When Dennis R. Mortensen hired his founding team members at x.ai, he pitched them by illustrating his vision of a world where everyone has a personal assistant to schedule their meetings. Recognizing the complexity of the challenge, he concluded by saying: "We may die trying." "It's a great setting to hire qualified people," Dennis says, recounting the late days of 2013. "We're working on something that is clearly very hard, to the extent that we might not make it, but it's not impossible." That's the sweet spot, he says.

Over the last year, in my spare time, I've built several small machine learning apps. For example, one that predicts the San Francisco fog at a neighborhood by neighborhood level. I have ideas for other things that I want to build, but at a much larger scale, for example large recommendation systems off Twitter's API. I've tried looking for tutorials or courses on how to build scalable machine learning apps, but I feel like I'm drowning in a lot of stuff I don't understand -- distributed architecture, MapReduce, Spark to name a few. Suggestions for the best way for a beginner to scale to get started?

On March 23, in an effort to appeal to a prime social media demographic, 18-24 year-old women, Microsoft launched a teen-girl-inspired chatbot named Tay. Less than a day later, the bot was swiftly removed from the site after tweeting things like "i fucking hate feminists"--and that's one of the tamer messages. In 2015, GE inaugurated a new, Multi-Modal manufacturing facility in Chakan, India. If the company's ambitions for the space are realized, it could drive a massive change in global manufacturing. But while the quick denigration of Tay's conversations may have been unexpected for Microsoft, most AI experts agree that it was inevitable.

The risk of cyberattacks is one of the most dangerous threats facing businesses today. And while new versions of attacks are constantly being born, teams of analysts are rushing to keep up with the latest risks. While many detection systems rely primarily on machine learning for catching attackers, a new AI system at PatternEx depends on human analysts as a vital part of their system of supervised machine learning. In 2015, GE inaugurated a new, Multi-Modal manufacturing facility in Chakan, India. If the company's ambitions for the space are realized, it could drive a massive change in global manufacturing.

There's a point on the Uncanny Valley when a humanoid robot turns from something "friendly" into something terrifying. An example of a robot that would naturally register as non-threatening would be Star Wars' C-3PO. We can still differentiate between computer and human at that level. It's familiar to us, but we know for a fact that it's non-human. Even though we see these robots in such a way, is it possible that we could associate them with a deeper emotional response?

You don't need a STEM background to make it in Silicon Valley. In fact, one of the most desirable skill sets these days in the tech capital of America has seemingly little to do with technology. So for all you struggling artists waxing poetic (literally), starve no more -- instead, you may want to consider making not a career change, but a change in scenery. As virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana grow in popularity, so too must their communication skills. And those skills have to come from humans who are particularly gifted in the realm of language.

At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, scientists have begun testing IBM's TrueNorth computer chip--a brain-inspired mega chip IBM deems "the largest neurosynaptic chip" to date. IBM's TrueNorth is the first of its kind. A collaboration between IBM and Cornell University via the DARPA SyNAPSE Program, which was granted 100 million in public funding, the idea for the chip was conceived in 2004. In 2015, GE inaugurated a new, Multi-Modal manufacturing facility in Chakan, India. If the company's ambitions for the space are realized, it could drive a massive change in global manufacturing.

A robo-monk called "Xianer" became an internet sensation in China after being shown on the country's internet, the country's People's Daily newspaper reported. The robot monk can talk to humans and answer some basic questions on Buddhist dharma. He was developed by the Buddhist monks of Beijing's Longquan temple. There is currently only one robot monk, with no plans for mass production, according to the newspaper. "After all, this is not a commercial endeavor. We made Xianer to preach Buddhist doctrines in a modern way," temple director Master Xianfan told People's Daily.

The survey, released by smart-cities research and advocacy organization Smart Government, underscores the opposition by some cities and local government groups to a provision in the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act that would make the FAA the sole regulator over drones, the group said. The provision would prohibit state and local governments from passing their own drone regulations and restrictions. Some local governments want the authority to pass their own restrictions covering where drones can be used. The survey comes out the same week that a federal advisory committee has proposed rules that would expand the uses of small commercial drones. In the Smart Government survey, 68 percent of those polled agreed that state and local governments should make drone rules because the federal government does not know the particular concerns of their community well enough.

Globes, an Israeli business news website, reports that Elon Musk made a secret visit to Mobileye headquarters in Jerusalem last month. Sources say Musk was on hand to personally witness recent technological breakthroughs Mobileye has made in its autonomous driving systems. The company has two Tesla Model S sedans that it uses for test purposes. The timing of the visit is interesting. It occurred just weeks before the high profile launch of the Model 3, a car that appears to be designed for advanced self driving operation.