Twitter shareholders will vote on whether to turn the social network into a user-led co-operative at the company's shareholder meeting set to take place at the end of May. The move follows a petition by a group of Twitter fans urging the company to sell itself to its users, turning the firm's publicly-listed share structure into a co-operative, meaning it would be owned by its users. "Wall Street thinks the company is a failure because it's not raking in enough profit for shareholders. That means that Twitter is up for sale, and there is a real risk that the new owner may ruin our beloved platform with a narrow pursuit of profit or political gains," the petition, which has so far gathered nearly 3,500 signatures, reads. "We want the company to share its future with those whose participation make it so valuable: its users" it adds.

Adam Marcus will host a session, Human-assisted AI at B12: 10 lessons in giving humans superpowers, at the O'Reilly Artificial Intelligence Conference, June 26-29, 2017, in New York City. Subscribe to the O'Reilly Data Show Podcast to explore the opportunities and techniques driving big data, data science, and AI. Find us on Stitcher, TuneIn, iTunes, SoundCloud, RSS. In this episode of the O'Reilly Data Show, I spoke with Adam Marcus, co-founder and CTO of B12, a startup focused on building human-in-the-loop intelligent applications. We talked about the open source platform Orchestra,for coordinating human-in-the-loop projects; the current wave of human-assisted AI applications; best practices for reviewing and scoring experts; and flash teams.

A technology company wanted its ads in front of people reading online about data storage. Instead, tens of thousands of dollars worth of ads landed on websites that belonged in the Internet's trash can. There was clouddatarecoverywebhost.info, where the firm's ad appeared on a page that featured a viral YouTube video of a woman whacking an attacker to the ground with a dog. Aside from their URLs, the websites had nothing to do with online storage. In the tangled ecosystem that is online advertising, such nefarious websites collectively reap billions of dollars annually bilking advertisers.

Google is set to give its artificial intelligence-based voice assistant, Google Assistant, a more robust personality. The company has hired Emma Coats, a storyboard artist who worked on Pixar's movie Brave, to help create a more "chatty" Assistant, BBC reported Friday. "The Assistant gives a conversational way to access everything Google can do for you, and on the Personality Team we add delight wherever we can. The rest of Google has all the useful parts of the Assistant covered, so the Google Assistant Personality Team really supports them by coming up with fun things the Assistant can say and do, whether that's games or things to discover," Coats told BBC in an interview. The Google Assistant is part of a tussle between Google and rival Apple, with both companies trying to outdo each other in terms of voice-based features every year.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming a hot topic, with development being made very quickly in the industry it's no wonder everyone is talking about it. We are always reading about the future of AI and whether robots will start to think and really become intelligent. While this does seem far off AI, with the help of machine learning, is starting to have an impact on our lives. All of our smartphones today have some form of'virtual personal assistant', for example Siri or Google Voice, allowing the user to ask questions to their phone and gain a response. While these apps are using machine learning to be able to answer and aid your question they are also learning about you.

Amazon has announced a crackdown on media players that enable consumers to illegally access pirated content. The firm has warned sellers that their accounts face termination if they're found to be selling "certain" prohibited streaming media players. "Products offered for sale on Amazon should not promote, suggest the facilitation of, or actively enable the infringement of or unauthorized access to digital media or other protected content," reads the company's warning. "Any streaming media player or other device that violates this policy is prohibited from sale on Amazon." The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph.

Amazon's second generation Fire TV stick – which lets you stream video and apps on your TV – continues the same winning formula but adds new voice search, Alexa assistant and a snappier, more polished experience making it one of the best instant smart TV devices available. It looks like a USB flash drive, just with an HDMI connector on one end and a microUSB socket in the side. Set up is incredibly easy. Plug it directly into the back of your TV or receiver, or use the included HDMI extension cable if it doesn't quite fit next to other devices, connect the included microUSB cable to the power adapter and plug it into the stick. If you bought the Fire TV Stick directly from Amazon then once you've put in your wifi password, your account details will already be set up and ready.

Artificial intelligence has quickly become part of our daily routine -- it powers everything from simple features like automatic image tagging on Facebook and purchase prediction on Amazon to more complex systems like smart cars and connected homes. We can even thank AI for HBO's hit TV series, Westworld, a sci-fi thriller about an amusement park populated with AI-powered robots called "hosts," that dominated the cultural zeitgeist this past fall. While the AI technology we interact with today gives us a hint at what's to come, it's actually Westworld that spells out the future most clearly. Before I get ahead of myself let me clarify: I don't foresee an apocalyptic robot takeover happening any time soon (or ever for that matter). But Westworld's narrative begins in a way that is quite similar to the true beginning of AI -- it may not look the same (you don't see many human-like "hosts" wandering the streets), but the technology behaves the same.

Newswire) Digital Reasoning, a leader in cognitive computing, was announced as the company with the'Best Artificial Intelligence Technology' at the WatersTechnology.com Digital Reasoning created the Synthesys cognitive computing platform, which is one of the most widely-adopted AI systems within financial services and used by many of the world's leading investment banks in applications ranging across risk and compliance, financial crime, and customer insights. Synthesys understands and analyzes human communications. Most communications data is unstructured, making it virtually unreadable using conventional technology. By applying artificial intelligence, Synthesys makes sense of human language in text, audio and images, and resolves who is talking about what and with whom.

Newswire) Remesh, a software company that is reinventing market research through artificial intelligence (AI), today announced the closing of its $2.25 million seed investment round that brings its total funding to $3.85 million. The round is led by LionBird Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in early stage digital health and business services companies with offices in Tel Aviv and Chicago. The round also includes Reimagine Holdings Group, a holding company focused on growing consumer insights and marketing services companies, as well as individual investors, representing a mix of new and returning investors. "We believe that Remesh has shown real potential to change the way brands, consultants and agencies listen to feedback from their audiences," said Ed Michael, Managing Partner at LionBird Ventures. "Remesh has recognized a way to solve for a number of inefficiencies in market research using artificial intelligence. This new model not only replaces legacy systems, but establishes entirely new market research workflows."