Facebook is well known for its early and increasing use of artificial intelligence. The social media site uses AI to pinpoint its billion-plus users' individual interests and tailor content accordingly by automatically scanning their newsfeeds, identifying people in photos and targeting them with precision ads. And now behind the scenes the social network's AI researchers are trying to take this technology to the next level--from pure data-crunching logic to a nuanced form of "common sense" rivaling that of humans. AI already lets machines do things like recognize faces and act as virtual assistants that can track down info on the Web for smartphone users. But to perform even these basic tasks the underlying learning algorithms rely on computer programs written by humans to feed them massive amounts of training data, a process known as machine learning.

The traditional definition of artificial intelligence is the ability of machines to execute tasks and solve problems in ways normally attributed to humans. Some tasks that we consider simple--recognizing an object in a photo, driving a car--are incredibly complex for AI. Machines can surpass us when it comes to things like playing chess, but those machines are limited by the manual nature of their programming; a 30 gadget can beat us at a board game, but it can't do--or learn to do--anything else. This is where machine learning comes in. Show millions of cat photos to a machine, and it will hone its algorithms to improve at recognizing pictures of cats.

Can Artificial Intelligence Help Save eBay? By The Street For eBay (EBAY), artificial intelligence could prove to be its salvation. The San Jose, Calif.-based e-commerce giant, which has been working to transform itself after spinning off PayPal Holdings (PYPL) last year, could reap some huge benefits if it can find out a way to effectively use AI, according to analysts. At the Code Conference earlier this month, eBay CEO Devin Wenig revealed that the company started getting very serious about using artificial intelligence last year, noting that e-commerce is essentially a data business and that AI may be more important for eBay than its peers due to the "breadth of its inventory." Wenig further explained that eBay plans to formulate a strategy focused on using data to predict what consumers might want and offering a wide selection of products.

Google is expanding its efforts in Artificial intelligence with a new project to teach machines what it terms "common sense". The technology giant has launched a new European research centre dedicated to advancing AI technology. Based in Zurich, the team will focus on three areas – machine learning, natural language understanding and computer perception. Emmanuel Mogenet, who will head the unit, said much of the research would be on teaching machines common sense. There was, he said, "no limit on how big I grow the team We are very ambitious in terms of growth. The only limiting factor will be talent," he told journalists gathered in Zurich to hear more about Google's AI plans.

Somewhere in the not so distance future, computers could help doctors diagnose diseases much more quickly than they can today. In fact, researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) have been working on a way to train artificial intelligence (AI) to read and interpret pathology images that doctors use to look for signs of cancer. Andrew Beck from BIDMC explains that the "method is based on deep learning." It is the method commonly used to train AI to recognize images, speech patterns, and objects. During a demonstration at the annual International Symposium of Biomedical Imaging, they were able to show how effective their training was.

Soon you could be chatting with your computer about the morning news. An AI has learned to read and answer questions about a news article with unprecedented accuracy. Creating AI systems that can learn in the background from humanity's existing stores of information is one of the big goals of computer science. "Computers don't have the kind of general knowledge and common sense of how the world works [from reading] about things in novels or watch[ing] sitcoms," says Chris Manning at Stanford University. To get a step closer to this, last year, Google's DeepMind team used articles from the Daily Mail website and CNN to help train an algorithm to read and understand a short story.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

Computers could soon be helping to diagnose cancer in patients with the help of artificial intelligence that has been trained to spots the early signs of the disease. An AI machine capable of accurately diagnosing breast cancer 92 per cent of the time has been developed by researchers. While it is still not quite as good as human specialists – who are correct 96 per cent of the time – it suggests that AI could soon be used to speed up and improve cancer screening. Scientists have used machine learning to create an artificial intelligence system capable of diagnosing breast cancer from lymph node biopsies with 92 per cent accuracy (cancer cells in a lymph node pictured). When combined with a human pathologist this accuracy increased to 99.5 per cent The system was developed by computer scientists at Harvard Medical School gave a machine learning algorithm slides of lymph nodes from breast cancer patients.

SAN FRANCISCO -- For years, parishioners at the Calvary Hill Community Church have learned to live by the code. Now their children are learning a different kind: computer code. The San Francisco church is one of the first to take part in an initiative from Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition to forge a new generation of computer programmers. Jackson is reaching out to African Americans in their spiritual homes with FAITHTECH Labs, an initiative that provides access to computers for all ages and coding classes for young people. So far, Rainbow PUSH has opened tech labs at Calvary Hill in San Francisco, in its Chicago headquarters and in a church in Greenville, S.C., Jackson's hometown.

The seabed holds some fascinating historical secrets, but unlike monuments on land, they're largely hidden from view. Now, archaeologists in the United Kingdom are using 3D printing to bring two historical shipwrecks to life for history enthusiasts and experts alike. Using data from photogrammetry (measuring the distance between objects from photographs) and sonar imaging, the researchers have produced scale models of a 17th-century shipwreck near Drumbeg, in Scotland, and the remains of the HMHS Anglia, a steamship that was used as a floating hospital during World War I. The steamship was sunk by a mine off the south coast of England. "It was a proof of concept for us, trying to establish what could be done using sound and light, but there are so many different applications you could use this for," said maritime archaeologist John McCarthy, a project manager at Wessex Archaeology who carried out dives at the Scottish site and was in charge of producing the 3D models.