This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com A philanthropic organization set up by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan has signed a deal to acquire Toronto tech company Meta. Financial terms of the deal, announced by venture capital firm iGan Partners, an early Meta backer, were not immediately available. Zuckerberg and Chan set up the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015. Meta uses artificial intelligence to help researchers keep on top of the latest scientific papers.

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Kinetica, provider of the fastest, in-memory database accelerated by GPUs, today announced the availability of in-database analytics via user-defined functions (UDFs). This industry-first capability makes the parallel processing power of the GPU accessible to custom analytics functions deployed within Kinetica. This opens the opportunity for machine learning/artificial intelligence libraries such as TensorFlow, BIDMach, Caffe, and Torch to run in-database alongside, and converged with, BI workloads. Kinetica also introduced its extensible and flexible'Reveal' visualization framework for interactive, real-time data exploration. Kinetica's advanced in-database analytics make it possible for organizations to affordably converge Artificial Intelligence, Business Intelligence, Machine Learning, natural language processing, and other data analytics into one powerful platform.

This will present what is Apache SystemML. It includes demonstration of how Data Scientist can use Apache SystemML through Jupyter notebook (or Data Science Experience Jupyter notebook) to do Machine Learning pipeline. It will have very high level information about how Apache SystemML achieves performance gain through its optimization and runtime techniques. As well it will explain how user can get Apache SystemML software and use it for doing machine learning similar to how it is demonstrated in the session. For more information about the Spark Technology Center: http://www.spark.tc/ Follow us: @apachespark_tc Location: San Francisco, CA Apache, Apache Spark, and Spark are trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries.

The Arterys Cardio DLTM application is vendor agnostic and was developed using data from several thousand cardiac cases. The software produces editable automated contours, providing precise and consistent ventricular function in seconds. The trained deep learning algorithm was validated as producing results within an expected error range comparable to that of an experienced clinical annotator. This clearance enables Arterys to make use of its unique clinical annotation platform, which collects ground-truth data every time a user views a study on Arterys.com. In the future, the deep learning model can be optimized as new data is collected from all global users.

Yojee Ltd, an Australia-based logistics and supply chain management solution supplier, will partner with Post Media, the parent company of the Phnom Penh Post and Post Khmer, to establish its own technology-based logistics platform on top of Post Media's existing daily newspaper delivery network, the company announced yesterday. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the two companies inked yesterday will see Yojee deploy a same-day, next-day delivery logistics service in Cambodia that leverages the efficiency and expertise of Post Media's delivery operations, generating new revenue and synergies. The collaborative partnership will employ Yojee's artificial intelligence (AI) logistics and supply-chain management software to manage delivery of freight and parcels in the Kingdoms' fast-growing e-commerce market. Ed Clarke, managing director of Yojee, said Post Media's nationwide business network and over 1 million active readers will provide a solid foundation for his company's entry into the Cambodian market without any additional asset acquisition costs. "Having this audience to market Yojee's delivery capabilities from day one is a coup for Yojee, as it literally saves us years and significant capital expenditure to acquire such a customer base in any other manner," he said.

There was sad news last week for enthusiasts of the Aibo Entertainment Robot from Sony: the doglike machine, which walks, barks and recognizes speech, is being put to sleep, the company said. The Aibo, which was introduced in 1999, is being discontinued as part of Sony's move to improve its financial position. Last September the company announced that it would eliminate or scale back 15 product categories. In addition to Aibo, Sony has also stopped selling its Qualia line of high-end televisions and audio equipment, plasma TV's and car stereos in Japan, said Rick Clancy, a senior vice president at Sony Electronics. With little marketing or promotion, the Aibo robot garnered a cultlike following around the world.

Telenor Group's Research arm today publishes the key global Tech Trends identified for the coming year. The search to digitize activities in our daily lives and in business will only accelerate now that technological platforms are maturing and moving into test mode. "Last year we highlighted several important developing trends and predicted that these would gain speed and attention during the year. IoT is on our list again for 2017, but we also claim that social media fatigue could be starting to appear, that chatbots are hot, that 5G will show itself in demos and pilot installations long before the standard is ready, and that the ethics of AI will be a hot topic," says Bjørn Taale Sandberg, Head of Telenor Research. The trends were identified through observations, patterns and supporting data from the continuous research conducted by Telenor's scientists in select expert fields.

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - Jan 12, 2017) - Cloverleaf, a retail technology company for the modern brick-and-mortar marketer and merchandiser, today announced shelfPoint, the industry's first dynamic shelf solution with built-in emotional artificial intelligence (Emotion AI) capabilities. With shelfPoint, brands and retailers can now capture customer engagement and sentiment data at the moment of purchase decision -- something previously unavailable in physical retail stores. Despite the rise of online shopping in recent years, Forrester1 predicts that 88% of purchases in 2017 will still be made in physical stores. Yet, retailers lack the in-the-moment tools necessary to captivate shoppers and gain insights that lead to sales uplift. While advancements in e-commerce analytics have upleveled marketers' understanding of consumer behaviors, brands and retailers still have little-to-no insight as to what happens in-store.

The pioneer in intelligent automation, ServiceNow can further increase productivity for its customers by applying machine‑learning capabilities and data models developed by DxContinuum. As more Internet of Things devices make service requests, it is increasingly important that those requests be categorized, routed and responded to. Hundreds of thousands of machine and manual work requests can now be effectively and automatically categorized and routed for each ServiceNow customer, bringing the "intelligent automation" of today's manual processes one step closer. While artificial intelligence and automation are rapidly changing the consumer world from self‑driving cars to smarter homes, the workplace still relies on manual processes. Every day employees deal with IT incidents, HR cases, customer requests, and security alerts with back‑and‑forth emails, calls and spreadsheets.

Robots are on the march again into the last bastion of labour intensive industry - farming and horticulture. Warwick researchers are working on a suite of robots and automated systems which could transform farming and horticulture over the next decade. The researchers from the University of Warwick's horticultural arm, Warwick HRI, and its manufacturing engineering section, Warwick Manufacturing Group, are working on a number of robotics and automation products that will vastly reduce the labour costs of farmers and growers. Those projects include: A robotic mushroom picker: the robot uses a charged coupled camera to spot and select only mushrooms of the exact size required for picking achieving levels of accuracy far in excess of human labour. The mushroom(s) are then picked by a suction cup on the end of a robotic arm.