exploration. The PCA method is trying to maximize variance of the data to make a predictive model and converts a set of possibly correlated variables into a set of linearly uncorrelated variables.

Contrary to the bleak picture painted by critics, a new IDC study of more than 1,000 organisations worldwide shows that AI will be in the workplace "sooner than we think", and will have a positive impact on productivity, revenues, and job creation. From 2017 to 2021, the Salesforce-sponsored study predicts that AI-powered CRM activities will boost business revenue by $1.1 trillion, and create more than 800,000 direct jobs and 2 million indirect jobs globally, surpassing those lost to AI-driven automation. The business revenue boost will be led primarily by increased productivity and lowered expenses due to automation, which account for $121 billion and $265 billion of the $1.1 trillion sum, respectively, according to the study. Keith Block, vice chairman and COO at Salesforce, said the impact of AI for the CRM market will be "profound" in that it will enable "new levels of productivity". "The convergence of increased computing power, big data, and breakthroughs in machine learning have meant artificial intelligence is set to transform the lives of workers, especially those that are already using CRM technology, by helping them be more productive in their development of more meaningful connections with customers," added Robert Wickham, RVP of Innovation and Digital Transformation at Salesforce APAC.

The key takeaway from Tuesday's RobotLabNYC forum, on "Exploring The Autonomous Future," was humans are the key to robot adoption. Howard Morgan of First Round Capital expressed to the audience of more than 100 innovators working within the automation ecosystem, the necessity of embracing "entrepreneurial marketing" to reach customers. Tom Ryden echoed Morgan's sentiment in his presentation about Mass Robotics, conveying his startups' frustrations with the pace of adoption. Dr. Eric Daimler, formerly of the Obama Administration, concluded the evening succinctly by exclaiming, "we only adopt what we trust." Trust is key for crossing the chasm.

Some 60 people from the police and Japan Coast Guard participated in the exercise at the Ikata nuclear power plant, which simulated a drone launched from a boat planting a makeshift explosive device on the premises of reactor 3. Officials of Shikoku Electric Power Co., which runs the plant, and members of the bomb disposal unit in the Ehime Prefectural Police also took part. "We took into account the serious situation regarding terrorism in conducting this drill, and I think it is important to prepare for the unpredictable," said Hideto Murase, the local security chief of the Ehime Prefectural Police. Reactor 3 was restarted last August after clearing safety requirements introduced after the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis. The reactor runs on plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel, or MOX, which contains plutonium extracted by reprocessing spent fuel. Shikoku Electric plans to finish building by March 2020 a facility that is capable of withstanding major terror attacks, such as those involving intentional aircraft crashes, and preventing the release of radioactive materials.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - European self-driving car company Vedecom Tech and Israel's Karamba Security said on Monday they are partnering in developing fully autonomous cars that will be deployed for limited use in certain European cities within the coming year.

With 20 years of investment industry experience under his belt, Mr Alexandra Mouthon says Pictet Asset Management's three equity strategies surrounding the themes of technology and artificial intelligence, or AI - security, digital and robotics - allow investors to get access to fast-growing disruptive technologies in a distinct way. All three strategies have outperformed the MSCI World Index since their respective launches. The three funds - Pictet-Security, Pictet-Digital and Pictet-Robotics - are available only for private bank and institutional clients in Singapore. Q There is so much discussion going on around disruptive technologies. What exactly are they and where does AI come into the picture?

BEIJING, CHINA--(Marketwired - Sep 12, 2016) - GPU Technology Conference China - NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today unveiled the latest additions to its Pascal architecture-based deep learning platform, with new NVIDIA Tesla P4 and P40 GPU accelerators and new software that deliver massive leaps in efficiency and speed to accelerate inferencing production workloads for artificial intelligence services. Modern AI services such as voice-activated assistance, email spam filters, and movie and product recommendation engines are rapidly growing in complexity, requiring up to 10x more compute compared to neural networks from a year ago. Current CPU-based technology isn't capable of delivering real-time responsiveness required for modern AI services, leading to a poor user experience. The Tesla P4 and P40 are specifically designed for inferencing, which uses trained deep neural networks to recognize speech, images or text in response to queries from users and devices. Based on the Pascal architecture, these GPUs feature specialized inference instructions based on 8-bit (INT8) operations, delivering 45x faster response than CPUs1 and a 4x improvement over GPU solutions launched less than a year ago.2

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The role of technology in the home has changed drastically in recent years. We've come a long way from the kitchen wall phone and desktop computer, in an era when smartphones, tablets and wearables dominate the scene. The newest wave comes from the internet of things (IoT), and today's offerings are raising the bar on what makes a device "smart." Increasingly, "smart" means safe, in terms of security and health. Joe Colistra, architect at the Center for Design Research at the University of Kansas, was recently profiled in The Atlantic on his vision for a smart home that safeguards occupants' well-being.

As artificial intelligence proliferates, companies and governments are aggregating enormous data sets to feed their AI initiatives. Although privacy is not a new concept in computing, the growth of aggregated data magnifies privacy challenges and leads to extreme ethical risks such as unintentionally building biased AI systems, among many others. Privacy and artificial intelligence are both complex topics. There are no easy or simple answers because solutions lie at the shifting and conflicted intersection of technology, commercial profit, public policy, and even individual and cultural attitudes. Given this complexity, I invited two brilliant people to share their thoughts in a CXOTALK conversation on privacy and AI.