Asked if a computer will ever be able to give better investment advice than a human, Oliver Bussmann does not hesitate. "I believe it's possible," said Bussmann, who until March was the chief information officer of UBS. Banks' wealth management departments and other investment firms are starting to adopt artificial intelligence. This is different from the robo-advisers you've probably heard about. Those have simplistic, rules-based models -- you give them your age, risk tolerance, goals, and so on and they select a basket of exchange-traded funds for you.

IT PAYS to have false memories. Our brains use them to generalise new information – but lack of sleep gets in the way. False memory was discovered in an experiment that asked volunteers to memorise lists of related words and then recall them. When they learned "bed", "drowsy" and "dream", about half later also remembered the word "sleep". That's because well-rested brains normally use "associative memory" to link related concepts together.

In 2016, the White House recognized the importance of AI at its Frontiers Conference. The concept of driverless cars became a reality, with Uber's self-driving fleet in Pittsburgh and Tesla's new models equipped with the hardware for full autonomy. Google's DeepMind platform, AlphaGo, beat the world champion of the game--10 years ahead of predictions. "Increasing use of machine learning and knowledge-based modeling methods" are major trends to watch in 2017, said Marie desJardins, associate dean and professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. How will this play out?

As the end of the year looms over the horizon, it's time to take a look forward and mull over the next big thing in technology. Like any year before, 2017 will bring its own problems and solutions, shaping up both the way we use and think about technology. TNW Conference is back for its 12th year. So without further ado, take a dive into the future and check out some of the most exciting tech trends to look forward to in 2017. With forecasts predicting its growth into a $30 billion market as early as 2020, much has been said about the bright future of virtual reality.

Alibaba has gone from an ecommerce company to its own economy. The Tmall Global Shopping day, Alibaba's Single's Day event, recorded 120.7 billion RMB (17.8 billion USD) in sales in one day. They also revealed some interesting plans for the coming future. Robotics, AI, AR, and VR will be adopted across sectors like ecommerce, logistics, service sector, and finance to make user's daily life smarter. YunOS, a cloud-based data and service oriented operating system for the Internet of Things, will power a wide range of smart devices including smartphones, wearables, Internet cars, robots, and smart household appliances.

Food and agribusiness comprise a $5 trillion industry that accounts for 10 percent of global consumer spending, 40 percent of employment and 30 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions. This massive industry does not change easily, but change – transformative innovation – is precisely what's needed. We collected some examples of artificial intelligence techniques that can help farmers to save thousands of dollars. Three years ago Belarusian startup OneSoil was created. It's an online service to monitor the status of sown areas, which can increase productivity and save resources with the help of artificial intelligence.

SINGAPORE – A boom in consumer drone sales has spawned a counter-industry of startups aiming to stop drones flying where they shouldn't, by disabling them or knocking them out of the sky. Dozens of startup firms are developing techniques -- from deploying birds of prey to firing gas through a bazooka -- to take on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are being used to smuggle drugs, drop bombs, spy on enemy lines or buzz public spaces. The arms race is fed in part by the slow pace of government regulation for drones. In Australia, for example, different agencies regulate drones and counter-drone technologies. "There are potential privacy issues in operating remotely piloted aircraft, but the Civil Aviation Safety Authority's role is restricted to safety. Privacy is not in our remit," a CASA official said.

This is the 2-part blog version of a talk I've given at DOAG Conference this week. I've also uploaded the slides (no ppt; just pretty R presentation;-)) to the articles section, but if you'd like a little text I'm encouraging you to read on. That is, if you're in the target group for this post/talk. For this post, let me assume you're a SQL girl (or guy). With SQL you're comfortable (an expert, probably), you know how to get and manipulate your data, no nesting of subselects has you scared;-).

Develop and tune a suite deep learning models on a range of projects. The most advanced machine learning platform used by professionals.

This is the second installment in a three-part review of 2016 in machine learning and deep learning. Part One, here, covered general trends. In Part Two, we review the year in open source machine learning and deep learning projects. Part Three will cover commercial machine learning and deep learning software and services. There are thousands of open source projects on the market today, and we cannot cover them all. We've selected the most relevant projects based on usage reported in surveys of data scientists, as well as development activity recorded in OpenHub. In this post, we limit the scope to projects with a non-profit governance structure, and those offered by commercial ventures that do not also provide licensed software. Part Three will include software vendors who offer open source "community" editions together with commercially licensed software.