According to the U.S. Census Bureau, millennials have officially surpassed baby boomers and are now the largest generation in the U.S. Although this is the first time we've officially recognized the demographic shift, companies across the globe have been adjusting to this swing for nearly a decade. With the increasing population of 18-35-year-olds, so too comes the increasing buying power of this critical segment of consumers. For industries focused on customer service, this milestone and the associated implications continue to be verified in the changing demands on customer interactions. An increased reliance on self-service, channels that feature intuitive technology as well as streamlined experiences continue to become increasingly popular.

The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission has delivered valuable sensing of surface soil moisture since 2015. However, it has a short time span and irregular revisit schedule. Utilizing a state-of-the-art time-series deep learning neural network, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), we created a system that predicts SMAP level-3 soil moisture data with atmospheric forcing, model-simulated moisture, and static physiographic attributes as inputs. The system removes most of the bias with model simulations and improves predicted moisture climatology, achieving small test root-mean-squared error (<0.035) and high correlation coefficient >0.87 for over 75\% of Continental United States, including the forested Southeast. As the first application of LSTM in hydrology, we show the proposed network avoids overfitting and is robust for both temporal and spatial extrapolation tests. LSTM generalizes well across regions with distinct climates and physiography. With high fidelity to SMAP, LSTM shows great potential for hindcasting, data assimilation, and weather forecasting.

The news of Rahul Gandhi addressing technology experts in Silicon Valley of the US has set the explosion of Jokes on Rahul Gandhi in the Twitter world and various social media domains. The subject he had chosen to address is "ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE" which exactly matches the definition of Comedy as mentioned by Steve Martin "Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke". Apparently, Rahul Gandhi will be accompanied by Chairman of Overseas Congress Department Sam Pitroda, who has reportedly fixed Rahul Gandhi's meeting with technology experts. He will also meet representatives of technological giants and startups working on the new science. The idea behind the visit, was for Gandhi to lead the domestic debate on the impending transition from software to artificial intelligence. Inspite of Nehru/Gandhi family being elected from Amethi since 1980, Amethi cuts a sorry figure when it comes to development and welfare of the people.

A drone is flown during a property inspection following Hurricane Harvey in Houston. The mass destruction brought on by Harvey has been a seminal moment for drone operators, proving that they can effectively map flooding, locate people in need of rescue and verify damage to speed insurance claims. A drone is flown during a property inspection following Hurricane Harvey in Houston. The mass destruction brought on by Harvey has been a seminal moment for drone operators, proving that they can effectively map flooding, locate people in need of rescue and verify damage to speed insurance claims. Tropical Storm Harvey disrupted at least 17 emergency call centers and 320 cellular sites, and it caused outages for more than 148,000 Internet, TV, and phone customers, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

Provided by AFP The US National Security Agency, which operates this ultra-secure data collection center in Utah, is one of the key US spying operations turning to artifical intelligence to help make sense of massive amounts of digital data they collect every day. Swamped by too much raw intel data to sift through, US spy agencies are pinning their hopes on artificial intelligence to crunch billions of digital bits and understand events around the world. Dawn Meyerriecks, the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy director for technology development, said this week the CIA currently has 137 different AI projects, many of them with developers in Silicon Valley. These range from trying to predict significant future events, by finding correlations in data shifts and other evidence, to having computers tag objects or individuals in video that can draw the attention of intelligence analysts. Officials of other key spy agencies at the Intelligence and National Security Summit in Washington this week, including military intelligence, also said they were seeking AI-based solutions for turning terabytes of digital data coming in daily into trustworthy intelligence that can be used for policy and battlefield action.

The data industry is a rapidly evolving space with the development of new technologies, methodologies, and platforms almost every other day. So, keeping pace with this industry can be challenging indeed. I have, therefore, created a list of 15 tech and data science influencers who are not just a source of inspiration to data science professionals and aspirants alike but also ensure that you keep abreast of all the new developments. I have not taken social media influence and related metrics into account. I have created this list based on how much I personally enjoy the content these individuals share on their social media.

Swamped by too much raw intel data to sift through, US spy agencies are pinning their hopes on artificial intelligence to crunch billions of digital bits and understand events around the world. Dawn Meyerriecks, the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy director for technology development, said this week the CIA currently has 137 different AI projects, many of them with developers in Silicon Valley. These range from trying to predict significant future events, by finding correlations in data shifts and other evidence, to having computers tag objects or individuals in video that can draw the attention of intelligence analysts. Officials of other key spy agencies at the Intelligence and National Security Summit in Washington this week, including military intelligence, also said they were seeking AI-based solutions for turning terabytes of digital data coming in daily into trustworthy intelligence that can be used for policy and battlefield action. AI has widespread functions, from battlefield weapons to the potential to help quickly rebuild computer systems and programs brought down by hacking attacks, as one official described.

After watching nonstop coverage of the hurricane and the incredible rescues that were taking place, I got in bed at 10:30 on Tuesday night. The Madman Theory p The United States has no diplomatic relations with North Korea, so there is no embassy in Washington, but for years the two countries have relied on the "New York channel," an office inside North Korea's mission to the United Nations, to handle the unavoidable parts of our … The artist and skate punk behind the viral Barack Obama'Hope' poster shares his tips p 8September 2017 p As the creative force behind the Barack Obama "Hope" poster, Shepard Fairey is, to put it frankly, single-handedly responsible for one of the most iconic political images in modern history. She turned to Google for help getting sober. Then she had to escape a nightmare. The 39-year-old math teacher and mother of two was in a spiral familiar to anyone who's struggled with addiction.

Britain's military will commit to ensuring that drones and other remote weaponry are always under human control, as part of a new doctrine designed to calm concerns about the development of killer robots. The move by the Ministry of Defence comes after more than 100 leading robotics experts wrote to the United Nations urging the organisation to step in to halt the development of artificial intelligence in weaponry. The announcement is also timed in response to demonstrations at this week's biennial Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) fair, one of the world's biggest arms exhibitions. More than 34,000 visitors are expected to attend the event at the ExCeL centre in east London's docklands. The new doctrine will make clear that the UK opposes the development of autonomous weapons systems that could operate without trained controllers and traditional chains of command.

It could even happen soon: At a recent cybersecurity conference, 62 industry professionals, out of the 100 questioned, said they thought the first AI-enhanced cyberattack could come in the next 12 months. This doesn't mean robots will be marching down Main Street. Rather, artificial intelligence will make existing cyberattack efforts – things like identity theft, denial-of-service attacks and password cracking – more powerful and more efficient. This is dangerous enough – this type of hacking can steal money, cause emotional harm and even injure or kill people. Larger attacks can cut power to hundreds of thousands of people, shut down hospitals and even affect national security.