Google's AutoML system recently produced a series of machine-learning codes with higher rates of efficiency than those made by the researchers themselves. In this latest blow to human superiority the robot student has become the self-replicating master. AutoML was developed as a solution to the lack of top-notch talent in AI programming. There aren't enough cutting edge developers to keep up with demand, so the team came up with a machine learning software that can create self-learning code. The system runs thousands of simulations to determine which areas of the code can be improved, makes the changes, and continues the process ad infinitum, or until its goal is reached.

After a few applied machine learning problems, you usually develop a pattern or process for quickly getting started and achieving good results. Once you have this process it is trivial to use it again and again on project after project. The more developed your process, the faster you can get to results! Let me give you a head start and teach you a 5-step systematic process that I developed while becoming a machine learning engineer. This step is all about learning more about the problem at hand.

Mike Brooks proposes the use of machine learning software to improve plant reliability and to reduce unplanned downtime. There is a significant need to carry out failure prevention using data-driven truths instead of guesstimates, evidenced by the fact that a combination of mechanical and process induced breakdowns account for up to 10% of the worldwide $1.4 trillion manufacturing market, according to a 2012 report from The McKinsey Global Institute. While companies have spent millions trying to address this issue and ultimately avoid unplanned downtime, only recently have they been able to address wear and age-based failures. Current techniques are not able to detect problems early enough and lack insight into the reasons behind the seemingly random failures that cause over 80% of unplanned downtime. This is where using machine learning software to cast a'wider net' around machines can capture process induced failures.

Istanbul, a city of 14 million people and a crossroads of cultural exchange dating back millennia, may also be where Turkey's next major earthquake strikes. Cities along the North Anatolian Fault, which stretches from eastern Turkey to the Aegean Sea, have experienced an advancing series of strong quakes during the past 80 years, beginning in 1939 when a devastating 7.8-magnitude rupture leveled the city of Erzincan and killed 33,000 people. Most recently, in 1999, 7.4-magnitude quake near the city of İzmit left 17,000 dead and half a million homeless. A few months later, another shock hit Düzce, 60 miles away. Brendan Meade, an applied computational scientist and associate professor of earth and planetary sciences, recently built a computer model of conditions in the North Anatolian Fault.

Data-driven predictive analytics are in use today across a number of industrial applications, but further integration is hindered by the requirement of similarity among model training and test data distributions. This paper addresses the need of learning from possibly nonstationary data streams, or under concept drift, a commonly seen phenomenon in practical applications. A simple dual-learner ensemble strategy, alternating learners framework, is proposed. A long-memory model learns stable concepts from a long relevant time window, while a short-memory model learns transient concepts from a small recent window. The difference in prediction performance of these two models is monitored and induces an alternating policy to select, update and reset the two models. The method features an online updating mechanism to maintain the ensemble accuracy, and a concept-dependent trigger to focus on relevant data. Through empirical studies the method demonstrates effective tracking and prediction when the steaming data carry abrupt and/or gradual changes.

Memristors have recently received significant attention as ubiquitous device-level components for building a novel generation of computing systems. These devices have many promising features, such as non-volatility, low power consumption, high density, and excellent scalability. The ability to control and modify biasing voltages at the two terminals of memristors make them promising candidates to perform matrix-vector multiplications and solve systems of linear equations. In this article, we discuss how networks of memristors arranged in crossbar arrays can be used for efficiently solving optimization and machine learning problems. We introduce a new memristor-based optimization framework that combines the computational merit of memristor crossbars with the advantages of an operator splitting method, alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). Here, ADMM helps in splitting a complex optimization problem into subproblems that involve the solution of systems of linear equations. The capability of this framework is shown by applying it to linear programming, quadratic programming, and sparse optimization. In addition to ADMM, implementation of a customized power iteration (PI) method for eigenvalue/eigenvector computation using memristor crossbars is discussed. The memristor-based PI method can further be applied to principal component analysis (PCA). The use of memristor crossbars yields a significant speed-up in computation, and thus, we believe, has the potential to advance optimization and machine learning research in artificial intelligence (AI).

Back in May, Google revealed its AutoML project; artificial intelligence (AI) designed to help them create other AIs. Now, Google has announced that AutoML has beaten the human AI engineers at their own game by building machine-learning software that's more efficient and powerful than the best human-designed systems. An AutoML system recently broke a record for categorizing images by their content, scoring 82 percent. While that's a relatively simple task, AutoML also beat the human-built system at a more complex task integral to autonomous robots and augmented reality: marking the location of multiple objects in an image. For that task, AutoML scored 43 percent versus the human-built system's 39 percent.

There's growing excitement – admittedly, at times, borderline hype – about what artificial intelligence can, and will, do for businesses. While speculation abounds among pundits, journalists, and'thought leaders' surrounding the impact that AI will have on jobs (CBInsights predicts 10 million jobs are at risk in the next 5-10 years), there's relatively little analysis of the tangible effect AI will have on marketer's day-to-day work, and the opportunity to'upskill' us all. Writing exclusively for ExchangeWire, Gareth Davies (pictured below), founder and CEO, Adbrain, explains why and how artificial intelligence can realise tangible benefits for marketers. Today's marketers will benefit by navigating an increasingly AI-centric (and AI-literate) world where bots, intelligent software and machine learning play an increased role in the marketing function. To help you cut through the noise, here are some tangible examples of where AI is likely to become a relevant part of the modern marketers' workflow, as well as ideas on how to better understand and qualify the impact that AI can have on your business.

This morning at the WSJ's D.Live event, Intel formally unveiled its Nervana Neural Network Processor (NNP) family of chips designed for machine learning use cases. Intel has previously alluded to these chips using the pre-launch name Lake Crest. The technology underlying the chips is heavily tied to Nervana Systems, a deep learning hardware startup Intel purchased last August for $350 million. Intel's NNP chips nix standard cache hierarchy and use software to manage on-chip memory to achieve faster training times for deep learning models. Intel has been scrambling in recent months to avoid being completely leveled by Nvidia.

The rise of robots could lead to'unprecedented' change and wipe out over a third of jobs in some areas by the 2030's a new report warns. A'heat map' of Britain shows the areas most at risk of automation, with workers in the ex industrial heartlands of the North and Midlands most likely to lose their jobs. The upheaval tossed up by'supercharged' technological change over the next 15 years could make the industrial revolution pale in comparison, the study says. The report, The impact of AI in UK constituencies, by think-tank Future Advocacy, slams the government for failing to prepare for the rapid change looming. Researchers said the results are'startling' and told ministers to urgently look at new education and training to help the country adapt to the challenge. It shows that the UK's former industrial heartlands of the Midlands and the north are most at risk from the march of the machines Meanwhile, a YouGov poll carried out for the report found that just seven per cent of Brits are worried about losing their jobs to automation.