There's something soothing about how rubbish Google's new predictive email tools are – if AI can't work out what you want to tell your accounts department, then it won't be organising a Terminator-style insurrection any time soon. So what hope does AI have for composing music, if bland office missives are too creatively challenging? California-based electronic composer Holly Herndon considers this moment of slowly emergent machine learning on her third album. Alongside the musicians in her ensemble is Spawn, an AI she created with husband Mat Dryhurst and developer Jules LaPlace, that listened to what the group was composing and mimicked it to create music of its own. It's not always clear which bits are Spawn-created, but Herndon obviously has the final say over how its contributions are used – and indeed, the whole album feels more like an announcement of human authority rather than a capitulation to machines.

In the age of click of a button convenience, many see the race to the bottom as competition that is both unsustainable and one where no one wins. Shipping things quickly come at both an environmental cost as well as a monetary cost. As more retailers try to beat each other on price and shipping -- the cost of doing business continues to skyrocket. Customers have unlimited options and know how to use them -- and many will expect a full refund and take their business elsewhere because of a late delivery. Artificial intelligence is a method of machine learning that can be used for everything from replacing humans in repetitive tasks to analyzing vast amounts of data to pinpoint relevant information.

Google researchers developed a way to peer inside the minds of deep-learning systems, and the results are delightfully weird. What they did: The team built a tool that combines several techniques to provide people with a clearer idea of how neural networks make decisions. Applied to image classification, it lets a person visualize how the network develops its understanding of what is, for instance, a kitten or a Labrador. The visualizations, above, are ... strange. Why it matters: Deep learning is powerful--but opaque.

Voice AI is becoming increasingly ubiquitous and powerful. Forecasts suggest that voice commerce will be an $80 billion business by 2023. Google reports that 20% of their searches are made by voice query today -- a number that's predicted to climb to 50% by 2020. In 2017, Google announced that their speech recognition had a 95% accuracy rate. While that's an impressive number, it begs the question: 95% accurate for whom?

A new generation of point artificial intelligence solutions will prove themselves in the near future. They'll build new trust, urgency and understanding of what'AI' actually is and just how much it can deliver. Voice-driven solutions will lead the charge. And we'll see pick-and-place robots in smart warehouses delivering a major competitive edge, as companies advance their use of Robotic Process Automation. Here are my three key predictions for AI in manufacturing.

The launch comes after years of research and improvements using artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language generation (NLG). According to Statista 2.14 billion people worldwide will buy goods and services online by 2021. In Canada, PayPal reports that eCommerce businesses are growing 28 times more than those who are not selling online. As more consumers turn to the web to research and purchase items, product content becomes increasingly important in order to drive this level of growth. According to Salsify 51% of the time, a product listing with more bullets will convert at a higher rate and outrank its top competitor.

Washington, DC – In the future, artificial intelligence could augment the background investigative work performed by humans, cutting the time it takes and providing a more realistic, in-depth and realistic profile of the individual, the technical director for research and development and technology transfer at the Defense Security Service's National Background Investigative Services said recently. Mark Nehmer spoke at the "Genius Machines: The New Age of Artificial Intelligence" event, hosted by Nextgov and Defense One in Arlington, Virginia. Millions of service members, federal employees and contractors receive background checks and are issued clearances on a periodic basis. There are several problems with the current system of background investigations, Nehmer said. The use of artificial intelligence, or AI, could significantly reduce the time it takes investigations and ease the strain on already-overworked personnel and reduce the backlog of cases, Nehmer said.

The Turkey Artificial Intelligence Initiative (TRAI) was held for the third time this year, with participation from its founders and supporters. I also participated in it. The event posed the following questions: "Where is the private sector in Turkey in terms of artificial intelligence (AI)?" and "What stage is it at?" Private sector representatives and academics drew Turkey's artificial intelligence picture with their discussions on common platforms. Gelecekhane CEO Halil Aksu, one of the founders of the TRAI, said during the workshop that important progress has been made in Turkey in the last two to three years in terms of AI.

A free online course in artificial intelligence (AI) created by the University of Helsinki and technology consultancy Reaktor has drawn 140,000 students from around the world. Launched in spring 2018, the Elements of AI is available in English and Finnish. It was originally envisioned with the ambitious goal of training one percent of the Finnish population -- 55,000 people -- in the fundamentals of AI. Inspired by the Finnish model, Sweden and the Netherlands have created similar courses, with 15 other countries interested in developing comparable course for their citizens. Part of the course's popularity is the fact that it's available online for free and doesn't require any prerequisite technology skills.

The rat sat still in the middle of her cage, moving only in response to my touch, and even then only as if in slow-motion. My subject, GRat66, was a few months old, and except for her long bare tail, fit neatly into my palm a few minutes earlier, when I injected a few drops of a potent opiate under her skin, near the belly. Now, her beady black eyes bulged as she faded into an opiate stupor. I was preparing to implant minuscule electrodes into the rat's brain. The opiate would serve as an analgesic before, during, and after the surgery. It was the fall of 2018 and I was hoping the results of the surgery would help answer some questions that had been tormenting me as I embarked on the sixth year of my Ph.D. in neuroscience. How do the parts of the brain controlling movement interact with those responsible for visual sensation? Why do neurons in the visual areas jolt to action when an animal moves, even in the dark?