MOSCOW A mobile phone application that helps Russian shoppers find the best discount deals in supermarkets has reached more than two million users, tapping into a new mood of thrift after the worst economic crisis in years hit Russia.

Have you ever been in a situation where knowing another language would have come in handy? I remember standing on the platform at Tokyo Station watching my train to Nagano -- the last train of the day -- pulling away without me on it. What ensued was a frustrating hour of gestures, confused smiles, and head-shaking as I wandered the station looking for someone who spoke English (my Japanese is unfortunately nonexistent). It would have been really helpful to have a bilingual pal along with me to translate. Bilingual pals can be hard to find, but Google's new translation software may be an equally useful alternative.

Neural attention has been applied successfully to a variety of different applications including natural language processing, vision, and memory. An attractive aspect of these neural models is their ability to extract relevant features from data, with minimal feature engineering.Brian Cheung is a PhD Student at UC Berkeley working with Professor Bruno Olshausen, as well as an Intern at Google Brain. By drawing inspiration from the fields of neuroscience and machine learning, he hopes to create systems which can solve complex vision tasks using attention and memory. At the Deep Learning Summit in Singapore, Brian will share expertise on the fovea as an emergent property of visual attention, ways we can extend this ability to learning interpretable structural features of the attention window itself, and finding conditions where these emergent properties are amplified or eliminated providing clues to their function. I asked him a few questions ahead of the summit to learn more.

Tags: AI, Deep Learning, New York City, NY, RE.WORK, Singapore Explore the latest machine learning research, technology and applications, with 2 RE.WORK events: the Deep Learning Summit in Singapore (20-21 Oct) and the Machine Intelligence Summit in New York City (Nov 2-3).

Two of Japan's biggest obsessions have collided on the Sharp booth at this year's Ceatec electronics show, where the company is displaying a robot vacuum cleaner that blasts J-Pop songs while it sweeps. Sharp said it developed the prototype after hearing comments from users of its Cocorobo robot cleaner that they don't like to hear the sound of the unit as it goes about vacuuming the floor. It blasts out J-Pop songs sung by Vocaloid, Yamaha's popular voice synthesis software, and is also capable of communicating with its owner. The music it plays is based on requests from the owner, picked up through a microphone in the cleaner, so it can be told to play something refreshing, something to lift spirits, or something more relaxing.

Russia will shoot down internet drones that pose a threat to the country's security, reports said Tuesday, citing Russian officials. Several tech companies, including Google and Facebook, are planning to provide internet using drones to remote places that do not have access to the cyberspace. State-run telecom company Rostelecom cautioned the Russian telecommunications industry that internet-sharing drones, such as those from Britain's OneWeb and South Korea's Samsung, are likely to pose a security threat, Russian language Life news reported. "Ground operators might encounter problems. If foreign players win here, it could be an issue for [Russia's] sovereignty. Whoever controls the information controls the world," a representative for Rostelecom reportedly said.

India and the United States are reportedly pushing forward a deal for the supply of Predator drone aircraft in order to complete the project before U.S. President Barack Obama leaves office early next year. The aim is to complete the main process in the next few months," Reuters quoted a government official in New Delhi -- speaking on condition of anonymity -- as saying. He was referring to the country's request for 22 Predator Guardian drones -- to be used for military surveillance -- that was made in June this year. India is apparently rushing to conclude the deal under the Obama administration as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shares cordial relations with the American president after several personal interactions since the former took office in 2014. India serves as a strategic partner in the U.S. mission to tackle terrorism in the region while Washington has replaced Moscow as the top arms supplier to New Delhi.

The excitement around artificial intelligence (AI) has created a dynamic where perception and reality are at odds: everyone assumes that everyone else is already using it, yet relatively few people have personal experience with it, and it's almost certain that no one is using it very well. This is AI's third cycle in a long history of hype – the first conference on AI took place 60 years ago this year – but what is better described as "machine learning" is still very young when it comes to how organisations implement it. While we all encounter machine learning whenever we use autocorrect, Siri, Spotify and Google, the vast majority of businesses are yet to grasp its promise, particularly when it comes to practically adding value in supporting internal decision making. Over the last few months I've been asking a wide range of leaders of large and small companies how and why they are using machine learning within their organisations. By exposing the areas of confusion, concerns and different approaches business leaders are taking, these conversations highlight five interesting lessons.

Google took on rivals Apple, Samsung and Amazon in a new push into hardware Tuesday, launching premium-priced Pixel smartphones and a slew of other devices showcasing artificial intelligence prowess. The unveiling of Google's in-house designed phone came as part of an expanded hardware move by the US company, which also revealed details about its new "home assistant" virtual reality headset and Wi-Fi router system. The San Francisco event marked a shift in strategy for Google, which is undertaking a major drive to make Google Assistant artificial intelligence a futuristic force spanning all kinds of internet-linked devices. "We are evolving from a mobile-first world to an AI-first world," Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said. "Our goal is to build a personal Google for each and every user."

If you're wondering what the future of fashion looks like, it looks like an early '90s robot fever dream built for Web 2.0. Chanel took to the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday to show off its tech-inspired, Spring-Summer 2017 collection (yes, they're already that much cooler than you). Chanel creative director Karl Lagerfeld described it as an exercise in "intimate technology." Here's what we know for sure: Lagerfeld has been watching a lot of Daft Punk film clips, and next month's fashion magazines are going to be filled with "pixelated tweed." The ready-to-wear collection was shown off in Chanel's customary Paris runway venue, the Grand Palais.