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How Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything

#artificialintelligence

Artificial intelligence is shaping up as the next industrial revolution, poised to rapidly reinvent business, the global economy and how people work and interact with each other. Andrew Ng, chief scientist at Chinese internet giant Baidu Inc. and co-founder of education startup Coursera, and Neil Jacobstein, chair of the artificial intelligence and robotics department at Silicon Valley think tank Singularity University, sat down with The Wall Street Journal's Scott Austin to discuss AI's opportunities and challenges. What is Baidu focused on? NG: For large enterprises like Baidu, AI creates two big pockets of opportunities. One is our core business.


Will Robots Take Our Jobs? We May Be Overreacting

Forbes - Tech

In our fourth installment of the Bytes Chat, we convened a panel of economists to discuss the newly released NBER study on the impact of robots on jobs and wages. Bytes contributors Rob Seamans, associate professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, Bret Swanson, president of Entropy Economics, and Hal Singer, senior fellow at George Washington University's Institute of Public Policy were joined by special guest Marshall Steinbaum, senior economist and fellow of the Roosevelt Institute. The conversation has been edited slightly for readability. First question is at the behest of our president. Are the robots coming over the border? Is this a border problem? Marshall Steinbaum: If you get all the enemies in one place, it's easier to kill them. Singer: Ok, let's get serious.


'Supergirl': Chyler Leigh, Floriana Lima Talk Impact Of Alex And Maggie's Relationship On Viewers

International Business Times

"Supergirl" stars Chyler Leigh and Floriana Lima revealed that they were pleasantly surprised by how significant Alex and Maggie's relationship has become to viewers who are struggling with their sexuality. "There was no way we would have known the impact that this would have had," Leigh told People at the 28th GLAAD Media Awards ceremony, where "Supergirl" was nominated for best dramatic TV show for its story featuring the lesbian relationship of Alex and Maggie. "We definitely wanted [Alex and Maggie's relationship] to be a strong representation, and that's why we've thought so hard about it and wanted it to be beautifully done," Leigh continued. "So I'm just really happy with the writers of'Supergirl,' who have really brought this to life." READ: Is there a James-centric "Supergirl" episode coming up? "We're just really humbled by it, very proud of it," added Lima who attended the awards night with Leigh.


How To Avoid A #ChatbotFail

#artificialintelligence

While brands have scrambled to launch Facebook Messenger chatbots since the social media behemoth opened up the channel for development last year, the early results haven't been particularly promising. Facebook is seeing a 70% failure rate among those 35,000 or so bots when it comes to understanding user requests. To combat this poor performance, Facebook is making some changes to Messenger, including adding a persistent menu that will allow users to choose from a number of requests or statements instead of using natural language and risking stumping the bot entirely. There's no question that AI will play a huge role in the future of retail, but in these early days of chatbots and virtual assistants, how do you reap the benefits while avoiding the pitfalls of this emerging technology? We caught up with Linc engineer Alessandro Sanchez to talk about the potential weaknesses in current chatbots and how smart brands are creating a chatbot experience that beats the odds and delivers great service.


Adapting ideas from neuroscience for AI

#artificialintelligence

Sign-up to download the forthcoming report: "Artificial Intelligence: Teaching Machines to Think Like People," by Jack Clark. This interview is one in a series of interviews that will be featured in the report. A better understanding of the reasons why neurons spike could lead to smart AI systems that can store more information more efficiently, according to Geoff Hinton, who is often referred to as the "godfather" of deep learning. Geoff Hinton is an emeritus distinguished professor at the University of Toronto and an engineering fellow at Google. He is one of the pioneers of neural networks, and was part of the small group of academics that nursed the technology through a period of tepid interest, funding, and development.


An introduction to AI-powered ecommerce merchandising

#artificialintelligence

Amazon has been using algorithms to try to sell you extra stuff for years. But the technology to personalise merchandising, much further than recommendations, is advancing rapidly across ecommerce. Companies such as Sentient and Apptus and their AI-powered systems are changing site search functionality, product lists, facets and more, to try to generate more sales. I caught up with Sรถren Meelby, VP Marketing at Apptus, to get an introduction to the technology (Apptus eSales), and to pose some questions about the user experience in online retail. Sรถren Meelby: Each and every sort order typically follows a logic or business rules and'most popular' is fairly straight forward.


09: Gary Marcus -- Making AI More Human

#artificialintelligence

AMLG: Gary I'm super excited to have you today, thanks for coming on the show. We first met a few years ago in New York when I was running a tech meetup, the Singularity society, and you kindly came and spoke. You've been a professor of psychology at NYU for many years where your work has focused on language, biology, and the human mind. You've spent decades studying how children learn, and then in 2015 you founded this startup called Geometric Intelligence, focused on mining cognitive psychology for insights into building better machine learning techniques. Just this past December you were acquired by Uber to run their newly founded AI labs -- congratulations on that exit. So your algorithms offer an alternative approach to what is now a very popular branch of machine learning, called deep learning. Let's talk about deep learning -- it's a sexy buzzword which is thrown into about every startup pitch I see these days, and many corporate presentations, so I'm sure listeners have heard the term. What it really is is a rebranding of an old technique of using neural nets, which dates back to the 50s. Neural nets basically mimic the human neocortex, and by feeding in massive amounts, gigabytes of data and using tons of computational power, the algorithms are able to recognize patterns. Part of the reason why this technique is back in vogue is the combination of increasingly powerful computers combined with the massive training datasets that companies are building up. So there's been a flurry of activity, and the Googles and Facebooks of the world are throwing resources at the technique. As just one example, Facebook, using the over 400 billion photos people have uploaded, has built something called DeepFace, an image recognition tool that's now better than humans at recognizing whether two different images are of the same person. Gary you are well known as a critic of this technique, you've said that it's over-hyped. That there's some low hanging fruit that deep learning's good at -- specific narrow tasks like perception and categorization, and maybe beating humans at chess, but you felt that this deep learning mania was taking the field of AI in the wrong direction, that we're not making progress on cognition and strong AI. Or as you've put it, "we wanted Rosie the robot, and instead we got the roomba."


How Close Are We? Bridging The Gap Between Science Fiction and Reality

#artificialintelligence

What do you think of when you hear the phrases "Future Tech" or "Science Fiction Technology?" Humanoid robots walking the streets? Today we're looking at science fiction #technology that was once just a fantasy, that is now part of our daily life. We are also going to take a peek at some of our favorite sci-fi tech, and see how close it is to being a reality. "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept around which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all." ("My Own View," The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction) Believe it or not, credit cards were first mentioned in science fiction. You might expect that the individual who envisioned the credit card to be a genius businessman or bank executive of some sort, however the person who first developed the idea of the modern credit card system was a Utopian science fiction author Edward Bellamy.


Machine Learning Is The Focus Area This Year

#artificialintelligence

SAP Labs in India is the second largest R&D centre for the company after its centre in Walldorf, Germany and among the three hubs in the SAP Labs network of 19 Labs across 16 countries. Dilipkumar Khandelwal, MD for SAP Labs in India, has a dual role as he is also the EVP and Global Head of Enterprise Cloud Services for SAP. In an exclusive interview with Ayushman Baruah, Khandelwal talks about their India focus, latest technologies, and their emphasis on innovation. Excerpts: What is the SAP Lab's focus here? Over a period of 19 years, SAP Labs India has evolved to become an integral part of SAP's global strategy.


Samsung Acknowledges Galaxy S8 Facial Recognition Security Limitations

Forbes - Tech

Earlier this week, the Samsung Galaxy S8 line of devices were announced with tremendous fanfare. The Galaxy S8 serves as a symbol of Samsung's comeback story following the Galaxy Note 7 debacle. In my opinion, the pros of the Galaxy S8 outweigh the cons. However, there is one specific con that has been making the headlines today. Early reviewers of the Galaxy S8 discovered a security flaw in the facial recognition feature.