"Machine learning is very good at identifying patterns in the data, such as risk factors that might identify zip codes or cohorts of people that are …

Navigating a new indoor space without any prior knowledge or even a map is a challenging task for a human, let alone a robot. To help develop intelligent machines that interact more effectively with complex 3D environments, Facebook researchers developed a GPU-accelerated deep reinforcement learning model that achieves near 100 percent success in navigating a variety of virtual environments without a pre-provided map. To achieve this breakthrough, the team focused their work on developing an efficient approach to scaling RL models, which require a significant number of training samples, using multi-node distribution. "A single parameter server and thousands of (typically CPU) workers may be fundamentally incompatible with the needs of modern computer vision and robotics communities," the researchers explained in their post, Near-perfect point-goal navigation from 2.5 billion frames of experience. "Unlike Gym or Atari, 3D simulators require GPU acceleration…. The desired agents operate from high-dimensional inputs (pixels) and use deep networks, such as ResNet50, which strain the parameter server. Thus, existing distributed RL architectures do not scale and there is a need to develop a new distributed architecture."

The global movie industry generated over $43 billion in revenue in 2018, of which the United States' contribution alone topped more than $11 billion. Yet, these seemingly impressive headline figures can obscure the fact that year-on-year growth has been a sluggish 2 per cent over the last several years, with market researchers forecasting further stagnation. Given the inherent financial risk involved in film making, some now believe artificial intelligence, rather than human expertise, is best placed to select which films are most likely to provide suitable returns on investment. In early January 2020, Warner Bros signed a deal with Cinelytic, a Los Angeles-based artificial intelligence company which, according to the press release, aims to help content creators make faster, better-informed decisions through predictive analytics. Belgium's ScriptBook provides a similar service, touted as "artificially intelligent script analysis and box office forecasting". Warner Bros is not the first film studio to pair up with an AI platform of this type, although it is one of the first to disclose its collaboration publicly.

More than half of the Britain's video games industry is based outside London and the south-east, according to a report from the sector's trade body, with gaming directly contributing more than £1.35bn to the UK economy. The report reveals that the UK gaming industry employs more than 16,000 people. Ukie, the trade body that produced the report, argues that this makes the sector the most productive of all of the nation's creative industries, with each individual employee contributing more than £80,000 to the national economy. The regional distribution of that contribution is significantly more than many other creative industries. Where more than half of the film industry, by company, is based in London, the figure is 28% for games, with significant sectoral hubs based in more than 20 towns and cities nationwide.