Focusing on what you know best often makes the most sense. In an interview with VentureBeat's editor in chief, Blaise Zerega, Line CEO Takeshi Idezawa explained his decision to focus on four Asian markets: Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia. A few years ago, Line sought to enter Western markets. The messaging app known for cute anime stickers encountered stiff competition from overlapping services in an overcrowded market -- from WhatsApp to Snapchat, from Twitter to Instagram, from iMessage and SMS, as well as China's WeChat, to say nothing of Facebook Messenger. Line scaled back its expansion, shelved a planned IPO, and narrowed its focus to four Asian markets.

What one piece of technology would most improve your working life? Chances are it wouldn't be a glove. But car workers in Germany are now using smart gloves that not only save time but prevent accidents as well. It is an example of how tech-enhanced humans are fighting back against the seemingly unstoppable rise of the robots. At BMW's spare parts plant in Dingolfing, for example, which employs around 17,500 people, hand-held barcode readers have been replaced by gloves that scan objects when you put your thumb and forefinger together.

At the end of June and beginning of July, I attended Viva Tech's international summit in Paris. Although the event was centred around Fintech and Insurtech, there were humanoid robots, flying drones, VR play stations… One could learn about the latest trends in retail and hospitality, media and medical industries, smart cities… But, the key idea of the organisers was to physically bring together top companies, investors and startups to boost innovation. There was a series of open innovation challenges designed to hack strategic business problems… In one word, a paradise for a guy like me! I learned a lot, met so many interesting people and interviewed some. One of them was David Kenny, General Manager of IBM Watson tasked to build Watson into "artificial intelligence as a service".

Vicarious has the mission to "build the next generation of artificial intelligence algorithms." That said, its objectives are longer-term in nature. Vicarious has assembled a who's who of technology legends as investors, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Mark Zuckerberg. Co-founder, Scott Phoenix is clear that the biggest value Vicarious can contribute will be in the long-term, in the form of artificial general intelligence (AGI), or human-like intelligence. There will be plenty of value created in the interim in the form of what Phoenix refers to as the "exhaust" of the process.

Is Cybersecurity the Next Frontier for AI? Nextgov: President-elect Donald Trump's plans for federal cybersecurity aren't clear, but some contractors are gearing up for a spike in business over the next few years. One company that builds an artificial intelligence-based forecasting product called Eureqa for federal customers, including the Air Force, is segueing into the cybersecurity market. Nextgov spoke with Michael Schmidt, founder of Nutonian, which is currently piloting Eureqa at a few federal agencies, and David Rubal, chief technology officer of analytics at re-seller DLT Solutions, about trends in federal demand for artificial intelligence. Analyst: Trump administration could enrich contractors, not customer experience Obama Confronts Complexity of Using a Mighty Cyberarsenal Against Russia Analyst: Trump administration could enrich contractors, not customer experience Senators call for probe of cyber attacks by Russia Here's some questions Congress should ask about the election-related hacks Last chance to give feedback on health IT offerings for GSA/DHA eTool Earnest: Intelligence Conclusions on Election Hacking Not Political Report: What Trump Needs to Do About Connected Devices Rick Perry, climate change skeptic, soon to oversee U.S. supercomputing The FCC could soon be paralyzed in a partisan stalemate Chief Innovation Officers: An Unclear Role in the Federal Government Government orgs plagued by botnet compromises, says security report Senate Republican leader backs investigation into Russian hacking US, China hold third dialogue on jointly battling cybercrime Here's some questions Congress should ask about the election-related hacks Rick Perry, climate change skeptic, soon to oversee U.S. supercomputing

Imagine pulling into a Starbucks drive-thru and seeing not just your drink order but your name on the screen -- along with the suggestions of what foods you might like with your drink, automatically generated by the weather, your buying history, and the choices that others with similar preferences have made. Coming soon to a Starbucks drive-through near you -- and to your smartwatch, and possibly to each store's cash register -- are serving suggestions generated by artificial intelligence. It's all part of the coffee giant's plan to use AI and the cloud to drive sales and growth, as laid out in a 45-minute presentation this month at Starbucks Investor Day in Manhattan. "I hope you're convinced we're continuing to set the bar for digital in brick-and-mortar," said Matt Ryan, Starbucks chief strategy officer, after laying out the company's technology plans. It gives us the advantage we have moving forward." Seattle-based Starbucks is going strong -- growing steadily and last month ...

Google's'Waymo' reveals its self driving minivan: 100 of the specially developed Crysler hybrids set to take to roads The hybrid vehicles are expected to form part of Google's ridesharing service, and are already being tested in California. Your left hand really DOES know what your right hand is... The'internet of the road': Government proposals call for... AirPods are FINALLY here after months of delays: Apple's... Your left hand really DOES know what your right hand is... The'internet of the road': Government proposals call for... AirPods are FINALLY here after months of delays: Apple's...

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) market is booming, with nearly every major player in the enterprise space vying for a foothold. IBM, Amazon, GE, Microsoft, Google, Cisco, SAP, HPE, Verizon--you name it, anybody and everybody, even folks who used to sell hardware--are actively working on and/or want to stake a claim in a piece of the AI pie. What encompasses the AI market? Machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), voice recognition and image processing, application and geography are what we're looking at, with mobile devices and cloud being the enablers. And just what will the AI market be?

You can only use a computer to paint like Van Gogh if, first, there is a real Van Gogh. This year's news about what artificial intelligence can do in the arts has been both exciting and scary. Neural networks have learned to paint like masters and compose sophisticated music. Those of us in creative endeavours might be as endangered by technological advances as blue-collar workers are often said to be -- though we are protected by certain limitations that technology is never likely to overcome. Last summer, a team of Russian developers released Prisma, a mobile app based on the work of some German artificial intelligence researchers. The neural network behind it could redraw an image using techniques it had learned from studying the oeuvre of a number of painters, including Vincent Van Gogh and Edvard Munch.

The Wisdom of Crowds (WOC), as a theory in the social science, gets a new paradigm in computer science. The WOC theory explains that the aggregate decision made by a group is often better than those of its individual members if specific conditions are satisfied. This paper presents a novel framework for unsupervised and semi-supervised cluster ensemble by exploiting the WOC theory. We employ four conditions in the WOC theory, i.e., diversity, independency, decentralization and aggregation, to guide both the constructing of individual clustering results and the final combination for clustering ensemble. Firstly, independency criterion, as a novel mapping system on the raw data set, removes the correlation between features on our proposed method. Then, decentralization as a novel mechanism generates high-quality individual clustering results. Next, uniformity as a new diversity metric evaluates the generated clustering results. Further, weighted evidence accumulation clustering method is proposed for the final aggregation without using thresholding procedure. Experimental study on varied data sets demonstrates that the proposed approach achieves superior performance to state-of-the-art methods.