Publicly funded and private technology ventures are tensing in anticipation of harsh budget cuts to research and H-1B visa restrictions. The Canadian government, joined by more than two dozen private institutions such as Google and Air Canada, will invest more than $150 million to create an AI research center within the University of Toronto, named the Vector Institute. Geoffrey Hinton, perhaps Canada's most famous AI researcher and co-author of the 1986 Nature paper that made modern deep learning possible, will serve as chief scientist for the center. Canada will contribute $50 million over five years, part of the $125 million Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy included in the country's budget that passed last week. Big tech names like Google and Nvidia are each contributing $5 million per year, while the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (not Facebook itself) is committed to $20,000 annually.

Professor Ajay Agrawal feels like he's back in 1995. That year, the first major commercial Internet service providers like AOL went online and Yahoo's search engine became available to the public. It was an inflection point for the Internet and, Agrawal believes, artificial intelligence or AI may now be nearing that stage. Agrawal, 47, is a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, but he also happens to be the founder of the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL). He has emerged as a prominent figure in the field of machine learning, with CDL's AI stream.

Netflix is finally bringing downloads to the desktop. The company added the much-requested feature, which allows users to save TV shows and films for offline viewing, to the Android and iOS versions of its app last November. Netflix has now added the same functionality to the Windows 10 version of the its app, under the label'Download & Go'. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

We are difficult for computers to understand. Our actions are sufficiently unpredictable that computer vision systems, such as those used in driverless cars, can't readily make sense of what we're doing and predict our next moves. Now fake people are helping them to understand real human behaviour. The idea is that videos and images of computer-generated bodies walking, dancing and doing cartwheels could help them learn what to look for. "Recognising what's going on in images is natural for humans. Getting computers to do the same requires a lot more effort," says Javier Romero at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, Germany.

Something feels dishonest about the moral panic over self-driving cars. It usually involves bizarre crash scenarios that would (probably) never happen in real life. Does it matter that the scenarios are artificial or unrealistic? The details change, but the set-up is the same. We're supposed to imagine that a self-driving car is faced with some terrible decision: should it crash into a crowd of people, or swerve into a single person? Or into a little girl on the road, or swerve into the side of a mountain?

In our fourth installment of the Bytes Chat, we convened a panel of economists to discuss the newly released NBER study on the impact of robots on jobs and wages. Bytes contributors Rob Seamans, associate professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, Bret Swanson, president of Entropy Economics, and Hal Singer, senior fellow at George Washington University's Institute of Public Policy were joined by special guest Marshall Steinbaum, senior economist and fellow of the Roosevelt Institute. The conversation has been edited slightly for readability. First question is at the behest of our president. Are the robots coming over the border? Is this a border problem? Marshall Steinbaum: If you get all the enemies in one place, it's easier to kill them. Singer: Ok, let's get serious.

Data streaming engines are now drilling down to a single event at a time so enterprises can see consumer behavior in real time. Add machine learning analytics, and it gets better, said Harley Davis (pictured), vice president of operational decision management and France Lab at IBM Corp. "When you take into account predictive analytics models, machine learning, what you get is kind of data from the future," Davis said. Davis spoke to John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's mobile live streaming studio, during IBM InterConnect 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Real-time data sources are multiplying. These include not only transaction data, but also social data that might literally spell out a consumer's motives, Davis explained.

Android has surpassed Windows as the world's most popular operating system for internet usage for the first time, according to new statistics. Google's mobile OS topped the worldwide OS internet usage market share in March with 37.93%, reports web analytics company StatCounter, which included data across the desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile. Windows-running devices, meanwhile, accounted for 37.91% of internet usage last month, putting it marginally behind Android. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

Goodyear's new concept tyre was unveiled in Geneva. Goodyear presented its Eagle 360 Urban concept tyre during the Geneva International Motor Show. The difference to the spherical concept tyre from last year is that the new model can not only be manoeuvred in all directions, but is also equipped with artificial intelligence. The tyre should be able to make decisions in order to adapt to and interact with the driving conditions. Together with a bionic outer skin and a morphing tread, the Eagle 360 Urban should be able to deploy the information it collects directly into the driving situation.

Nintendo Switch users are reporting that the device can warp when it's been docked for an extended period of gaming. The handheld games console is proving more popular than Nintendo expected, having sold out almost immediately after its release, prompting the company to increase production. However, it's not all positive on the Switch front, with Reddit users discussing apparent build issues online. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.