As we have written about extensively here at The Next Platform, there is no shortage of use cases in deep learning and machine learning where HPC hardware and software approaches have bled over to power next generation applications in image, speech, video, and other classification and learning tasks. Since we focus on high performance computing systems here in their many forms, that trend has been exciting to follow, particularly watching GPU computing and matrix math-based workloads find a home outside of the traditional scientific supercomputing center. This widened attention has been good for HPC as well since it has brought new attention to the field, which many outside tend to think of as academic (even if many of us know it is far broader than that). But what was interesting this week as we wrap up at the International Supercomputing Conference in Germany, which focused heavily on HPC and AI, was how much deep learning folks need from HPC, but how little there is (yet) to feed AI and machine learning back into supercomputing. To be fair, in our conversations, we asked users at several national labs and supercomputing sites if the emphasis this week at ISC '16 on deep learning was relevant for their workloads.

It is the future of shipping - and there's not a single sailor on board. Rolls Royce has revealed planed for fleets of'drone ships' to ferry carry around the world - all controlled from a central'holodeck'. It believes an entirely unmanned ship could take to the seas by 2020. Rolls Royce said it has already begun testing the technology needed to make the ships a reality, and expected them to take to the sea by the end of the decade. Cameras would beam 360-degree views from the drone ship back to operators based in a virtual bridge.

Neuroscientists at DeepMind, a Google-owned AI lab in London, have teamed up with academics at Oxford University and UCL to try and determine how the human brain navigates an underground train network. The group -- whose work was published in the journal Neuron this week -- asked humans to plan a journey in a virtual subway network. Participants were tasked with getting from A to B while MRI scans of their brain were taken. These scans showed which parts of the brain are involved in planning and making decisions. The group, which included Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, concluded that the brain splits the task of completing a journey into different jobs, with different parts of the brain handling different elements of the task.

The number of intelligence (A.I.) systems used in infotainment and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) systems will jump from 7 million in 2015 to 122 million by 2025, according to a new IHS Technology report. IHS's Automotive Electronics Roadmap Report found the install rate of A.I.-based systems in new vehicles was just 8% in 2015, and the vast majority were focused on speech recognition, according to IHS. However, that number is forecast to rise to 109% in 2025, as there will be multiple A.I. systems of various types installed in many cars. "An artificial-intelligence system continuously learns from experience and by its ability to discern and recognize its surroundings," Luca De Ambroggi, IHS Technology's principal analyst for automotive semiconductors, said in a statement. "It learns, as human beings do, from real sounds, images and other sensory inputs. The system recognizes the car's environment and evaluates the contextual implications for the moving car."

The "why" and "what" questions are fairly straightforward. Why would a company employ machine intelligence? To help mine large data sets, recognize patterns and improve the infrastructure of systems. What is answered through the tools from the likes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft and IBM. Now comes the pertinent questions: how do I get into this to help my business.

The number of older drivers in the USA is rising rapidly. In the quest to be able to keep driving as they grow older, more Boomers are anxious to try the latest in car safety tech that might help keep them stay behind the wheel, a new study finds. Some 76% drivers age 50 say they would look for a car with the latest safety features, finds the online survey by insurer The Hartford. "Our findings indicate that some drivers, age 50-plus, would be more willing to drive in certain situations if they had particular technologies," said Jodi Olshevsky, a gerontologist who is executive director of The Hartford Center for Mature Marketing Excellence. He says it suggests "they associate advanced technologies with enhanced safety," They are looking for advanced safety features like blind-spot warning, crash mitigation, lane departure warnings and advanced headlights.

A robot in Russia caused an unusual traffic jam last week after it "escaped" from a research lab, and now, the artificially intelligent bot is making headlines again after it reportedly tried to flee a second time, according to news reports. Engineers at the Russian lab reprogrammed the intelligent machine, dubbed Promobot IR77, after last week's incident, but the robot recently made a second escape attempt, The Mirror reported. Last week, the robot made it approximately 160 feet (50 meters) to the street, before it lost power and "partially paralyzed" traffic. Promobot, the company that designed the robot, announced the escapade in a blog post the next day. The strange escape has drawn skepticism from some who think it was a promotional stunt, but regardless of whether the incident was planned, the designers seem to be capitalizing on all the attention.

Seasoned travellers know how it happens--just one cancelled flight and you're done. If it's not a simple "there and back" journey, only one change in your schedule is capable of making all other flights, hotel bookings, and business meetings fall like dominoes. It can be a real bummer, unless you're Tony Stark with Pepper Potts as your secretary. Well, I'm not Iron Man, but for a few weeks, I've been something even better--a Mission Control user. So this time, when my flight was cancelled, it hardly left a ripple in my travel routine. When I woke up on the day of departure to find my flight cancelled, I received a notification on my phone offering me a few updated options for the whole trip--up to the final meeting.

This rather long read article from Nautilus does a great job on showing the current landscape of a quite new type of medical research aimed at curing aging and eventually curing death. It feels like the technology is almost here. The big players are getting interested in the research as they get older. The hype is getting real. Augmented humans that combine technology and biology, including apps for the brain and hard drives wired straight into people's veins are just around the corner, according to a business software company.

The announcement Monday is a new milestone for Chinese supercomputer development and a further erosion of past U.S. dominance of the field. Last year's Chinese winner in the TOP500 ranking maintained by researchers in the United States and Germany slipped to No. 2, followed by a computer at the U.S. government's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Also this year, China displaced the United States for the first time as the country with the most supercomputers in the top 500. China had 167 systems and the United States had 165. Japan was a distant No. 3 with 29 systems. Supercomputers are one of a series of technologies targeted by China's ruling Communist Party for development and have received heavy financial support.