The last place you want to learn you have heart failure is where it often winds up being diagnosed: in the emergency room. Researchers analyzing electronic health records are using artificial intelligence and GPUs to get ahead of this curve. They've shown they can predict heart failure as much as nine months before doctors can now deliver the diagnosis. A research team from Sutter Health, a Northern California not-for-profit health system, and the Georgia Institute of Technology, believe their method has the potential to reduce heart failure rates and possibly save lives. "The earlier we can detect the disease, the more likely we can change health outcomes for people and improve their quality of life," said Andy Schuetz, a senior data scientist at Sutter Health and an author of a paper describing one aspect of the research.

And now, the technology is being harnessed to streamline the United States Air Force acquisitions process -- an effort that will be undertaken by a small Lawrence business. Lawrence-based KalScott Engineering Inc. announced Wednesday it was selected to finish building artificial intelligence, called SOPHIA, for the Air Force. KalScott, owned by two Kansas University graduates, was chosen last summer to do some preliminary work training a supercomputer -- or "cognitive thinking machine" -- that could understand Defense Department contracting rules and answer questions about them audibly. Suman Saripalli, a co-owner of KalScott, said Wednesday the firm received the final go-ahead to complete the work. The announcement came with 750,000 more in funding. The finished product -- which will act as a "very intelligent assistant," Saripalli said -- is intended to help businesses and government employees navigate the Air Force's complex procurement process, which has been found to discourage small and innovative businesses from partnering with the federal government.

A United Nations meeting this week in Geneva is debating the future of autonomous weapons--the controversial weapons systems capable of selecting and engaging targets without human intervention. Delegates from about 90 countries are discussing the far-reaching technical, legal, and ethical questions that these robotic weapons raise, and at the end of the week-long meeting they hope to agree on what to do next. For a group of arms control activists that has long been concerned about autonomous weapons, the next step countries should take is clear: they should ban these weapons. That's the goal of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a coalition of non-governmental organizations that was formed in late 2012 and whose steering committee includes groups like Human Rights Watch and the International Committee for Robot Arms Control. On Monday Human Rights Watch released a memorandum to the delegates in Geneva calling for countries to "adopt an international, legally binding instrument that prohibits the development, production, and use of fully autonomous weapons."

The last place you want to learn you have heart failure is where it often winds up being diagnosed: in the emergency room. Researchers analyzing electronic health records are using artificial intelligence and GPUs to get ahead of this curve. They've shown they can predict heart failure as much as nine months before doctors can now deliver the diagnosis. A research team from Sutter Health, a Northern California not-for-profit health system, and the Georgia Institute of Technology, believe their method has the potential to reduce heart failure rates and possibly save lives. "The earlier we can detect the disease, the more likely we can change health outcomes for people and improve their quality of life," said Andy Schuetz, a senior data scientist at Sutter Health and an author of a paper on the research.

Optimization provides a valuable framework for thinking about, formulating, and solving many problems in machine learning. Since specialized techniques for the quadratic programming problem arising in support vector classification were developed in the 1990s, there has been more and more cross-fertilization between optimization and machine learning, with the large size and computational demands of machine learning applications driving much recent algorithmic research in optimization. This tutorial reviews the major computational paradigms in machine learning that are amenable to optimization algorithms, then discusses the algorithmic tools that are being brought to bear on such applications. We focus particularly on such algorithmic tools of recent interest as stochastic and incremental gradient methods, online optimization, augmented Lagrangian methods, and the various tools that have been applied recently in sparse and regularized optimization.

Salesforce's recent acquisitions of AI startups including MetaMind will enable it to keep pace with the functions that consumer-focused companies … From Dick Tracy's watch to Wonder Woman's Bracelets to Bat Girls total recall and technopathy, fiction has a intriguing dialog with invention. Enable natural interaction with your app using a conversational interface powered by the Watson Developer Cloud APIs. KPMG LLP and IBM today announced plans to apply IBM's Watson cognitive computing technology to KPMG's professional services offerings. It can answer guests' questions about the hotel and tourist destinations. The hotel has recently welcomed a new concierge named "Connie," you see, and it's actually a Nao robot powered by IBM's AI.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

DigitalGenius is announcing a Human AI customer service platform today with a 4.1 million seed investment. The platform integrates with existing customer service software suites -- like Salesforce, Zendesk, and Oracle -- to automate the most repetitive parts of customer service through AI and machine learning-powered chat bots. The work to augment the process, while still keeping the human element decidedly at the center of things. It's interesting to note that Salesforce was part of the deal, as that could conceivably help the startup scale quickly in this space, thanks to Salesforce's massive distribution network and its suite of automation products ripe for AI. I talked to DigitalGenius' chief strategy officer Mikhail Naumov to clarify what AI is and isn't.

Anticipating whether the car in front is going to take the next left or is slowing down is a fundamental part of driving, and key to not totalling your car. While keeping your eyes ahead should be second nature to those on the road, this most basic of tasks is still a challenge for driverless cars. But details have emerged of a patent filed by Google for its autonomous vehicles to detect and track brake and indicator lights of other cars on the road. Google has filed a patent for its autonomous vehicles to detect and track brake and indicator lights of other cars on the road. This will enable the driverless cars to better anticipate the movements of cars on the road. The technology would enable the driverless cars to anticipate the movements of cars on the road ahead using a forward-facing camera.

Today there is an ongoing battle between man and machine. While genuine machine consciousness is still years into the future, we are beginning to see computers make choices that previously demanded a human's input. But we are not beaten yet - humans are still superior in some areas and researchers in Denmark have developed a scheme that is mapping the human brain to blur the lines between the two. While machine consciousness is still years into the future, we are beginning to see computers make choices that previously demanded a human's input. 'It may sound dramatic, but we are currently in a race with technology - and steadily being overtaken in many areas,' said Danish physicist Jacob Sherson.