The counting grid is a grid of microtopics, sparse word/feature distributions. The generative model associated with the grid does not use these microtopics individually, but in predefined groups which can only be (ad)mixed as such. Each allowed group corresponds to one of all possible overlapping rectangular windows into the grid. The capacity of the model is controlled by the ratio of the grid size and the window size. This paper builds upon the basic counting grid model and it shows that hierarchical reasoning helps avoid bad local minima, produces better classification accuracy and, most interestingly, allows for extraction of large numbers of coherent microtopics even from small datasets. We evaluate this in terms of consistency, diversity and clarity of the indexed content, as well as in a user study on word intrusion tasks. We demonstrate that these models work well as a technique for embedding raw images and discuss interesting parallels between hierarchical CG models and other deep architectures.

We are about to see a black hole for the first time ever, scientists hope. A team of scientists are hope to use a computer algorithm and a range of equipment to take the first ever picture of a black hole's event horizon next year. The picture will be taken by a project called Event Horizon Telescope – a network of nine radio telescopes placed all around the world. From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station.

A self-learning knowledge base is often found to be a key component of enterprise level self-service solutions. Leading knowledge base technologies use machine learning algorithms to automatically collect customer queries, learn from representatives' responses, and continuously expand the knowledge base over time. As its name might suggest, the self-learning knowledge base continues to improve in accuracy and performance as it receives additional information. Knowledge Base systems which are integrated with digital self-service solutions improve with each customer interaction that occurs through the self-service interface. The machine-learning algorithms which are found in more advanced knowledge base systems are usually designed to evaluate and process large amounts of data received through customer interactions.

"Alexa, ask Pebble how the Kickstarter campaign is doing." Today, we're very excited to announce that integrated Amazon Alexa support is coming Pebble Core! Core will be the first truly independent 3G wearable to give you the magic of Alexa on the go. Ask for your latest workout summary, catch up on current news, check the weather, or change your tunes--Alexa has you covered with its ever improving set of skills. Pebble Core streams music from Spotify, tracks your workouts with GPS, and now gives you the power of Alexa--all from the palm of your hand. Back the first truly connected ultra-wearable on Kickstarter, starting at 69.

We introduce Bayesian Poisson Tucker decomposition (BPTD) for modeling country--country interaction event data. These data consist of interaction events of the form "country $i$ took action $a$ toward country $j$ at time $t$." BPTD discovers overlapping country--community memberships, including the number of latent communities. In addition, it discovers directed community--community interaction networks that are specific to "topics" of action types and temporal "regimes." We show that BPTD yields an efficient MCMC inference algorithm and achieves better predictive performance than related models. We also demonstrate that it discovers interpretable latent structure that agrees with our knowledge of international relations.

Our most powerful 21st-century technologies – robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech – are threatening to make humans an endangered species. From the moment I became involved in the creation of new technologies, their ethical dimensions have concerned me, but it was only in the autumn of 1998 that I became anxiously aware of how great are the dangers facing us in the 21st century. I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil, the deservedly famous inventor of the first reading machine for the blind and many other amazing things. This article has been reproduced in a new format and may be missing content or contain faulty links. Contact wiredlabs@wired.com to report an issue. Ray and I were both speakers at George Gilder's Telecosm conference, and I encountered him by chance in the bar of the hotel after both our sessions were over. I was sitting with John Searle, a Berkeley philosopher who studies consciousness. While we were talking, Ray approached and a ...

One video, for me, changed everything. It's footage from the old Atari game Breakout, the one where you slide a paddle left and right along the bottom of the screen, trying to destroy bricks by bouncing a ball into them. You may have read about the player of the game: an algorithm developed by DeepMind, the British artificial intelligence company whose AlphaGo programme also beat one of the greatest ever Go players, Lee Sedol, earlier this year. Perhaps you expect a computer to be good at computer games? Once they know what to do, they certainly do it faster and more consistently than any human. DeepMind's Breakout player knew nothing, however. It was not programmed with instructions on how the game works; it wasn't even told how to use the controls. All it had was the image on the screen and the command to try to get as many points as possible. At first, the paddle lets the ball drop into oblivion, knowing no better. Eventually, just mucking about, it knocks the ball back, destroys a brick and gets a point, so it recognises this and does it more often.

Creators of the popular game revealed this week that Minecraft has now been sold more than 100 million times – and a few copies have even made it to Antarctica. The figures combine sales from PC, console, and mobile versions of the game to create a user-base that'includes folks from every country and territory on the planet.' Creators of the popular game revealed this week that Minecraft has now been sold more than 100 million times – and a few copies have even made it to Antarctica. The figures combine sales from PC, console, and mobile versions of the game to create a user-base that'includes folks from every country and territory on the planet' Minecraft was created in 2009. At the start of the game, a player is put into a'virtually infinite game world.'

Our love affair with domestic robots that can service our needs started more than five decades ago with Rosie, the maid in The Jetsons. The concept of condensing meals into pills may not yet be a staple of our diets, but robots like Rosie could have – and already are having – a significant impact on how we produce and consume food. Giuseppe is the invention of a group of Santiago-based graduates with engineering and chemistry knowledge, who refer to it as the smartest food scientist on earth. The group recently launched the The Not Company, a brand that's producing vegan dairy and meat products from mainly plant-based ingredients. This is nothing new of course, but Giuseppe's role is to use deep machine learning – a form of training – to understand the molecular structure of food and then copy it. It's like milk, but it doesn't come from a weird bit of a cow (Photo: thenotcompany.com)

It looks like USA Today is officially not going to be the Los Angeles Times' tomorrow. During its annual shareholder meeting here Thursday morning, Tribune Publishing, the Times' parent company, won a key victory. Its tech-entrepreneur owner fended off two takeover attempts from Gannett, publisher of USA Today, and won approval of his board slate. Before the meeting, Bloomberg reported, Gannett was likely to pull out of acquisition talks pending the result of the vote, an outcome that seems almost perfunctory at this point. Now all Tribune chairman Michael Ferro has to do is make the futuristic vision he and the company's new vice chairman and second-largest investor, biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, have for the company -- which includes artificial intelligence, "machine vision" technology and new bureaus from Rio de Janeiro to Lagos -- a promising story about the future of news.