Time series is different from more traditional classification and regression predictive modeling problems. The temporal structure adds an order to the observations. This imposed order means that important assumptions about the consistency of those observations needs to be handled specifically. For example, when modeling, there are assumptions that the summary statistics of observations are consistent. In time series terminology, we refer to this expectation as the time series being stationary.

This by itself is of course nothing new, as Israel keeps attracting the attention of top global funds looking for great deal flow outside of Silicon Valley, NYC and Boston; large corporates interested in tapping into innovation coming out of Israel; and large scale startups acquiring smaller Israeli startups as a strategy to get a foot in the Startup Nation door. Given all that, it is no surprise that funding for Israeli startups has reached a record high in 2016 with Israeli tech companies raising $4.6 billion this year, up from $4.4 billion in 2015. The growth in funding is supported in part by massive influence of Chinese investors who "want a piece" of Startup Nation too and invest directly in companies as well as in Israeli VC funds. On the flip side, 2016 was the year we saw a major decline in exits of Israeli companies which took a plunge of 67% compared to the previous year, with no huge, billion dollar Waze-type exits. While global market dynamics definitely played a role here, this is also a sign of maturity of the Israeli tech ecosystem where startups are less excited to sell early and strive to grow bigger companies.

We have seen the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon and many more come out in open and acknowledge the impact machine learning and deep learning had on their business. Last week, I published top videos on deep learning from 2016. I was blown away by the response. I could understand the response to some degree -- I found these videos extremely helpful. So, I decided to do a similar article on top videos on machine learning from 2016.

A new report claims that from this point on, intelligent machines could become more vital to business than people. It estimates that up to 15 million UK jobs are at'high or medium risk' of being replaced by automation in the next two decades. And British people could face a reality that is somewhere'between Star Trek and the Matrix.' A new report claims that 60 per cent of British retail roles, around 2 million people, could be taken over by technology by 2030. Britain has reached'peak human', with intelligent AI more powerful than the human brain set to takeover everyday jobs and tasks The report, by Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) we are close to the point where humans are more important to labour than machines.

Remark Media's image and video recognition technologies are based on Deep Learning, a type of algorithm-based machine learning that is used to model high-level abstractions in data. In developing its technologies, Remark Media leveraged its extensive KanKan data platform to train its AI with tens of millions of supervised and unsupervised samples, developing models that extract facial features and recognize objects in images or videos such as branded logos, animals, airplanes, license plates, etc., with high precision. The KanKan Data Intelligence Platform is a growing global platform of over 1.3 billion socially active user profiles, over 15 billion posts, more than 10 billion images, and over 50 billion comments and reviews. In addition to providing its technology to Alibaba Cloud, Remark Media will provide its turnkey AI platform as a service to companies or individuals requiring assistance with integrating the technology into their own models. Additional information on this partnership can be found on Alibaba Cloud's website.

Machine learning and other variations of artificial intelligence (AI) are expected to proliferate in the enterprise in 2017. The majority of IT players, including today's leading technology companies, have invested in the space and plan to increase efforts for the foreseeable future, according to analysts who cover the market. However, while machine learning has generated tremendous interest throughout the enterprise, a wide gap still exists between research and beneficial use cases in the real world. And only a small number of companies have the resources to actually drive AI innovation and deliver it to the masses, sources say. During last month's Code Enterprise conference, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said AI was one of leading factors in the company's decision to be acquired by Microsoft.

The idea of re-wiring humans to make them capable of re-growing limbs sounds like an experiment from Dr Frankenstein's lab. But one scientist believes that the creepy idea could soon be a reality. Dr Michael Levin has already created a range of strange creatures, including tadpoles with eyes on their backs and frogs with six legs, and believes that in the future he will be able to re-wire humans to come in any shape desired. Dr Levin's work focusses on ion channels – hollow proteins across the surface of cells, which allow charged molecules to pass through. Within each channel, tiny gates control the flow of these molecules.

Our smartphone currently represents the most expensive area to be purchased per squared centimeter (even more expensive than the square meters price of houses in Beverly Hills), and it is not hard to envision that having a bot as unique interfaces will make this area worth almost zero. None of these would be possible though without heavily investing in speech recognition research. Deep Reinforcement Learning (DFL) has been the boss in town for the past few years and it has been fed by human feedbacks. However, I personally believe that soon we will move toward a B2B (bot-to-bot) training for a very simple reason: the reward structure. Humans spend time training their bots if they are enough compensated for their effort.

Learning to speak a new language brings health benefits and in addition we could be predisposed to speak more than one language, new research suggests. In this spirit multilingualism has shown to have social, psychological and lifestyle advantages as well as direct health benefits like faster recovery from a stroke or delaying dementía. Something that could mean that to reach your brain's full potential and to "empower" it, multilingualism is a great practice. This is at the same time a practice that brings a lot of "headache" for artificial intelligence. As Will Knight, senior editor for AI and robotics at MIT Technology Review writes: "There's an obvious problem with applying deep learning to language. It's that words are arbitrary symbols, and as such they are fundamentally different from imagery."

Many people depend on Skype to chat with family, colleagues and clients throughout their working day. To help them stay connected while they're outside the office, Volvo has announced plans to integrate Skype for Business into its high-end 90 Series cars. Accessible through a large touchscreen dashboard, drivers will see a list of scheduled meetings and a shortcut to their complete contact list. Tapping once will reveal a meeting summary, including the organiser, participants and the ways in which they can join the call. A "Join Meeting" shortcut will reside at the bottom so users can quickly dial in -- no pesky pin codes required (hopefully).