Years of work down the drain, the convolutional neural network is a step change in image classification accuracy. Image Analyst Dr Mike Pound explains what it does. AI's Game Playing Challenge: https://youtu.be/5oXyibEgJr0 This video was filmed and edited by Sean Riley.

Software engineering is about developing programs or tools to automate tasks. Instead of "doing things manually," we write programs; a program is basically just a machine-readable set of instructions that can be executed by a computer. Let's consider a classic example: e-mail spam filtering. Assuming that we have access to the source code of our e-mail client and know how to handle it, we could come up with an instinctive set of rules that may help us with our spam problem. For example: if not "sender in contacts": if "subject line contains BUY!: e-mail spam folder:" else if ... It is intuitive to say that coming up with these rules is a pretty tedious task.

If a choir of the Greater Toronto Area's nearly six million voices were to speak at once you'd hear 140 languages and dialects each with its own cadence and cultural nuance. This is why Anthony Lee stays here. It's also one of the reasons the Toronto-based startup he co-founded called Knowtions – which combines machine learning with a 500-strong PhD-trained community to translate patents and academic articles in the life sciences industry – is thriving. Anthony left home at 17 and spent several years in Newfoundland paying his way through university by doing translation work on the side. "When I transferred from Memorial University to University of Toronto, that's when I really started to think more about how I could use this experience," says Lee. It was also where he met his eventual co-founder Christina Cai and the pair started to muse about the business case for Knowtions, launching the business in 2013.

For the sake of brevity, not all the relevant data and code are displayed in this post but can rather be found here. And you can visit the final working web application here. The Rugby World Cup (RWC) is here! With many fans around the world excited to see the action unfold over the next month and a half. If you've never heard of the sport, whatisrugby.com

If you've ever wondered whether there's a way to do what 23andMe wanted to do with regards to fitting patient care to risk factor relationships found in the genome, by the way, there may be. Genetically personalized medicine can already account for single-nucleotide mutations that impair a drug's function, as demonstrated in the design of different drugs for different stages in the progression of CML, a form of leukemia. The Geisinger hospital system in Pennsylvania, which treats about three million people, is participating with a company called Regeneron (PDF) in a huge longitudinal genomics study that will work with anonymized data on patient exomes from DNA samples they've volunteered. They intend to use the unaltered data to tailor health care to the patients in the study. As pioneers in the field, no doubt they'll experience problems and setbacks, but the example Geisinger sets will be an important proof of concept.

Artificial intelligence sounds cool in theory, and as Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at the Google I/O event on Wednesday, the company wants to "help you get things done" with AI. But one example that Google used to showcase its AI at Google I/O on Wednesday was anything but exciting. Using its new messaging app called Allo, Google showed how easy it is to find restaurants and make reservations, or find a movie and buy tickets. Allo is designed so you can do those things by having a conversational texting session, as you would with a friend, with a bot called @google that uses the company's new AI platform called Google Assistant. There were some other examples, like recognizing the context of messages and pictures you send between your friends and coming up appropriate short replies so you don't have to come up with the response yourself.

At I/O this year, Google displayed its vision for a more ubiquitous and conversational way of interacting with technology. Its Assistant is chattier, answering natural language queries with a more human voice, and it's found its way into several new Google products: the messenger Allo and the Echo-like speaker Home. Uber as finally released the first official photo of the self-driving cars that it is testing on the streets of Pittsburgh, almost a year to the day since reporters in that city first spotted an earlier prototype. Paris startup Shift Technology raises 10 million to help insurers fight fraud with artificial intelligence by venturebeat.com Shift Technology, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that leans on artificial intelligence (AI) to help companies combat insurance fraud, has raised 10 million in a round led by Accel, with participation from existing investors Iris Capital and Elaia Partners.

Glasswing Ventures, which was registered in December of 2015 and launched in March, has announced its VC fund dedicated to early-stage tech startups, with a specific emphasis on artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. Rudina Seseri and Rick Grinnell, both former partners at Fairhaven Capital Partners in Cambridge for nine years, are the firm's founders and principal partners. The promise of AI technology enticed them to create a separate entity dedicated to investing in early ventures focused on this emerging market. Their home base will be Boston, but they'll be focused on startups all along the East Coast. "We will have the advantage, with all the AI talent - not just in academic like from Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, MIT - but also with the number of startups and companies on the East Coast, private and public, that have AI at their core," Seseri said.

Partnering with Chinese internet company NetEase is what's made this development possible, the very same NetEase that operates games like World of Warcraft and Hearthstone in China already. There's no official release date yet and no further information on what kind of alterations to the main game are even warranted for the Chinese market. What we do know is the Chinese version will only launch for PC and mobile devices, not consoles, when it finally makes an appearance. "We are excited to bring Minecraft to Chinese audiences, and expect our large online community to embrace this preeminent game," William Ding, CEO and founder of NetEase, Inc. announced. "With our deep understanding of the Chinese market and our ability to successfully launch world-renowned online and mobile games, we offer a strong platform for the introduction of Minecraft to China's vast user base."

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