In my previous post "The Human Face of Big Data" (attached again below), I referenced a couple of blog posts from David Meyer, Chief Scientist and Brocade Fellow. Below is a great video of him presenting on Machine Learning and emerging applications for computer networking at the DevOps Networking Forum a couple weeks ago. Definitely worth the 30 minutes to watch if you're at all interested in the most current developments in this space. If you're interested in hearing David speak live, he'll be discussing this topic with regard to the Federal space at our upcoming Federal Forum conference in Washington, DC at the Renaissance Hotel on June 14. Register here and use the Promo Code: brocadefriends to attend for free.

AI as management assistant: The artificial intelligence program AlphaGo got a lot of attention for beating 18-time Go world champion Lee Sedol four out of five games last week. The significance of this achievement is rooted in the extraordinary number of possible moves in Go: 2.08168199382 … 10170, reportedly more than the number of atoms in the universe. That's too many possibilities for brute computing force to handle (which is how IBM's Deep Blue beat chess master Garry Kasparov 20 years ago). Yet AlphaGo, created by Google DeepMind, formerly British AI company DeepMind Technologies, mastered the 2,500-year-old board game on its own in a matter of months. "It started by studying a database of about 100,000 human matches, and then continued by playing against itself millions of times," reported science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel at NPR. Go bragging rights are nice for Google, but what does AlphaGo's victory mean for management?

On March 23, Microsoft launched an artificial intelligent (AI) chat bot on twitter called TayTweets, and within hours, anonymous individuals had hijacked the experiment. Because the program was not built with contingencies meant to handle inappropriate questions or information gathering, like a human brain for instance, by asking the AI bot something in a specific manner people were able to get responses regarding Holocaust denial, 9/11 conspiracies and incest. On their project website, the Microsoft development team stated the bot was designed to conduct research on "conversational understanding" through engaging and entertaining people with playful conversation. "Unfortunately, within the first 24 hours of coming online, we became aware of a coordinated effort by some users to abuse Tay's commenting skills to have Tay respond in inappropriate ways. As a result, we have taken Tay offline and are making adjustments."

Google is reportedly working on a competitor to the Amazon Echo, Amazon's voice-controlled personal assistant. According to The Information, Google is working on a'secret project' which would create a rival to the Echo, currently the leading device of its kind on the market. The Amazon Echo is the home of the digital assistant Alexa, who responds to a'wake word' and can help out around the house by creating to-do lists, playing music, setting alarms, providing weather information and doing internet searches. The Echo hasn't been released in the UK yet, but it's generated a lot of buzz in the US, and has proved successful enough that Amazon is releasing a new version, the Echo Dot, which connects to users' existing speakers. Google-owned company Nest, the creators of smart home devices like the Nest Thermostat, reportedly wanted to be part of the project, but were apparently pushed away by Google itself.

Computers may have become smart enough to beat humans in the world's most complicated board game, but occasionally, they get confused by something as simple as a name. Due to the nature of certain computer systems, some names will bring up error messages or even crash websites, potentially blocking users from entering important information. Names may just be too long for particular online forms to bear, or for people with the last name'Null,' the problem lies in the language of programming. Computers may have become smart enough to beat humans in the world's most complicated game, but sometimes, they get confused by something as simple as a name. People with the last name'Null,' have grown accustomed to the difficulties presented by the word.

U.S. vehicle safety regulators have said the artificial intelligence system piloting a self-driving Google car could be considered the driver under federal law, a major step toward ultimately winning approval for autonomous vehicles on the roads. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc, of its decision in a previously unreported Feb. 4 letter to the company posted on the agency's website this week. Google's self-driving car unit on Nov. 12 submitted a proposed design for a self-driving car that has'no need for a human driver,' the letter to Google from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Chief Counsel Paul Hemmersbaugh said. At a Senate hearing, representatives of General Motors and Delphi touted numerous safety and environmental benefits of autonomous vehicles. In January, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it may waive some vehicle safety rules to allow more driverless cars to operate on US roads.

A drone has successfully delivered a package to a residential location in a small Nevada town in what its maker and the governor of the state said Friday was the first fully autonomous urban drone delivery in the U.S. Flirtey CEO Matt Sweeney said the six-rotor drone flew about a half-mile along a pre-programmed delivery route on March 10 and lowered the package outside a vacant residence in an uninhabited area of Hawthorne, southeast of Reno. The route was established using GPS. A pilot and visual observers were on standby during the flight but weren't needed, Sweeney said. He said the package included bottled water, food and a first-aid kit. "Conducting the first drone delivery in an urban setting is a major achievement, taking us closer to the day that drones make regular deliveries to your front doorstep," Sweeney said.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your shapeshifting Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. HEBI Robotics, who we like because they make snake robots that also work as legs for non-snake robots, have just released a new modular robot actuator that's geared towards general-purpose robotics and looks pretty awesome: This series of powerful robot module allow engineers, researchers, and industrial integrators to quickly and easily create world-class custom robots of any configuration. These actuators are packed with sensors that enable controllable position, velocity, and sensitive torque control as well as three axis inertial measurement.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park 1997 AMC Sun. Tomorrow Never Dies 1997 EPIX Wed. 10 p.m., Thur. The X-Files: Fight the Future 1998 IFC Thur. Hard to Kill 1990 Sundance Mon. 8 p.m., Tue. A scientist gives his bodyguard superhuman powers in order to fight racists. A lawyer unwittingly becomes friends with an unstable woman who has a criminal history. A successful businesswoman puts her family, career and life on the line to satisfy her addiction to sex. With his father trapped in the wreckage of their spacecraft, a youth treks across Earth's now-hostile terrain to recover their rescue beacon and signal for help. In the future a cutting-edge android in the form of a boy embarks on a journey to discover his true nature. An 11-year-old boy experiences the worst day of his young life but soon learns that he's not alone when other members of his family encounter their own calamities. A struggling writer falls in love with a stenographer while trying to finish his new novel in 30 days.

A man walks at the Samsung Electronics' headquarters in Seoul January 7, 2015. Samsung wants to use some of its US 61 billion (RM246 billion) in cash and equivalents to help it morph into more of a software-driven company, executive vice president Rhee In Jong said in an interview. The South Korean consumer-electronics giant also is spending more to develop its own services because the global market for gadgets is saturated and can't be counted on for significant revenue growth, he said. "We are actively looking for M&A targets of all sorts in the software area," said Rhee, who runs the mobile division's research-and-development business. "We are open to all possibilities, including artificial intelligence. Intelligence is no longer an option -- it is a must."