Whether you're interested in cognitive computing, artificial intelligence or machine learning, you probably know that the fourth industrial revolution is well underway and accelerating rapidly. The speed of change presents a challenge to developers who want to stay abreast of the latest ideas and approaches. Conferences, workshops and other meetings provide opportunities to learn where the jobs and technology is headed and a chance to learn and practice the skills necessary to keep up. Why you should attend: AI engineers, practitioners, researchers and scientists will discuss the latest developments in the field, while tutorials and workshops will give attendees a chance to hone their skills. Speakers will be drawn from a wide variety of sectors, including Microsoft, MIT, the National Science Foundation and NASA Ames Research Center.

Beachgoers in Australia can be a little less panicky about shark attacks this summer, because artificial intelligence-equipped drones will be monitoring the water for big scary fish. Developed by researchers at University of Technology Sydney, the AI system--dubbed Sharkspotter--can identify sharks and notify beachgoers when they're nearby. An Australian drone company called Westpac teamed up with the school to outfit its battery-powered Little Ripper Lifesaver unmanned helicopters with the technology in an effort to, hopefully, offer swimmers and surfers better protection. The AI-equipped drones will patrol "many main beaches in Australia" this summer, the school said in a news release. "The system will give an overhead warning to swimmers/surfers when a shark or a potential risk is detected, using an on-board megaphone attached to the drones," Professor Michael Blumenstein, head of the UTS School of Software, said in a statement, adding that the system "will create a positive impact for the public, making beach recreation much safer." Sharkspotter uses "cutting-edge deep neural networks and image processing techniques" to examine live video feeds in real time and detect the presence of sharks, and distinguish them from other marine life and objects, the school said.

Australia's first driverless shuttle trial turned a year old this week, during which the bus has clocked up more than 4200 km in autonomous mode. The RAC Intellibus has made around 1500 thirty-minute trips, carrying more than 4300 passengers around its route on open road in South Perth. The autonomous bus – which can reach speeds of 45km per hour, but averages at around 25km per hour – is fully electric and uses light detection and ranging (LIDAR), stereovision cameras, GPS, odometry and autonomous emergency braking to detect and avoid obstacles and maintain its course. It is considered to have'Level 4' automation (as defined by SAE International standards) which means the vehicle can perform all safety critical driving functions without any occupants. Nevertheless, the bus has a'chaperone' whom can take the wheel (actually a Playstation controller) if needed.

Despite what you might see in movies, today's robots are still very limited in what they can do. They can be great for many repetitive tasks, but their inability to understand the nuances of human language makes them mostly useless for more complicated requests. For example, if you put a specific tool in a toolbox and ask a robot to "pick it up," it would be completely lost. Picking it up means being able to see and identify objects, understand commands, recognize that the "it" in question is the tool you put down, go back in time to remember the moment when you put down the tool, and distinguish the tool you put down from other ones of similar shapes and sizes. Recently researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have gotten closer to making this type of request easier: In a new paper, they present an Alexa-like system that allows robots to understand a wide range of commands that require contextual knowledge about objects and their environments.

Since the days of Da Vinci's "Ornithoper", mankind's greatest minds have sought inspiration from the natural world for their technological creations. It's no different in the modern world, where bleeding-edge advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence have begun taking their design cues from the most advanced computational organ in the natural word: the human brain. Deep learning neural networks -- the likes of which power AlphaGo as well as the current generation of image recognition and language translation systems -- are the best machine learning systems we've developed to date. They're capable of incredible feats but still face significant technological hurdles, like the fact that in order to be trained on a specific skill they require upfront access to massive data sets. What's more if you want to retrain that neural network to perform a new skill, you've essentially got to wipe its memory and start over from scratch -- a process known as "catastrophic forgetting".

Since the days of Da Vinci's "Ornithoper", mankind's greatest minds have sought inspiration from the natural world for their technological creations. It's no different in the modern world, where bleeding-edge advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence have begun taking their design cues from the most advanced computational organ in the natural word: the human brain. Deep learning neural networks -- the likes of which power AlphaGo as well as the current generation of image recognition and language translation systems -- are the best machine learning systems we've developed to date. They're capable of incredible feats but still face significant technological hurdles, like the fact that in order to be trained on a specific skill they require upfront access to massive data sets. What's more if you want to retrain that neural network to perform a new skill, you've essentially got to wipe its memory and start over from scratch -- a process known as "catastrophic forgetting". Compare that to the human brain, which learns incrementally rather than bursting forth fully-formed from a sea of data points.

Ford and Domino's have announced road tests for a self-driving pizza delivery service in Michigan. A fleet of research vehicles will begin deliveries in September as the two firms explore how customers respond to and interact with self-driving cars. In the coming weeks, Domino's customers in Ann Arbor, Michigan, will be given the option to have a Ford Fusion Hybrid autonomous research vehicle deliver their pizza. Ford and Domino's have announced road tests for a self-driving pizza delivery service in Michigan. In the coming weeks, Domino's customers in Ann Arbor, Michigan will be given the option to have a Ford Fusion Hybrid autonomous research vehicle deliver their pizza.

Finally, a martian rover to call your own. A Polish team of engineers who first created a rover in a NASA contest that eventually led to Curiosity have revealed a remote control, backpack-sized version of their'land drone' designed to be used on Earth. The $1400 'Turtle Rover' has a robot arm that can be remotely controlled, a HD camera for livestreaming, and can have everything from GoPro's to laser mapping attachments added to it. The'Turtle Rover' land drone is built on NASA-inspired suspension and can conquer every terrain and even be submerged under water, making it possible for everyone from researchers to wildlife photographers to explore what might otherwise be inaccessible parts of Earth Its makers boast it can conquer every terrain and even be submerged under water, making it possible for everyone from researchers to wildlife photographers. ''The only real limit is your imagination' are not just empty marketing words we use,' Simon Dzwonczyk, CEO and mechanical designer of Kell Ideas, the maker of Turtle Rover, told DailyMail.com.

Big data was the first step in creating value from transactions and accumulated data. Now that we have warehouses filled with data the challenge has turned to delivering actionable insights to not just customers, but also employees. Smart businesses have realized that their employees, across teams, can make better decisions and scale expertise by democratizing the access to real-time data insights. These six companies are just a small sampling of how AI is helping companies empower all their employees to be as good as their best ones. H&R Block trains its tax pros to create tax returns for its customers but understanding and interpreting the 74,000 page tax code is daunting.

There didn't seem to be anything strange about the new teaching assistant, Jill Watson, who messaged students about assignments and due dates in professor Ashok Goel's artificial intelligence class at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her responses were brief but informative, and it wasn't until the semester ended that the students learned Jill wasn't actually a "she" at all, let alone a human being. Jill was a chatbot, built by Goel to help lighten the load on his eight other human TAs. "We thought that if an AI TA would automatically answer routine questions that typically have crisp answers, then the (human) teaching staff could engage the students on the more open-ended questions," Goel told Digital Trends. "It is only later that we became motivated by the goal of building human-like AI TAs so that the students cannot easily tell the difference between human and AI TAs. Now we are interested in building AI TAs that enhance student engagement, retention, performance, and learning."