Ask most people outside academia or Silicon Valley what comes to mind when they hear the term "machine learning" and you're likely to get a response that involves a movie like "The Matrix" or "Ex Machina." You're less likely to hear how it's a great tool for fraud detection or supply chain optimization, and that's too bad. Machine learning has a tremendous range of business applications, from optimizing data centers to predicting fine wine price changes to retail market basket analysis. With that in mind, I hope to cut through the science fiction clutter and misconceptions so you can consider how machine learning relates to your business. Many have heard about Andrew Ng's popular graduate level machine learning course at Stanford, now available on Coursera.

Headlines on artificial intelligence typically belong to globally renowned tech giants, such as Google, Facebook, and Apple. Asia's AI and machine learning startups, on the other hand, rarely make it onto the world stage. "I want a world-competitive AI company coming from Asia," says Tak Lo, the Managing Director of Zeroth, a funding program for early-stage AI and machine learning startups in Asia. "[Part] of that is taking Asian startups and being able to support them from a global network of entrepreneurs." Zeroth, which launched on July 1st, is a three month funding program that offers mentorship and 20,000 USD in capital to early-stage startups.

From harnessing artificial intelligence to understanding our origins, a panel of distinguished scientists outlined the grand challenges for science in the 21st century. Held at Nanyang Technological University and moderated by independent writer and lecturer Tor Norretranders, the panel session comprised Sydney Brenner, Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine; W. Brian Arthur, external professor at the Santa Fe Institute; Astronomer Royal Martin Rees; Terrence Sejnowski, Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies; and Eörs Szathmáry, director of the Parmenides Center for the Conceptual Foundations of Science. The scientific industry has seen a marked shift towards industrial science--or science that directly benefits the economy--and away from basic research, said Sydney Brenner, a senior fellow at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore. He lamented that scientists today lack a crucial truth-seeking mentality, by accepting the results of published research without challenging assumptions. In science, where research is built upon research--which potentially leads to an accumulation of mistakes--the practice of critical evaluation is all the more pertinent, Brenner said.

Have you ever considered what real people actually do with the products of all of the innovation flowing from the IT industry? Sometimes, the answers are quite obvious. Shopify (NYSE:SHOP) essentially builds websites for mainly smaller businesses and facilitates credit card transactions. Silver Spring Networks (NYSE:SSNI) uses the technology of the IoT to facilitate the "intelligent city" and the "smart grid." Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) sells solutions that help companies manage both their sales people or agents and manage their customer interactions. Those and other solution sets are sold to rather obvious customers. But who actually buys and uses Big Data Appliances or Artificial Intelligence or advanced analytics. But in recent years, some financial services firms have tried to transform themselves from their roots as the providers of simple financial products used by consumers and business into what is known these days as Fintech. There are more than few such companies and perhaps at this point, there are companies with more aspirations as opposed to significant revenue. Equifax (NYSE:EFX) for many years has been known as one of the 3 major credit reporting agencies, the people who calculated your credit score using some arcane methodology. The business of selling credit scores to both business and consumers is hardly the most exciting in the world and has modest growth organic growth prospects in the US.

When Donald Trump opens his mouth, the output can seem like the work of a demented Markov chain, a poorly trained algorithm trying its hand at rhetoric. Key words--"great again," "let me tell you," "we don't win anymore"--end up strung together by exceptionally weak ligaments. His syntax seems generated on the fly, word to word, each stumbling straight into the next, bound by the barest loyalty to grammar. As only he could, Trump's brought the state of political speech down to the state of the art of machine speechwriting. This past winter, a graduate student at the Technical University of Denmark earned significant attention for the politicians he was crafting in Python.

Looking in fine form after two days of rest, Roger Federer equaled Jimmy Connors' Open-era record by reaching his 14th Wimbledon quarterfinal and added to his own mark by making it at least that far at a Grand Slam tournament for the 48th time. Federer, a seven-time champion at the All England Club, has not dropped a set in the tournament through four matches after beating unseeded American Steve Johnson 6-2, 6-3, 7-5 at Centre Court on Monday. Johnson was making his debut in the fourth round of a major. The No. 3-seeded Federer hadn't played since Friday, when he was the only man to finish a third-round match. He next faces No. 9 Marin Cilic, the 2014 US Open champion, who advanced when Kei Nishikori retired from their fourth-round match.

Tesla Motors shipped fewer cars to customers in the past three months than it had hoped, making it unlikely to meet expectations for delivering 80,000 to 90,000 vehicles this year. This is the second consecutive quarter during which the electric car manufacturer has failed to meet its delivery targets. The figures suggest the company is still wrestling with production issues as it looks to transform itself into a mainstream, high-volume manufacturer. This file photo taken on September 16, 2015 shows the Model S of US electric cars manufacturer Tesla Motors. The California-based maker of electric autos announced it delivered 14,370 vehicles in the April-June quarter of this year.

The world's largest radio telescope China completed Sunday could answer one of mankind's oldest questions about the cosmos: is there other life out there? China's Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, could have the ability to detect alien life, as it searches space for strange objects such as neutral hydrogen, faint pulsars, and low frequency gravitational waves, according to China's state-run Xinhua News Agency. The telescope, which China hopes is operational by September, will be open to the global scientific community in up to three years. The magnitude of the 185 million, 500-meter-wide telescope with 4,450 panels attests to the world's increasing commitment to searching for other life in the galaxy. The discovery that life forms on Earth can survive in the harshest environments, as well as estimates the Milky Way, alone, has thousands of Earth-like planets, has spurred these investments.

Austin Haughwout, 19, of Clinton, and his father, Bret Haughwout, are refusing to comply with subpoenas issued by the U.S. attorney's office on behalf of the FAA, saying the subpoenas violate their constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and questioning the agency's authority to regulate recreational drones. A hearing on whether the Haughwouts have to comply with the subpoenas is set for Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Meyer in New Haven. The case potentially has national significance because it would set a precedent on how much authority the FAA has over recreational drone use, said the Haughwouts' lawyer, Mario Cerame. One video, viewed more than 3.7 million times, shows a flying drone equipped with a handgun firing rounds. Another video, viewed nearly 600,000 times, shows a flying drone with a flamethrower lighting up a spit-roasting Thanksgiving turkey.

Each Sunday, we publish a list of top articles and other content related to manufacturing in areas like quality control, product development, supply chain management, sourcing, auditing and law. The world of manufacturing is constantly evolving. It never seems to stop. Just when one technology seems to take center stage, another one steps up. One big performer on the horizon is machine learning.