It is no coincidence that Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are used or will be used for such technologies that will define how the real future of many industries. However, one can not and should not talk about the future, but of the present. In the field of communication and marketing, a lot of algorithm-based tools can be used daily, which can suggest the best thing to do, lighten up the work, or be able to help us in more basic tasks, writing a message in the best possible way. Think also of customer care services, which in many cases consist of real chatbots that can answer many different questions or needs. The artificial intelligence has come to our lives for some time now, even outside the scope of work, if you think of apps that we listen to music, play online, or allow us to get in touch with our friends.

Many efforts have been devoted to training generative latent variable models with autoregressive decoders, such as recurrent neural networks (RNN). Stochastic recurrent models have been successful in capturing the variability observed in natural sequential data such as speech. We unify successful ideas from recently proposed architectures into a stochastic recurrent model: each step in the sequence is associated with a latent variable that is used to condition the recurrent dynamics for future steps. Training is performed with amortized variational inference where the approximate posterior is augmented with a RNN that runs backward through the sequence. In addition to maximizing the variational lower bound, we ease training of the latent variables by adding an auxiliary cost which forces them to reconstruct the state of the backward recurrent network. This provides the latent variables with a task-independent objective that enhances the performance of the overall model. We found this strategy to perform better than alternative approaches such as KL annealing. Although being conceptually simple, our model achieves state-of-the-art results on standard speech benchmarks such as TIMIT and Blizzard and competitive performance on sequential MNIST. Finally, we apply our model to language modeling on the IMDB dataset where the auxiliary cost helps in learning interpretable latent variables. Source Code: \url{https://github.com/anirudh9119/zforcing_nips17}

Generating music medleys is about finding an optimal permutation of a given set of music clips. Toward this goal, we propose a self-supervised learning task, called the music puzzle game, to train neural network models to learn the sequential patterns in music. In essence, such a game requires machines to correctly sort a few multisecond music fragments. In the training stage, we learn the model by sampling multiple non-overlapping fragment pairs from the same songs and seeking to predict whether a given pair is consecutive and is in the correct chronological order. For testing, we design a number of puzzle games with different difficulty levels, the most difficult one being music medley, which requiring sorting fragments from different songs. On the basis of state-of-the-art Siamese convolutional network, we propose an improved architecture that learns to embed frame-level similarity scores computed from the input fragment pairs to a common space, where fragment pairs in the correct order can be more easily identified. Our result shows that the resulting model, dubbed as the similarity embedding network (SEN), performs better than competing models across different games, including music jigsaw puzzle, music sequencing, and music medley. Example results can be found at our project website, https://remyhuang.github.io/DJnet.

There are a whole host of apps and games that are aimed at teaching kids to code, but not all of them come with stellar IP partnerships. But that's just what Bloxels, Pixel Press's video game building system aimed at teaching kids how to be content creators, has. Today, Pixel Press and the toy company Mattel announced that the companies were partnering to release a Star Wars edition of Bloxels. You can buy it today for $50 at retailers nationwide. Bloxels aim to help kids learn about the mechanics of video game design and storytelling by putting them in control of creating a game.

A few weeks ago, Jochen Leidner, Director of Research at Thomson Reuters, discussed and dissected artificial intelligence (AI). Leidner offered some case studies, conducted by his team, to demonstrate successful ways of building AI products. However, before getting into specifics, Leidner gave a very brief explanation of what AI is and what it does. "It automates things that we deemed, maybe, not automatable a couple of years ago – if it works, or to an extent." Dr. Leidner, who is also the Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of Data Analytics at the University of Sheffield, made the point very early on that AI is a tool to be utilized with other forms of intelligence.

The absence of Amazon's Alexa and Prime Music services in Canada has been a strange oversight, given that the nation's share a border and (one of two) common languages. That has now been corrected, as Amazon has finally launched the Echo family, Prime Music and Alexa Voice services and skills in the land of hockey and poutine. "We're excited to bring [Alexa] to Canada with an experienced designed from the ground up for our Canadian customers," said Amazon Senior VP Tom Taylor in a statement. Amazon has introduced a new English voice for Alexa with a Canadian accent, though even we Canadians aren't exactly sure what that is. However, Alexa doesn't seem to be available yet in French, which is bit surprising considering that it's one of Canada's two official languages (Engadget has reached out for more information).

Al Alcorn knew he was being wooed. Nolan Bushnell, the tall, brash, young engineer from Alcorn's work-study days at Ampex, had shown up at Alcorn's Sunnyvale office. Bushnell was driving a new blue station wagon. "It's a company car," he said with feigned nonchalance. He offered to drive Alcorn, recently hired as an associate engineer at Ampex, to see the "game on a TV screen" that Bushnell and Ted Dabney had developed at their new startup company. The two men drove to an office in Mountain View, near the highway. The space was large, about 10,000 square feet, and looked like a cross between an electronics lab and an assembly warehouse. Oscilloscopes and lab benches filled one area. Half-built cabinets and screen with wires protruding from them sat in another. Bushnell walked with Alcorn to a sinuous, six-foot-tall fiberglass cabinet with a screen at eye level. Bushnell was proud of what he called its "spacey-looking" shape.

It's no understatement to say that the science fiction stories that we've told ourselves in well-thumbed paperbacks, cult movies and beloved TV series have changed the world. For years they've led the way for real scientific advances, providing the creative vision that has inspired engineers and scientists. But in an age where reality is starting to catch up with fiction… well, what happens next? "We're really starting to catch up with those ideas now in the real world," says futurologist and artificial intelligence (AI) expert Dr Ian Pearson. And it's true, science is making fiction a reality.

Personalized experiences are a hot topic these days. Certain types of businesses have become very skilled at delivering personalized service. Think about a hotel you've stayed at before that welcomes you back and remembers that you liked a certain type of pillow, a specific newspaper and a corner room. The experience is becoming more and more common, and this type of service is crossing over into many other industries, especially retail. When a customer walks into a retail store, the salesperson has two choices: simply ring up a purchase, or truly help the customer get what he or she really needs.

Just in time for the impending release of its higerh-fidelity Google Home Max smart speaker, Google has given its Home app a makeover, bringing advanced audio settings, smarter search, and better navigation. Anyone who owns an Assistant or Chromecast device knows how easy it is to set it up using the Home app, but now Google is giving us a reason to open more often. The entire app has been redesigned, with a clean aesthetic and more intuitive navigation. For example, when you want to find a movie or song, the search bar is at the bottom of the screen, just like it is on the new Pixel phones. The new Google Home app has audio controls, in-app movie trailer casting, and smarter search.