It is every Top Gun's worst nightmare - an AI can can outmanoeuvre them in the air. Now researchers have tested their AI on a retired top gun - and left him stunned. Retired United States Air Force Colonel Gene Lee took on the AI in a simulator - and lost. An AI has beated Air Force pilots in simulated showdowns for the first time. Retired United States Air Force Colonel Gene Lee took on the AI in a simulator.

Professor Stephen Hawking says he believes pollution and human "stupidity" remain the biggest threats to mankind, while also expressing his concerns over the use of artificial intelligence in warfare. The world's leading theoretical physicist argued "we have certainly not become less greedy or less stupid" in our treatment of the environment over the past decade, during an interview on Larry King Now, which is hosted on Ora TV. Professor Hawking said: "Six years ago, I was warning about pollution and overcrowding, they have gotten worse since then. The population has grown by half a billion since our last interview, with no end in sight. "At this rate, it will be eleven billion by 2100.

The challenge sounds daunting: Use artificial intelligence "to address humanity's Grand Challenges." But if that sounds like the kind of thing that stimulates your creative juices, and you have the engineering chops to back it up, you could win a few million bucks and a lot of attention. IBM Watson and XPrize announced earlier this year that they'd be linking up to offer a top award of 3 million and additional prizes totaling 2 million to winning entrants in the competition. Roughly 3,500 parties responded to the announcement of the prize in February to say they were interested in competing. The five-month registration window ends Dec. 1, after which applicants will go through four selection rounds over the course of four years.

By Max Chafkin Y Combinator, the startup accelerator and investment firm that helped produce Airbnb, Dropbox, and Instacart, is embarking on a creation project arguably more ambitious than any company. "We want to build cities," wrote Y Combinator partner Adora Cheung and President Sam Altman in an announcement slated for release Monday. YC Research, Y Combinator's nonprofit arm, plans to solicit proposals for research into new construction methods, power sources, driverless cars, even notions of zoning and property rights. Among other things, the project aims to develop ways to reduce housing expenses by 90 percent and to develop a city code of laws simple enough to fit on 100 pages of text. Eventually the plan is to actually produce a prototype city.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is gathering pace as one of the biggest ICT trends of our time – and the topic of "robot journalism" provides important insight on how AI is being applied to industry. How is natural language generation (NLG) being used to explain big data in narrative form that broader audiences can easily understand? What insights are being found by machines producing 2,000 articles per second? How are some of the world's biggest media agencies currently using vendors that provide these solutions to build their reach, engagement, and businesses? Will "robots" (or automated content) soon render journalists obsolete?

As we've mentioned, corporate giants in tech are competing to acquire private artificial intelligence startups, with Google emerging as the most active acquirer over the last 5 years. So far in 2016, there have already been over 20 acquisitions of AI startups, the most recent being Twitter's acquisition of visual-processing startup Magic Pony Technology. We analyzed M&A and IPO activity in this space from 2011. Our artificial intelligence category includes companies developing core AI algorithms as well as those applying AI solutions to specific industries like healthcare and cybersecurity. We used our database to analyze at what stage the AI companies exited.

There are some things even Stephen Hawking can't figure out. On "Larry King Now," the world-famous astrophysicist told Larry King that he wonders why anything -- and everything -- even exists in the first place. "Why do the universe and all the laws of nature exist? "In one sense, they are, because otherwise we wouldn't be here to ask the question. But is there a deeper reason?" That's a little different from the answer Hawking gave in 2012 when New Scientist asked him what he thought about most during the day. Hawking said he's learned a lot about women since, and even asked King about his eight marriages to seven women. "Is that the triumph of hope over experience?" "You make a good point, Stephen," King said, noting his most recent marriage had lasted 19 years. "I think the answer is yes." Hawking was interviewed from the Canary Islands, where he was being honored at the Starmus Festival. During the interview, Hawking also warned that mankind could eventually be threatened by artificial intelligence. "I don't think that advances in artificial intelligence will necessarily be benign," he said. "Once machines reach the critical stage of being able to evolve themselves, we cannot predict whether their goals will be the same as ours." During an interview with King in 2010, Hawking said that two of mankind's biggest dangers were greed and stupidity. Not much has changed in the intervening years. "We certainly have not become less greedy or less stupid," Hawking said. "Six years ago, I was warning about pollution and overcrowding.

Google uses a machine-learning artificial intelligence system called "RankBrain" to help sort through its search results. Wondering how that works and fits in with Google's overall ranking system? Here's what we know about RankBrain. The information covered below comes from three original sources and has been updated over time, with notes where updates have happened. First is the Bloomberg story that broke the news about RankBrain (See also our write-up of it).

Dr. Ratner has written a unique book that distinguishes between statistical and machine-learning data mining. The book includes 14 statistical data mining and 17 machine-learning data mining techniques. All techniques are quite practical, making this volume a handbook for every statistician, data miner, and machine-learner. Let me describe a few chapters that present approaches and techniques that I really favored. Chapter 3 introduces a new data mining method: a smoother scatterplot based on CHAID.

In this tutorial, we will give you a taste of the powerful Machine Learning libraries in Apache Spark via a hands-on lab. We will also introduce the necessary steps to get you up and running with Apache Zeppelin on a Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) Sandbox. This tutorial is a part of series of hands-on tutorials to get you started with HDP using Hortonworks Sandbox. Please ensure you complete the prerequisites before proceeding with this tutorial. Note: if you are attending a Meetup/Crash Course your speaker/instructor may have additional instructions regarding the Sandbox VM image.