Deep learning and deep architectures are emerging as the best machine learning methods so far in many practical applications such as reducing the dimensionality of data, image classification, speech recognition or object segmentation.... In fact, many leading technology companies such as Google, Microsoft or IBM are researching and using deep architectures in their systems to replace other traditional models. Therefore, improving the performance of these models could make a very strong impact in the area of machine learning. However, deep learning is a very fast-growing research domain with many core methodologies and paradigms just discovered over the last few years. This thesis will first serve as a short summary of deep learning, which tries to include all of the most important ideas in this research area. Based on this knowledge, we suggested, and conducted some experiments to investigate the possibility of improving the deep learning based on automatic programming (ADATE). Although our experiments did produce good results, there are still many more possibilities that we could not try due to limited time as well as some limitations of the current ADATE version. I hope that this thesis can promote future work on this topic, especially when the next version of ADATE comes out. This thesis also includes a short analysis of the power of ADATE system, which could be very useful for other researchers who want to know what it is capable of.

Sometime in early 2019, the self-driving e.GO Mover bus will hit the streets in Germany. The electrically powered vehicle can transport up to 10 people, with a battery that lasts for 10 hours or so. And, it's powered by the cloud. The Microsoft Azure cloud platform, to be exact. While autonomous vehicles powered by the cloud are not new, e.GO Mover highlights how artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Thing (IoT), and edge computing projects are increasingly coming together to power smart cities. Amazon Web Services (AWS), for example, boasts customers including DriveAI, nuTonomy, TuSimple, and Mapillary--all of which work on autonomous vehicle systems.

Last month Airbus released a video of the first successful test flight of its electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) autonomous drone. Although it only hovered in the air for 53 seconds, the fact that its eight rotors were powered entirely by electricity was a landmark for the manufacturer of gas-guzzling planes. The goal is that the technology could be used for airborne travel in congested cities. "Our goal is to democratise personal flight by leveraging the latest technologies such as electric propulsion, energy storage and machine vision," blogged Zach Lovering, Vahana project executive. Chinese drone manufacturer Ehang is considerably more advanced than Airbus. In February it flew 40 journalists and local dignitaries on trips of up to 15km in Guangzhou, southern China, reaching top speeds of 80mph.

Recently, the "Deep Greens" team, comprised of Intel AI data scientists and horticultural experts from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), competed in, and won, a 24-hour hackathon for the chance to win one of 5 slots to grow cucumbers in an autonomous greenhouse later this year. The competition is to designed to test which team can grow the most cucumbers while reducing the number of total resources needed. By succeeding in the hackathon we now have the chance to test our deep reinforcement learning algorithms in a very novel environment. In this post, we will talk more about the overall challenge, our strategy for the hackathon, and the strategy going forward. The competition is sponsored by the Wageningen University and Research (WUR) of the Netherlands, and the company Tencent*.

Phil Rosenthal, the host of Netflix's "Somebody Feed Phil," meets Jefferson Graham for lunch, and reveals his top 3 favorite destinations in the world. Phil Rosenthal is the star of Netflix's travel documentary series "Somebody Feed Phil" (Photo: Jefferson Graham) LOS ANGELES -- At age 58, Phil Rosenthal finally has a website, https://www.philrosenthalworld.com The star of Netflix's globe-trotting "Somebody Feed Phil," travel documentary series had a previous life as the co-creator of "Everybody Loves Raymond," and was happy to have people look him on his IMDB page. But now that he's got a second act as an internet video star, with "Phil," he realized he needed more, as his fans were demanding it. "They would sit with a pencil, writing the names of the places we visited as the show was on," says Rosenthal.

We are in the midst of an unprecedented surge of investment into artificial intelligence (AI) research and applications. Within that, discussions about'ethics' are taking centre stage to offset some of the potentially negative impacts of AI on society. Mona Sloane writes that to achieve a sustainable shift towards such fields, we need a more holistic approach to the relationship between technology, data, and society. In June 2018, the Mayor of London released a new report that identifies London's'unique strengths as a global hub of Artificial Intelligence' and positions the capital as'The AI Growth Capital of Europe'. This plea coincides with the government's focus on'AI & Data Economy' as the first out of four'Grand Challenges' to put the UK'at the forefront of the industries of the future'.

Billionaire serial entrepreneur Richard Branson told the New York Times in June that a universal basic income is an appropriate response to income inequality. "A basic income should be introduced in Europe and in America," Branson told David Gelles of the Times. "It's a disgrace to see people sleeping on the streets with this material wealth all around them." In particular, Branson said the acceleration of machine intelligence is driving the need of cash payments. "I think with artificial intelligence coming along, there needs to be a basic income," said Branson.

Once a year, the bucolic grounds of Goodwood House in West Sussex, England, are consumed by the smell of exhaust fumes, the sound of engines revving, and an excited crowd of 100,000 people, all wanting a look at the special cars on show. They gather here because Charles Gordon-Lennox, the 11th Duke of Richmond, likes to occasionally open his home to host the Goodwood Festival of Speed, a celebration of all the history, the heritage, and the future of motor racing. This week, among the supercars, hypercars, and pure racing cars, Goodwood visitors will spot a low, black machine streaking in near silence up the winding driveway to the estate, which for the event is transformed into a 1.16-mile hill climb track. "We're pretty sure when the car appears, people will freak out," says Rod Chong, deputy CEO of Roborace. And it will be the first machine to give the hill climb a try without a human in command, so there are some nerves.

Life is full of little disappointments. That's why it's so refreshing to occasionally see someone do something grand, and just a bit nutty. Like Elon Musk setting up a fully functional production tent in the Tesla's factory's backyard, in a improbable--and thus far successful!--bid to hit his 2018 production targets. Like a developer taking a polluted ex-Ford factory in Minnesota and trying to turn it into a walker-friendly, net-zero energy planned community. Like the mere existence of the Polaris Slingshot, which is not quite a car and not quite a motorcycle, but tells us some important things about the future of transportation. This week, it was all about lofty goals.

Digital Secretary Matt Hancock has announced a package of measures to strengthen ties between the UK and France's digital industries during a visit to a Paris summit. The aim of the initiative is to boost both countries' digital economies and forge closer links between cutting-edge companies from both nations. Hancock made the announcement at an address at a landmark bilateral conference on data and the digital economy alongside his French counterpart, Mounir Mahjoubi. He confirmed the UK's world-leading centre for AI and data, The Alan Turing Institute, is signing an agreement with the French institute, DATAIA, to promote collaboration between the French and British sectors. The deal will see the two organisations pursue collaborative research in areas of shared interest; for example, in fairness and transparency in the design and implementation of algorithms.