After updating your Health app, you'll be able bark voice commands on the Band's mic without having to touch your phone and get instant notifications. According to The Digital Lifestyle, though, you have to be in the US (due to the app's limited availability) and have Cortana for Android installed on your phone to be able to use the feature. You can read the application's change log on Google Play, which also lists the ability to create challenges for everyone in your friends' circle who has the wearable.

New concerns have been raised about the political influence of Google after research found at least 80 "revolving door" moves in the past decade – instances where the online giant took on government employees and European governments employed Google staff. The research was carried out by the Google Transparency Project, an initiative run by the Campaign for Accountability (CfA), a US organisation that scrutinises corporations and politicians. The CfA has suggested that the moves are a result of Google seeking to boost its influence in Europe as the company seeks to head off antitrust action and moves to tighten up on online privacy. In the UK, Google has hired people from Downing Street, the Home Office, the Treasury, the Department for Education and the Department for Transport. Overall, the company has hired at least 28 British public officials since 2005.

Elon Musk, Chairman of SolarCity and CEO of Tesla Motors, speaks at SolarCity's Inside Energy Summit in Manhattan, New York October 2, 2015.REUTERS/RASHID UMAR ABBASI Elon Musk, Chairman of SolarCity and CEO of Tesla Motors, speaks at SolarCity's Inside Energy Summit in Manhattan, New York October 2, 2015. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant "neural laces" in their brains to keep up, Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told a crowd of tech leaders this week. While Musk's description of an injectable human-computer link may sound like science fiction, top tech executives repeatedly said that artificial intelligence (AI) was on the verge of changing everyday life, during discussion at a conference by online publication Recode this week. It is no secret that tech companies are diving into AI analytics research, an industry that will grow to 70 billion by 2020 from just 8.2 billion in 2013, according to a Bank of America report citing IDC research. AI, which combs through large troves of raw data to predict outcomes and recognize patterns, is already used in web search systems, marketing recommendation functions and security and financial trading programs.

I had the good fortune to meet Charis Loveland at the Machine Learning, Analytics, & Data Science Conference in Redmond, WA. Charis manages the team behind the Decoding Brain Signals machine learning contest. Please see this keynote video from CVP Joseph Sirosh announcing this competition at the Strata conference.

At ICML last year and the year before the amount of capacity that needed to fit everyone on any single day was about 1500. My advice was to expect 2000 and have capacity for 2500 because "New York" and "Machine Learning". I was not involved in the venue negotiations, but my understanding is that they were difficult, with liabilities over 1M for IMLS the nonprofit which oversees ICML year to year. The result was a conference plan with a maximum capacity of 1800 for the main conference, a bit less for workshops, and perhaps 1000 for tutorials. Then the NIPS registration numbers came in: 3900 last winter.

A business incubator from Beijing will open an accelerator in Mountain View on Thursday for artificial intelligence startups. TechCode will select startups with existing AI prototypes to spend six months in the program, including two weeks in China meeting potential investing, manufacturing and distribution partners. The program will conclude with a demo day, said Luke Tang, general manager of TechCode's U.S. Accelerator. TechCode's international presence in China, South Korea and Germany will give the startups an opportunity to tap into global markets, he said. TechCode will target startups that want to expand globally.

Google engineers unveil their latest feat: their program, AlphaGo, which defeated South Korean Go champion Lee Sedol. Note that this is the first of five Go games to occur before a winner is crowned. The talking point is how remarkable it is to configure a program to play this game, let alone defeat a professional. This Chinese board game, as old as age itself, is known for its layers of complexity. Lee could have won, had he changed one or two early decisions in the game.

At any given moment, pharmaceutical firms have a massive library of compounds and no clue what to do with them. Tucked away in extensive collections of synthetic and theoretical drug banks lie hidden gems - drugs to treat perhaps even the most devastating diseases - but identifying them is a pain: testing can take years, even decades, and often researchers aren't even sure what they're looking for. Dan provides interesting guest commentary with Geekwire: In short, the biggest threat posed by AI is not the advent of autonomous machines, but of human beings losing their autonomy by being driven from the production process. We must confront the potential for serious social unrest, perhaps even revolt or revolution. More than a location tracker for dogs, Tracy alerts owners when it is time to run, play and go to the bathroom and is smart enough to learn on its own Stockholm, Sweden (PRWEB) May 24, 2016 Tracy is a dog tracker that can do more than simply locate a dog's position.

Kevin Kelly knows technology can't be stopped. Of course, artificial intelligence will wipe out or rework whole industries, and entire career paths will vanish. And if you think the world is addicted to its phones now, just wait until there's a screen everywhere, and you never really escape the grid. We will be tracked like never before. While this may sound like the recipe for a Tom Cruise dystopia sci-fi movie, it doesn't have to be. In fact, in his new book, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, Kelly goes to great pains to make it all seem like a net positive.

Sexism has been a persistent problem in video gaming, and France wants to do something about it. The issue has gained mainstream coverage following the so-called Gamergate scandal, an online campaign of harassment against critics or individuals raising awareness of sexism in video games. To fight that, the French government is exploring ways to promote strong representations of women in video games, such as financial bonuses to developers and publishers for games promoting diversity or featuring strong female characters, incentives for partnership opportunities to increase acceptance in the video game community and penalties against video games that promote violence against women by placing them in a "discrimination" category that would keep them from being advertised during prime time, Le Figaro reported Thursday. French Minister of Digital Affairs Axelle Lemaire met with industry leaders to discuss three potential incentives for developers to create more games with strong female characters. A spokesperson for Lemaire said the discussions were still in the early stages, the Verge reported.