Google has made access to Nvidia graphics cards available on its Compute Engine and Cloud Machine Learning platforms, enabling users to access additional computational horsepower for training smart software and artificial intelligence (AI). Users of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) will be able to tap into the parallel processing capabilities of Nvidia's Tesla K80 graphics processing units (GPUs) by spinning up virtual machines in the us-east1, asia-east1 and europe-west1 regions of the GCP. Offering such a service helps avoid the need for companies working on software and systems that use machine and deep learning algorithms to have GPU clusters in their own data centres. "As always, you only pay for what you use. This frees you up to spin up a large cluster of GPU machines for rapid deep learning and machine learning training with zero capital investment," said Google's product manager John Barrus.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a game changer for the future of cybersecurity. Security professionals need to mine not only structured information, but also unstructured data, including human-generated content. Artificial intelligence enables IT teams to reason, learn and provide context in real time beyond simple analytics patterns. Armed with this collective insight, security analysts can respond to threats with increased speed, accuracy and confidence. Like any new technology, AI introduces many concerns related to governance, transparency, human interactions, privacy and security principles.

Quantum biomimetics consists of reproducing in quantum systems certain properties exclusive to living organisms. Researchers at University of the Basque Country have imitated natural selection, learning and memory in a new study. The mechanisms developed could give quantum computation a boost and facilitate the learning process in machines. Unai Alvarez-Rodriguez is a researcher in the Quantum Technologies for Information Science (QUTIS) research group attached to the UPV/EHU's Department of Physical Chemistry, and an expert in quantum information technologies. Quantum information technology uses quantum phenomena to encode computational tasks.

Advancements in technology are not always welcome, particularly to a workforce fearing displacement. This is particularly true with the rise of automation, with the threat that companies could outsource labor to machines. And while experts say artificial intelligence and automation can provide a cheaper and better way to solve problems that previously took up valuable human time and effort, putting numbers to those changes is challenging. Almost half of knowledge work activity can be automated, according to a recent McKinsey study. Physical tasks "in highly structured and predictable environments, as well as data collection and processing" will be the first to be automated, according to the report.

Apple will soon open the door of its huge new campus, moving thousands of staff into the donut-shaped building. The campus, which brings to an end years of work, will be christened Apple Park and take up 175 acres in the Santa Clara Valley. The vision for the campus began in 2011, when Steve Jobs presented plans for the building to the council. In the six years since it has become a fascination of Apple and architecture fans, based on its huge ring-shaped design which is made entirely of the world's biggest glass panels. As well as hosting 12,000 of Apple's staff, Apple Park will also feature a visitors centre that will include an Apple Store and cafe.

President Donald Trump's "poisonous" rhetoric during his campaign to win the presidential election led to a global trend in increasingly divisive politics, Amnesty International's 2016/17 annual report released Wednesday said. "Donald Trump's poisonous campaign rhetoric exemplifies a global trend towards angrier and more divisive politics. Across the world, leaders and politicians wagered their future power on narratives of fear and disunity, pinning blame on the "other" for the real or manufactured grievances of the electorate," the report titled "The state of the world's human rights" read. The publication also commented on the instability of the Trump-led administration, saying: "His predecessor, President Barack Obama, leaves a legacy that includes many grievous failures to uphold human rights, not least the expansion of the CIA's secretive campaign of drone strikes and the development of a gargantuan mass surveillance machine as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. Yet the early indications from President Trump suggest a foreign policy that will significantly undermine multilateral co-operation and usher in a new era of greater instability and mutual suspicion."

For the first time, astronomers have used advanced algorithms taken from evolutionary biology and successfully applied them to make a phylogenetic family tree of 22 nearby stars. In a paper appearing in the journal The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the authors report that they have taken a page from the work of Charles Darwin in an effort to do stellar genealogy on a sampling of stars within our own galaxy. "We worked together with people from evolutionary biology and basically applied the principles of biology to astronomy," Paula Jofre, the paper's lead author and an astronomer at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., told me. "We used the chemical elements of the stars as if they were the DNA and used genetic algorithms that have been built in evolutionary biology to create the trees." Astronomers hope to use this new data to develop a genealogical family tree of millions of our galaxy's stars.

A video game livestreamer has mysteriously died after taking part in a day-long challenge. Brian Vigneault, who was known to his friends and fans as Poshybrid online, intended to run a 24-hour livestream of himself playing games as part of a challenge to raise money for the Make A Wish Foundation. But 22 hours into the stream, Mr Vigneault went for a cigarette and didn't return to the computer. Fans later discovered that he had collapsed and died while away from the video. That information was shared by first responders who arrived at Mr Vigneault's house the morning after the stream, and used a computer logged into his chat app to confirm the news with a friend.

IT is no longer news that Nigeria is in a serious recession with a very high misery index. So, as year 2016 Christmas approached, those living in the country were advised by experts in money management to conserve whatever little funds they had at their disposal. They particularly advised that folks should stay at home, travel less, spend less, cut out on luxury items and save more, as the economic headwinds in the country will continue well into 2017. So, I struggled to convince myself to stay put at home for the Christmas and New Year. However, the allure of the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) was too strong for me to resist, thus compelling me to set out for the CES 2017, which is hosted annually in the city of Las Vegas, United States of America.

All eyes are on Montreal these days as a hub for deep learning. "Clearly it's a place where everybody wants to be if we want to tap into that talent," says Nagraj Kashyap, corporate vice-president of Microsoft Ventures in San Francisco. Montreal's pre-eminence as a deep learning centre can largely be attributed to the efforts of Yoshua Bengio, considered to be one of the three "co-fathers" of deep learning technology. Bengio not only engaged in cutting-edge research at the Université de Montréal long before deep learning was considered viable; his work has spawned an ecosystem that many say is unrivalled in the artificial intelligence (AI) world. That ecosystem includes the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA) which has been funded by government and private sector parties, including Google and Microsoft, among other tech notables.