In fact, it's about a thousand of them, give or take a few. An experiment using fake ducks to stand in for the real thing has found that when it comes to counting birds, drones beat humans. Jarrod Hodgson and his colleagues at the University of Adelaide in Australia had previously used aerial images from drones to count seabirds and found that the drones had a more comprehensive view of the colonies than the people trying to count them on the ground. However, neither could provide an exact count of the number individual birds. "We couldn't test for accuracy," says Hodgson.

Machine-learning enterprise-focused cybersec firm Darktrace has raised $75m in order to expand its sales operations into Latin America and Asia as it prepares for a possible IPO. The $75m Series D fundraising round, led by new investor Insight Ventures, comes a year after a $65m funding round and propels the company towards tech unicorn status (startups valued at over $1bn). Analysts value Darktrace at $850m. Existing investors Summit Partners, KKR and TenEleven Ventures also contributed to the latest funding round. Cambridge-based Darktrace, backed by one-time Autonomy chief exec Mike Lynch, uses machine learning and AI technology to protect corporate networks against cyber threats through what it markets as an "Enterprise Immune System".

OSLO--Two Norwegian companies are taking the lead in the race to build the world's first crewless, autonomously operated ship, an advance that could mark a turning point in seaborne trade. Dubbed by shipping executives the "Tesla of the Seas," the Yara Birkeland now under development is scheduled in late 2018 to start sailing fertilizer 37 miles down a fiord from a production facility to the port of Larvik. Using the Global Positioning System, radar, cameras and sensors, the electric ship is designed to navigate itself around other boat traffic and to dock on its own. The vessel will cost $25 million, about three times as much as a conventional container ship of its size, but its backers say without need for fuel or crew it promises to cut annual operating costs by up to 90%. The 100-container ship is scheduled to be in the water toward the end of next year, though initially it will be tested with a human at the controls.

When experimenting with machine learning and big data, you may identify data sets that contain streams of text that contain customer reviews, or social media posts where customers (or potential customers) are talking about a product, brand or service that you offer. Mining such data to determine how people feel about your product, brand, or service, is called Sentiment Analysis. People have always had an interest in what people think, or what their opinion is. Since the inception of the internet, increasing numbers of people are using websites and services to express their opinion. With social media channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, it is becoming feasible to automate and gauge what public opinion is on a given topic, news story, product, or brand.

OSLO--Two Norwegian companies are taking the lead in the race to build the world's first crewless, autonomously operated ship, an advance that could mark a turning point in seaborne trade. Dubbed by shipping executives the "Tesla of the Seas," the Yara Birkeland now under development is scheduled in late 2018 to start sailing fertilizer 37 miles down a fiord from a production facility to the port of Larvik. Using the Global Positioning System, radar, cameras and sensors, the electric ship is designed to navigate itself around other boat traffic and to dock on its own. The vessel will cost $25 million, about three times as much as a conventional container ship of its size, but its backers say without need for fuel or crew it promises to cut annual operating costs by up to 90%. The 100-container ship is scheduled to be in the water toward the end of next year, though initially it will be tested with a human at the controls.

USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham asks people about getting their news on Snapchat. We've been watching the NBC News Stay Tuned newscast, which is tailored for the young people who use Snapchat, and it's quite different from the NBC Nightly News we've been watching on network TV for years. This is a good thing. Savannah Sellers is the co-host of NBC's new Stay Tuned news show for Snapchat (Photo: Snapchat) If we want to get the next generation watching news, this could be the way to do it. Hire two young hosts, put them in hip attire, use language that assumes you know very little ("O.J. Simpson became famous for pushing yards on a football field") have fast-moving graphics, quick cuts and split screens, eliminate lengthy sound bites and tell young folks the essence of the story.

The explosive growth of structured and unstructured data, along with the availability of new technologies such as cloud computing and machine learning algorithms, have made the expanded use of artificial intelligence (AI) in banking possible. According to Goldman Sachs, AI will enable $34 billion to $43 billion in annual "cost savings and new revenue opportunities" within the financial services sector by 2025. With more data accessible than ever before, banks are actively working on opportunities to better integrate machine learning into their businesses. However, this does not have to mean a less personalized experience for customers. Rather, it is crucial for customer loyalty that, even with decreasing face-to-face interactions, customized interactions are the norm.

Today's technologies have given us an unprecedented ability to capture, store, exchange, and analyse information. In this article, we will explore how the Internet of Things (IoT), augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will combine to permanently change the native advertising landscape. "There was five exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilisation through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing. People aren't ready for the technology revolution that's going to happen to them," said Eric Schmidt, Former Google CEO. As comprehensive as the human imagination may seem, people generally fail to grasp how inadequate it can be with regards to our future.

They all have to be tested before they roll out into the world, not only to meet government regulations but to verify adherence to a host of voluntary standards, like WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, Thread and others. That is a lot of testing. And that's why TUV Rheinland recently opened a huge Silicon Valley test facility in Fremont, Calif. It's important for testing to be near the design teams, says TUV Rheinland's Sarb Shelopal, the company's global director of wireless and IoT testing. Distance, he says--and Silicon Valley's traffic--is a big deal when companies are trying to move fast.

Christina Demetriades and Deb Santiago of Accenture discuss common concerns people raise about AI and look beyond ethics as the sole magic potion to solve all of AI's ills.