The amount of energy consumed by big data centers has always been a headache for tech companies. Keeping the servers cool as they crunch numbers is such a challenge that Facebook even built one of its facilities on the edge of the Arctic Circle. Well, Google has a different solution to this problem: putting its DeepMind artificial intelligence unit in charge and using AI to manage power usage in parts of its data centers. A 40 percent reduction in the amount of electricity needed for cooling, which Google describes as a "phenomenal step forward." After accounting for "electrical losses and other non-cooling inefficiencies," this 40 percent reduction translated into a 15 percent reduction in overall power saving, says Google.

The human eye is capable of detecting the presence of a single photon, the smallest measurable unit of light, in the dark, researchers said. In a study first published in the journal Nature Communications Tuesday, scientists found that the human eye can sense individual particles, seemingly concluding the quest to test the limits of human vision. "If you imagine this, it is remarkable: a photon, the smallest physical entity with quantum properties of which light consists, is interacting with a biological system consisting of billions of cells, all in a warm and wet environment," Alipasha Vaziri, lead researcher from the Rockefeller University in New York, reportedly said. "The most amazing thing is that it's not like seeing light. It's almost a feeling, at the threshold of imagination," he told the Nature. The experiment was conducted with three subjects who sat in a dark room for nearly 40 minutes and were then told to look into an optical system.

Are you familiar with self-driving cars? These things would not be possible without the help of Machine Learning--the study of pattern recognition and prediction within the field of computer science. This course is taught by Stanford-educated, Silicon Valley experts that have decades of direct experience under their belts. They will teach you, in the simplest way possible (and with major visual techniques), to put Machine Learning and Python into action. With these skills under your belt, your programming skills will take a whole new level of power.

Data science companies are increasingly looking at portfolios when making hiring decisions. One of the reasons for this is that a portfolio is the best way to judge someone's real-world skills. The good news for you is that a portfolio is entirely within your control. If you put some work in, you can make a great portfolio that companies are impressed by. The first step in making a high-quality portfolio is to know what skills to demonstrate.

Tech City News held a roundtable attended by a variety of AI experts, who discussed the potential of AI and the ethical challenges posed by the technology. Yessi Bello Perez, our reporter, has more. Just last year, Stephen Hawking – arguably one of the world's brightest minds – predicted artificially intelligent computers would overtake humans at some point over the next century. Although it may have seemed like an outlandish statement at the time, the truth is that since Hawking's appearance at the Zeitgeist conference in London, artificial intelligence has reached buzzword status among the highest echelons of the global tech scene. AI-focused investors have emerged, funding in the space is soaring, tech giants are acquiring AI startups – and pouring significant resources into researching the technology – and the community is avidly discussing the technology's potential and its ethical implications.

It won't help you find Pikachu, but a new mobile tool from Macy's will assist shoppers in navigating the store. The department store retailer is piloting "Macy's On Call," a solution that lets in-store customers use their mobile phones to interact with an artificial intelligence (AI) platform powered by IBM Watson. The Satisfi intelligent engagement platform provides the connection between the mobile tool and the Watson platform. Macy's On Call, accessed via a mobile browser, allows customers to input natural language questions about the store's unique product assortment, services and facilities. These can include store navigation details, as well offerings such as the myStylist personal shopper program and buy-online-pickup-in-store counters.

Car maker Honda is teaming up with electronics giant Softbank to work on artificial intelligence (AI). The pair have confirmed they will develop an innovative range of products, which use sensors and cameras to improve the breadth and depth of communication possible between car and driver. Soft bank's pionerering Pepper robot was designed to live with humans and the company will now work with Honda through its robotics unit – Cocoro SB – to create products that give drivers a feeling of'friendship' with their cars. Honda is opening a new AI laboratory in Tokyo in September as it continues its investment in the future of robotics.

First was the Monte Carlo tree search, an algorithm that rather than attempting to examine all possible future moves instead tests a sparse selection of them, combining their value in a sophisticated way to get a better estimate of a move's quality. The second was the (re)discovery of deep networks, a contemporary incarnation of neural networks that had been experimented with since the 1960s, but which was now cheaper, more powerful, and equipped with huge amounts of data with which to train the learning algorithms. The combination of these techniques saw a drastic improvement in Go-playing programs, and ultimately Google DeepMind's AlphaGo program beat Go world champion Lee Sedol in March 2016. Now that Go has fallen, where do we go from here? Following Kasparov's defeat in 1997, scientists considered that the challenge for AI was not to conquer some cerebral game.

Once, I dreamed I was at a man's funeral. According to the deceased's instructions, each of his toes were to be buried in tiny, individual coffins. When I woke up, I wondered, "What could it mean?" According to some neuroscience research on dreams, like that of the Harvard psychiatrist Allan Hobson, the coffined toes might mean absolutely nothing. In his view, dreams are essentially narratives that our frontal brain areas piece together from chaotic brain signals originating from the brain stem. I might look back on that dream and derive some meaning from it after the fact, but it's not like those coffined toes are my brain's way of telling me something important.

That's a 3D printed shell around a sea-slug mouth muscle. The cyborg's leg is a sea slug's mouth. The robot, built from printed parts and organic material, moves on land like a sea turtle. There is no feeling to the partially organic machine. An external electrical field provides stimulation, and the robot moves.