A NEW commodity spawns a lucrative, fast-growing industry, prompting antitrust regulators to step in to restrain those who control its flow. A century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now similar concerns are being raised by the giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital era. These titans--Alphabet (Google's parent company), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft--look unstoppable. They are the five most valuable listed firms in the world.

Congratulations! You've gotten through the week of the Google Docs phishing ploy that rocked the world, or at least a vocal corner of the media. Speaking of speaking out, FBI Director James Comey this week gave his most thorough explanation yet of the election-rocking Clinton investigation letter he gave last fall, though it's unlikely to satisfy critics. Oh, and apps can use your phone's mic to listen for marketing beacons your ears can't hear. In other news, hackers tried to extort Netflix by threatening to put the unreleased, upcoming season of Orange Is the New Black online, a pretty serious miscalculation. Intel fixed a seven-year-old bug that left enterprise machines exposed.

SEOUL – Ahn Cheol-soo's supporters believe that as South Korean president he'll rise above a political culture long bogged down by corruption and factional bickering. His critics say the former computer software mogul is torn between his slogans that cater to both liberal and conservative voters. Opinion surveys see Ahn as coming in second in Tuesday's vote to Moon Jae-in, who seems to be capitalizing on conservative disarray following the ouster of former President Park Geun-hye, who was jailed in March on corruption charges. However, South Korean elections can be tricky to predict because the electorate is deeply split along ideological lines. Surveys have suggested Ahn was attracting conservative voters disappointed by Park but who continue to dislike Moon, who calls for engagement with belligerent North Korea.

Microsoft is currently topping the leaderboard in the race to develop Machine Reading – the ability for computers to read arbitrary text and extract meaning from it sufficient to answer questions regarding the content. "We're trying to develop what we call a literate machine: A machine that can read text, understand text and then learn how to communicate, whether it's written or orally," said Kaheer Suleman, the co-founder of Maluuba, a Quebec-based deep learning startup that Microsoft acquired earlier this year. Microsoft's teams are currently on top of the SQuAD leaderboard, which pits academic teams against each other to develop technology to read information from Wikipedia to test how well AI systems can answer questions about text passages. Microsoft researchers and other industry and academic experts also are competing for the best results using another dataset, called MS MARCO, that uses real, anonymized data from Bing search queries to test a system's ability to answer real questions from real users. "We're not just going to build a bunch of algorithms to solve theoretical problems. We're using them to solve real problems and testing them on real data," said Rangan Majumder, a partner group program manager within Microsoft's Bing division.

Amrit gave a high level overview on what machine learning is, what do all the buzzwords mean and how you might want to use ML in your business or app.

Newswire) Breaking Data Corp. (TSX VENTURE:BKD) (OTC PINK:BKDCD) (the "Company" or "BKD") is pleased to announce that is has now finalized its new independent Director appointees with key industry veteran leadership and experience. "We are extremely privileged to have this group of experienced and successful directors join our board," said Nick Thain, CEO. "These executives not only bring a vast network of knowledge but also have deep ties in many sports related businesses across the globe, that cross into our key markets. They will, no doubt, be valuable to our strategic and business progress." Greg D'Alba: Mr. D'Alba is currently the Co- founder & CEO of VIDL NEWS LLC, a start-up artificial intelligence news venture focused on real-time personalized news intelligence and reporting.

Disclaimer: I am an IT guy and my knowledge on human body is limited to my daughter's high school biology class book and information obtained from search engines. So, excuse me if any of the information below is not represented accurately!! Human body is the most complex machine ever created. With a complex network of interconnected organs, millions of cells and the most advanced processor, human body is the most automated system in this planet. In this article, we will draw comparisons between working of a human body to that of a data center. We will draw parallels between human body automation to data center automation and explain different levels of automation we need to drive in data centers.

There seems to be no escaping a future where robots and artificial intelligence (AI) get to perform more and more jobs, as sci-fi films warn. But Sen. Bam Aquino is not too excited about reaching such technotopia, as he raised concerns about AI completely doing away with human intelligence and leaving thousands of Filipino workers jobless. Aquino, who chairs the Senate committee on science and technology, filed a resolution on Friday seeking an inquiry into the government's preparedness to address the negative effect of AI on the country's workforce. The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) has been tapped to develop an AI program in the Philippines to optimize mass production, particularly in the country's manufacturing sector. Artificial intelligence is defined as the capability of machines to imitate human cognitive functions in doing simple to complex tasks.

The company now has more than 1,300 employees dedicated to A.I. In a signal of just how critical the efforts are to the company, it said in January that it had hired Qi Lu, a former executive at Microsoft and an A.I. specialist, to become the chief operating officer. Mr. Ng's announcement comes after the technology executive Hugo Barra left Xiaomi, a Chinese phone maker and e-commerce company, for Facebook. Mr. Ng and Mr. Barra were viewed as part of a nascent trend of Silicon Valley executives jumping to well-funded Chinese internet companies. They seemed to represent a new era of closer ties, and competition, between America's tech giants and China's. The resignations underline how that trend never materialized.

SINGAPORE: The National Research Foundation (NRF) will be investing up to S$150 million into a new national programme aimed at boosting Singapore's artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities over the next five years. Called AI.SG, the initiative will see Singapore-based research institutes partner AI start-ups and companies developing AI products to grow knowledge in the space, create tools and develop talent to power the country's AI efforts. This was announced by Minister for Communications and Information Yaacob Ibrahim at the opening of InnovFest Unbound event on Wednesday (May 3). "AI.SG will do three key things – first, address major challenges that affect both society and industry. Secondly, invest in deep capabilities to catch the next wave of scientific innovation. And finally, to grow AI innovation and adoption in companies - an initiative most pertinent to our business community," said Dr Yaacob.