Over the past few years, the term "deep learning" has firmly worked its way into business language when the conversation is about Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data and analytics. And with good reason – it is an approach to AI which is showing great promise when it comes to developing the autonomous, self-teaching systems which are revolutionizing many industries. Deep Learning is used by Google in its voice and image recognition algorithms, by Netflix and Amazon to decide what you want to watch or buy next, and by researchers at MIT to predict the future. The ever-growing industry which has established itself to sell these tools is always keen to talk about how revolutionary this all is. But what exactly is it?

It takes years of work to become a cinematographer. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are developing a system for aerial cinematography that learns from human visual preferences in order to enable drones to make artsy filmmaking choices while autonomously filming scenes. The system does not require GPS tags to localize targets or prior maps of an environment. Drones have been a boon to filmmakers, significantly lowering costs for aerial shots, which previously required chartering manned helicopters or airplanes. But the ease of access also comes with a downside.

Musician Halldór Eldjárn has been drawing a lot of attention recently for his AI-approach to composing, as well as his homemade percussion-playing robots. Here's what has made him the artist he is today. The concept of generating music has always fascinated me. My uncle, Kjartan Ólafsson, has worked in this field for decades, creating an AI-driven music composition software called Calmus. He definitely made me realise it was possible to make a computer write music.

Just tried TPU pytorch for a classification problem, my impressions so far are quite positive. Working with TPU looks very similar to working with a multi-GPU with distributed data parallel - it needs about the same amount of modifications, maybe even smaller, at least when all ops are supported and shapes are static, like it is for a simple classifications task. It also needs an efficient data pipeline and a powerful machine to feed all 8 TPU core, similar to what you'd need for an 8-GPU machine. So far I didn't see any strange hangs or stability issues.

Called LOGAN, the deep neural network, i.e., a machine of sorts, can learn to transform the shapes of two different objects, for example, a chair and a …

AI automation is coming, and it's going to impact knowledge workers -- writers, artists, designers, scientists, managers, and entrepreneurs. However, even when AI automation completely replaces the need for a human -- such as in its conquest of strategy games like Chess and Poker -- the world doesn't end and the human element doesn't disappear. Largely better, in some ways worse, but life in fact goes on. Humans keep doing our thing. And the machines keep getting better, and better, and better.

Every week, there are news reports on how AI will impact jobs, but what about the impact of AI on indie authors? Can we surf the change instead of being drowned by it? Could it make our lives better as creative entrepreneurs? I recently did a mega-solo podcast on 9 Ways that Artificial Intelligence Will Disrupt Authors and the Publishing Industry, and in this interview, Orna Ross interviews me about some of the specifics that might impact indie authors, in particular. The interview is on the Alliance of Independent Authors AskAlli Podcast feed. The interview starts after the introduction around 12:25 mins. Links and notes here and you can subscribe below. Click here to watch the interview on YouTube. But today we are going to talk about something that sounds maybe mysterious, sounds maybe scary for a lot of authors. But that you have been investing a lot of time and attention and you're hugely interested in and you're actually making work for you. And that is artificial intelligence. And our theme for today is really how can indie authors harness the power of AI? Where are we with it? What can it do for us? And on all things AI, you are our guru so I'm going to be quizzing you, but first, before we start on what it can do for us, what is it? Explain to the people, what are we talking about when we're talking about artificial intelligence?

Fern Halper, Ph.D., is vice president and senior director of TDWI Research for advanced analytics. She is well known in the analytics community having been published hundreds of times on data mining and information technology over the past 20 years. Halper is also co-author of several Dummies books on cloud computing and big data. She focuses on advanced analytics, including predictive analytics, text and social media analysis, machine learning, AI, cognitive computing and big data analytics approaches. She has been a partner at industry analyst firm Hurwitz & Associates and a lead data analyst for Bell Labs.

In Japan's FANUC plant robots are producing robots and they outnumber people. Robots are beating humans in intelligence games, reading and writing pop songs. They are driving us to our chosen destinations and are on their way to become doctors, engineers, scientists, songwriters and painters. Never ever in history, the boundaries between fact and fiction were so thin. By 2030 AI will add an additional $15.7 trillion to the global economy.