Picking the winner from the 20 horse field at the Kentucky Derby is hard. So hard, in fact, that no expert polled by SBNation was able to do it. That's why the holy grail at the racetrack is the Superfecta, where bettors are asked not only to pick the winner, but the second, third and fourth horses to finish the Derby. This is fiendishly difficult task that, not surprisingly, defeated every expert at Churchill Downs, where no one predicted the top four horses correctly, much less in the correct order. In the world of AI, even Bing Predicts blew it, picking only heavily favored Nyquist to win the race, but missing the other 3 picks entirely.

Scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory have devised a way of using machine learning in order to discover new materials with specific properties using an informatics-based adaptive strategy in combination with experiments. The new approach will help scientists find new materials in a manner that is more cost-effective and less time consuming than current procedures. "What we've done is show that, starting with a relatively small data set of well-controlled experiments, it is possible to iteratively guide subsequent experiments toward finding the material with the desired target," said Turab Lookman, a physicist and materials scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and senior author of the study. "Finding new materials has traditionally been guided by intuition and trial and error," he continued. "But with increasing chemical complexity, the combination possibilities become too large for trial-and-error approaches to be practical."

If you're an athlete sponsored by Puma, you're about to get a new toy. The shoe company partnered with ad agency J. Walter Thompson New York to create the Puma BeatBot, a self-driving robot built to help runners train. The BeatBot, which looks like a rolling shoebox with LED lights, can trace a perfect line around a track at world record speeds to help give professional runners a physical target to chase down. "We found a lot of anecdotal evidence that head to head competition raised performance levels, even a few studies that showed an uptick performance," Florent Imbert, JWT New York's executive creative director told Fast Company. "But, to us, it felt like a human truth. Running against an invisible clock will never be as motivating as running against someone -- or something."

Robots today can perform space missions, solve a Rubik's cube, sort hospital medication and even make pancakes. But most can't manage the simple act of grasping a pencil and spinning it around to get a solid grip. Intricate tasks that require dexterous in-hand manipulation--rolling, pivoting, bending, sensing friction and other things humans do effortlessly with our hands--have proved notoriously difficult for robots. Now, a University of Washington team of computer science and engineering researchers has built a robot hand that can not only perform dexterous manipulation but also learn from its own experience without needing humans to direct it. Their latest results are detailed in a paper to be presented May 17 at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

No one expected the Loch Ness expedition to actually find anything. Scotland's famous highland lake is as known for its mythical monster'Nessie' as it is for continuous, failed attempts to prove that monster's existence. That hasn't stopped people from searching, so The Loch Ness Project and VisitScotland worked with Norwegian company Kongsberg Maritime to survey the lakebed with an underwater robot. And then they found Nessie. At least, they found a prop of Nessie.

Everyone in business has heard about Big Data, but the reality is those Big Data ideas splashed across the headlines are only a stepping stone toward a greater change. How data is managed and collected is important, but how data can be understood is critical. That's where the real revolution is happening. IBM has thrown its hat into the ring with what it calls cognitive computing. To gain some insight on this second data revolution, Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, joined Sandy Carter, GM of IBM Ecosystems and Social Business Evangelism, during the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference 2016 event.

Aptly named TacoBot, the software will make use of AI advancements like natural language processing to let users talk with the bot, order food, and even pay for items entirely through Slack. TacoBot can also provide recommendations, answer questions, and organize group office orders. It apparently comes equipped with a "witty personality you'd expect from Taco Bell." "The TacoBot Slack integration is the latest step on our journey to make the brand more accessible wherever and whenever our fans want it," said Lawrence Kim, Taco Bell's director of digital innovation and on demand, in a statement. "Taco Bell is about food tailor-made for social consumption with friends, and that's why integrating with a social communications platform like Slack makes perfect sense. TacoBot is the next best thing to having your own Taco Bell butler… and who wouldn't want that??" Kim asks a good question, and the answer is nobody.

One day in January, Eric Wilson dashed off a message to the teaching assistants for an online course at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "I really feel like I missed the mark in giving the correct amount of feedback," he wrote, pleading to revise an assignment. Thirteen minutes later, the TA responded. "Unfortunately, there is not a way to edit submitted feedback," wrote Jill Watson, one of nine assistants for the 300-plus students. Last week, Mr. Wilson found out he had been seeking guidance from a computer.

Artificial intelligence is the frontier of computer science. The science has advanced enough that AI is beating us at our own game -- or should we say, games. Some people may fear the rise of Skynet with each AI evolution, but we're a bit more optimistic. AlphaGo is the latest AI to beat a human in a board game, but it comes from a long pedigree. Though these five machines started as purpose-built programs, some have found second lives that go beyond their original callings.

If you're going down to the racetrack, you might want to have an AI by your side. An artificial intelligence program developed by Unanimous A.I. successfully predicted the Superfecta at the 142nd Kentucky Derby last Saturday, turning a 20 bet into nearly 11,000. Using'Swarm Intelligence,' the AI was able to correctly choose the winning horse, Nyquist – along with the second, third, and fourth finishers. Unanimous AI's platform works by using the knowledge a group of people online, all logged into an the same interface where they can answer a series of questions. This animation shows how UNU's swarm intelligence makes its predictions Unanimous AI's platform works by using the knowledge a group of people online, all logged into an the same interface where they can answer a series of questions.