The Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, led by Gil Weinberg, has a reputation for doing incredible musical things with robots, with a mix of creativity and technical expertise in robotics and AI. We've seen projects like a cybernetic second arm for a drummer, a cybernetic third arm (!) for a drummer, and a bunch of interesting research on ways that robots can dynamically collaborate with humans in the context of improvisational music. That last thing usually features Shimon, a four-armed expressive robotic marimba player, which can analyze music in real time and improvise along with human performers. It's an impressive thing to watch, but Shimon's talents were mostly restricted to riffing on what other human musicians were doing. Now, Shimon has leveraged deep learning to create structured and coherent and totally unique compositions of its very own.

In anticipation of Sunday's Emmy Awards, this week WIRED staffers are looking back at some of their favorite shows from the past year. One scene from Westworld replays in my head again and again, a little like (I imagine) one of the poor, doomed robots on the show who start noticing and remembering the programmatic loops in their simulated, hyper-violent Old West sandbox game. It's when the android Maeve, played by Thandie Newton, grabs a technician's tablet showing the dashboard for her personality software and, with a deft finger swipe, upgrades herself to genius. Yes, maybe taking control of your life by literally taking control of your life is a teensy bit on the nose. But for me it was the best flicker of weirdness from a show that--again, like its robots--dreamed big dreams.

In this Aug. 15, 2017 photo, computer scientist Mohamed Saad Ibn Seddik, of Sea Machines Robotics, uses a laptop to guide a boat outfitted with sensors and self-navigating software and capable of autonomous navigation in Boston Harbor. The boat still needs human oversight, but some of the world's biggest maritime firms have committed to designing ships that won't need any captains or crews - at least not on board.

Computers are taking over our world. This may sound like a crazy rant from a paranoid old-man but the advent of virtual reality slowly and gradually is nudging us along the line of increased tech dependence. Brain-computer interfaces are integral in furthering the human-AI interactions. The BCIs could serve as the software interface medium to stabilize human action controlling robots. The BCI interface uses an EEG cap to measure brain signals.

Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli's voice soared to the rafters of a Tuscan theatre, but all eyes were on YuMi, the automated conductor beside him. The robot with the apparent penchant for Verdi took part in a world first, using its two mechanical arms to direct the orchestra. The Swiss-designed system swept its baton skywards with one hand, while the other curved around in a caress spurring on the strings as the operatic La Donna E' Mobile, or Woman Is Fickle, reached its climax. Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli's (front of stage) voice soared to the rafters of a Tuscan theatre on Tuesday, but all eyes were on YuMi, the automated conductor beside him (foreground of image) during a world first performance by a two armed robotic maestro YuMi, whose name is derived from the phrase'you and me', was taught all the movements by conductor Andrea Colombani. He held its arms in rehearsals so the computer could memorise the correct gestures.

Apple said the phone's battery will last two hours longer than that of the iPhone 7. Reporter Dave Lee for BBC Radio 4's Today program was at the Apple launch. He spoke to Marc Allera, chief executive officer of mobile network EE, who said: 'I think that phone isn't for everyone, given the price point, but there are a large number of customers that we're seeing do want the latest technology. These new smart phones are packing in more and more features and we're all spending more and more time using more and more services and applications on our smartphones.' But not everyone is convinced. Apple on Tuesday announced the iPhone X, pronounced'iPhone 10', that comes with no home button. Users have to swipe up from the bottom to unlock or to go home from an app or to multitask. It also includes'Face ID' that allows users to unlock the phone by looking at it Robert Scoble, a Silicon Valley tech evangelist best known for his Scobleizer blog, was first in line for the original iPhone, 10 years ago. But he feels the latest model is less than impressive, particularly given the price. He told the Today program: 'This doesn't change the world.

This involves automatic extraction of the business logic from a code base. One of the challenges is to understand the developper's intentions that led to a specific organization of this business logic. Using Posters to Recommend Anime and Mangas by Jill-Jênn Vie, (livestream from Japan) - English- The classic recommendation problem is the following: given a user and the items (mangas) that they like, how can we recommend new items (mangas) that they are also likely to enjoy? Typically this is done via collaborative filtering, i.e. people with similar taste also enjoy other mangas, so we recommend these to the original user. A very common problem occurs when you have a new or obscure manga, aka the cold-start problem. There are no reviews to use for this manga, so a cooler option is to build a system that actually understands the content it recommends. We propose extracting visual information from the posters of these little-known mangas, using a deep neural net called Illustration2Vec. The theory is that users that like mangas with "girl with sword" will also like other mangas that have "girl with sword" or perhaps "girl with bow" but probably not "multiple boys in a swimming pool".

Monkeys cannot create copyrightable works. This is an actual rule. In 2011, British photographer David Slater was photographing a troop of macaques when Naruto, a six-year-old, smiled into Slater's lens, pressed the shutter button, and captured this toothy selfie: The lawsuit seeks to establish that Naruto should own his selfie, just as any human being owns a selfie they take. After going viral and popping social media metrics rivaling Ellen DeGeneres' Oscar-selfie, the photo was posted on Wikipedia. Slater fired off a cease-and-desist letter, but Wikipedia refused to take down the photo because a monkey, not a human, created it. PETA jumped into the fray and sued Slater to establish Naruto's ownership of his selfie. After entertaining some giggle-inducing, "monkey-see, monkey-do" briefs, a federal court held that Congress did not intend to extend copyright protection to works created by animals. A recent settlement – in which Slater will donate a portion of future royalties to conservation charities – mooted the Ninth Circuit appeal. Nonetheless, this seemingly frivolous lawsuit has significant consequences.

This is an actual rule. In 2011, British photographer David Slater was photographing a troop of macaques when Naruto, a six-year-old, smiled into Slater's lens, pressed the shutter button, and captured this toothy selfie: The lawsuit seeks to establish that Naruto should own his selfie, just as any human being owns a selfie they take. After going viral and popping social media metrics rivaling Ellen DeGeneres' Oscar-selfie, the photo was posted on Wikipedia. Slater fired off a cease-and-desist letter, but Wikipedia refused to take down the photo because a monkey, not a human, created it. PETA jumped into the fray and sued Slater to establish Naruto's ownership of his selfie.

Watson has made AI practitioners' lives worse by building up unnecessary hype with marketing materials that are essentially science fiction and then predictably failing to deliver anything remotely similar to customers. I just hope they don't cause another AI recession with their reckless overpromising.