Koichiro Otaki started taking aerial pictures of photovoltaic power stations in April 2015. At first, it was an innocent desire to capture their sheer scale and aesthetic value that motivated him, he says. Solar parks, mostly in rural, desolate areas, were also among the few places where he could practice flying a drone without having to worry about hitting people or tall structures, he says. Weather permitting, the 38-year-old freelance photographer would toss a compact drone into his backpack and venture out to the suburbs of Tokyo or up north to the Tohoku region by motorcycle, snapping away at solar panels neatly lined up along river banks, mountain slopes and even abandoned golf courses. "I was simply captivated by their geometric beauty," Otaki said of the panels.

In recent years, advanced machine learning techniques have enabled computers to recognize objects in images, understand commands from spoken sentences, and translate written language. But while consumer products like Apple's Siri and Google Translate might operate in real time, actually building the complex mathematical models these tools rely on can take traditional computers large amounts of time, energy, and processing power. As a result, chipmakers like Intel, graphics powerhouse Nvidia, mobile computing kingpin Qualcomm, and a number of startups are racing to develop specialized hardware to make modern deep learning significantly cheaper and faster. The importance of such chips for developing and training new AI algorithms quickly cannot be understated, according to some AI researchers. "Instead of months, it could be days," Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said in a November earnings call, discussing the time required to train a computer to do a new task.

Don't worry about the robots, worry about the humans. There's a huge difference between the modest aims of the artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning being used today, and the grand ideas of creating an artificial general intelligence that could match -- and then rapidly exceed - the capabilities of a human mind As they develop, AI and machine learning will be able to take on even more complicated tasks, but it could still be half a century or more before AI capable of human-level intelligence is built. And, then, even longer before the sort of super-intelligence emerges that excites some, terrifies others and has provided plot lines for science fiction for decades. One may (eventually) lead to the other, but conflating today's AI and machine learning with tomorrow's Skynet is not helpful. Indeed, that confusion has encouraged many to exaggerate the short-term potential of existing (and often somewhat mundane) AI and machine learning technologies.

Hey, you know that I'm big supporter of women in tech. I'm actually partnering with Women Who Tech for the 4th Women Startup Challenge at Google and focused on women-led ventures in artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR). Note: if you haven't applied you have until December 12th to get your applications in. The winner will receive $50,000 as a cash grant, and $15,000 in probono legal services by global law firm Paul Hastings, LLP. All finalists will join join Samsung for a special startup showcase and reception featuring the 10 finalists.

New artificial intelligence software designed to spot new child sexual abuse media online could help police catch child abusers. The toolkit, described in a paper published in Digital Investigation, automatically detects new child sexual abuse photos and videos in online peer-to-peer networks. The research behind this technology was conducted in the international research project iCOP - Identifying and Catching Originators in P2P Networks - founded by the European Commission Safer Internet Program by researchers at Lancaster University, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), and University College Cork, Ireland. There are hundreds of searches for child abuse images every second worldwide, resulting in hundreds of thousands of child sexual abuse images and videos being shared every year. The people who produce child sexual abuse media are often abusers themselves - the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found that 16 percent of the people who possess such media had directly and physically abused children.

Dramatic moment Russian special forces use a machinegun ROBOT as they'take out' ISIS warlord behind deadly bombings Rustam Aselderov was thought to have been involved in blasts in the southern Russian city of Volgograd which killed 34 in 2013. He was fighting for another Caucasus insurgent group at the time. 'Highly organised' ISIS cells are using chaos caused by... Up to 1,750 ISIS jihadists have returned to Europe with... Inside the den of terror: Raids at home of ISIS recruiter's... 'Highly organised' ISIS cells are using chaos caused by... Up to 1,750 ISIS jihadists have returned to Europe with... Aselderov, also known as Sheikh Abu Mohammad al-Qadari, and four of his henchmen were'neutralised' in the raid. Soldiers can be seen securing the area after the robot's machinegun had ripped holes in the wall in a hail of bullets Russia's FSB security service revealed on Sunday that it had killed an ISIS'emir' in the operation Horrifying moment woman is kicked down the stairs by stranger Lads post the rudest mannequin challenge from "Scottish party" Police officer filmed punching man as he's arrested in London'He's ruined our holiday!': 'Drunk' passengers kicked off plane Caught on Camera: Employee brawl erupts at Waffle House Is he fur real?

Apple IS developing a car: First patent for'Project Titan' reveals pedestrian avoidance system Apple's latest patent describes technology for a collision avoidance system that is designed for robots, or self-driving cars. And it uses what it has learned from previous encounters for new ones. Facebook copies Snapchat AGAIN with new'photo frame'... Meet Fyodor: Russia's spacebot put through its paces on... Will Apple's next iPhone FOLD? Patents reveal flexible'flip... Earth could be DESTROYED in a fiery inferno as the sun... Facebook copies Snapchat AGAIN with new'photo frame'... Meet Fyodor: Russia's spacebot put through its paces on... Will Apple's next iPhone FOLD? Patents reveal flexible'flip... Earth could be DESTROYED in a fiery inferno as the sun... Details about Apple's secretive'Project Titan' have been floating around since last year and although the Cupertino company has tried to deny its plan for a self-driving car (pictured is a concept drawing), its actions speak otherwise The new patent describes technology that could be the key to self-driving cars – a system that can operate in both 2D and 3D area, which computer visions systems have had difficulty doing.

Meet Fyodor: Russia's spacebot put through its paces on Earth before being blasted to the ISS - where it will carry out spacewalks before helping build a moon base'Cyber cosmonaut' Fyodor will be sent to the International Space Station Putin wants space chiefs to make first landing on the moon within 15 years A key task for Fyodor will be to'assist in construction and use of bases' 'Cyber cosmonaut' Fyodor will be sent to the International Space Station A key task for Fyodor will be to'assist in construction and use of bases' Take the mind-bending tests that reveal how our brain'makes... Look out for auroras! The world's oldest cancer case: Tumor found in the mouth of... Mercedes reveals smart headlights that can project... Take the mind-bending tests that reveal how our brain'makes... Look out for auroras! The world's oldest cancer case: Tumor found in the mouth of... Mercedes reveals smart headlights that can project... Putin's deputy premier Dmitry Rogozin said: 'This thing can work without a space suit, live not only in a crew vehicle, but even outside it. It can even perform press-ups and drive. Operators will use VR headsets to control its movements from Earth - unless the AI is in control.

SimTensor is a multi-platform, open-source software for generating artificial tensor data (either with CP/PARAFAC or Tucker structure) for reproducible research on tensor factorization algorithms. SimTensor is a stand-alone application based on MATALB. It provides a wide range of facilities for generating tensor data with various configurations. It comes with a user-friendly graphical user interface, which enables the user to generate tensors with complicated settings in an easy way. It also has this facility to export generated data to universal formats such as CSV and HDF5, which can be imported via a wide range of programming languages (C, C++, Java, R, Fortran, MATLAB, Perl, Python, and many more). The most innovative part of SimTensor is this that can generate temporal tensors with periodic waves, seasonal effects and streaming structure. it can apply constraints such as non-negativity and different kinds of sparsity to the data. SimTensor also provides this facility to simulate different kinds of change-points and inject various types of anomalies. The source code and binary versions of SimTensor is available for download in http://www.simtensor.org.

Uber made two big announcements on Monday: It is acquiring Geometric Intelligence, a New York-based startup, and using that 15-person team to help launch a new artificial intelligence division within Uber, called Uber AI Labs. Uber AI Labs will focus on improving both ride-hailing software and the company's self-driving car software, according to a blog post by Uber's product chief Jeff Holden. Geometric Intelligence, a 2-year-old artificial intelligence startup, will move its 15-person staff from New York to Uber's San Francisco headquarters to help build the lab. "In spite of notable wins with machine learning in recent years, we are still very much in the early innings of machine intelligence," Holden wrote in the blog post. "The formation of Uber AI Labs, to be directed by Geometric's Founding CEO Gary Marcus, represents Uber's commitment to advancing the state of the art, driven by our vision that moving people and things in the physical world can be radically faster, safer and accessible to all."