Emerging anxieties pertaining to the rapid advancement and sophistication of artificial intelligence appear to be on a collision course with historic models of human exceptionality and individuality. Yet it is not just objective, technical sophistication in the development of AI that seems to cause this angst. It is also the linguistic treatment of machine "intelligence." But what is really at stake? Are we truly concerned that we will be surpassed in our capacities as human beings?

Two decades ago, Artificial Intelligence was a major topic in the world of Sci-Fi. Primarily driven by big blockbusters, such as The Terminator and The Matrix, the idea of computational power becoming sufficient enough to simulate the human brain has been around since the 1940s. Yet, philosophers have theorized the possibility of how the human mind can be explained through mathematics and symbols much earlier. Nevertheless, in 2018, our societal definition of the term has been tweaked. Based on its prevailing significance today in the online tools we use constantly, making the assumption that AI will change social media marketing with a swing is not too far off. Whether not to reveal company secrets or just to avoid a major media backlash, social media platform execs rarely touch on the matter of how AI is being used in algorithmic analysis.

AI and ML are top of most 2018 trend lists, with the technologies being adopted by many different industries. Indeed, experts forecast these technologies will be incorporated as part of the standard toolkit for broadcasters to transform the process of creating and managing content. BBC Research and Development Senior R&D Engineer Stephen Jolly said the demand for automated intelligence is coming from everywhere. He defined AI as the use of computers to automate tasks that would otherwise have to be completed by humans. ML is a technique under the AI umbrella and notably in the spotlight for its ability to optimise and enhance processes.

I'm working on a transfer learning thing that is geared towards optimizing the space of models to look at given that you know something about e.g. the amount of training data you will receive, examples of the kind of covariate shift or nonstationarity effects you expect to exist, etc. It's a kind of learned regularization trick, and the best results seem to be when you know you'll only ever have from 10-100 points of training data (you can also run it in unsupervised or semi-supervised modes, asking it to do the best it can with 10 labeled points and 100 points with no labels for example). The aim is to submit to NIPS 2018. Currently when I do performance comparisons I've mostly used the basic Kaggle standbys - linear SVC, RBF-kernel SVC, kNN, RandomForest, and XGBoost. What kinds of algorithms would you (as a reviewer) expect to see comparisons with in this problem space?

You can already use Google Assistant to play Netflix, but it becomes a hassle if you have more than one Netflix profile. You probably don't want to muck up a partner's recommendations just because you couldn't bother to reach for the remote. Well, you won't have to risk it from now on: Google has revealed that Assistant can now match your voice to a specific Netflix profile. You don't have to do more than link the profile in the Google Home app's video settings. So long as you use voice matching in the first place, this should make hands-free Netflix control reatively painless in a busy household.

Apple's HomePod smart speaker finally has a launch date. After missing its original December debut, Apple announced Tuesday that the HomePod will begin shipping on Feb. 9, with preorders beginning this Friday. That means Apple will finally join one of the most popular areas of consumer technology today. It also means that we'll finally find out how Apple fares against incumbents, such as Amazon and Google, who have had smart speakers available more than a year (and more than three years, in the Echo's case). Apple is late to the game and will face some significant challenges ahead.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and other disruptive technologies came under the spotlight in a series of thought-provoking sessions at our annual Financial & Risk Summit in Toronto. This year's event -- "Revving the Innovation Engine" -- brought together thought leaders and practitioners from across financial markets and risk and compliance communities for a full-day series of interactive discussions. It was also an opportunity to introduce members of our #TRFinRiskCanada40 list, which showcases Canada's top social media voices in finance, innovation, and risk. One of the highlights of the summit was the Reuters Newsmaker interview with Geoffrey Hinton, a vice-president with Alphabet Inc's Google, who is often referred to as "the godfather of deep learning." He discussed how artificial intelligence is being used today by internet companies such as Google and Facebook, and also in a wide variety of other industries, from financial services and healthcare, to automotive and manufacturing.

Apple is finally ready to launch its attempt to compete with the internet-connected speakers made by Amazon and Google with the release of its long-awaited HomePod. Pre-orders for the HomePod will begin Friday in the U.S, U.K. and Australia, two weeks before the speaker goes on sale in stores for $349. Apple had intended to release the HomePod last month during the holiday shopping season, but delayed its debut to refine the product. Both Amazon's Echo and Google's Home speakers have been expanding their reach into people's homes since Apple announced the HomePod last June. Amazon and Google also are selling their speakers for substantially less, with streamlined versions of their devices available for below $50.

Siri's news reading feature is no longer limited to the beta testing crowd. Apple has officially released iOS 11.2.5, and the centerpiece is the ability to ask Siri for the latest happenings. If you're in the US, UK or Australia, you can get a briefing from a slew of local sources, such as NPR and the Washington Post in the states or the BBC and Sky News in the UK. And it doesn't have to be general news, either -- you can ask for business, music or sports news as well. Not surprisingly, 11.2.5 is also key to unlocking support for the HomePod speaker.

"OK Google, tell Audible we're coming after you." It may not be worthy of a page-turner. But Google is indeed launching an audiobooks service on Google Play that is set to challenge the Audible service owned by Amazon. It'll be an uphill battle for sure. Audible is the largest seller of narrated books and spoken content, with more than 400,000 titles overall. While Google starts rolling out audiobooks on Google Play starting today in nine languages and 45 countries, the company wouldn't tell me how many titles will be made available at launch.