GovTech Business Watch is a weekly roundup of news in the government technology market. Following the explosive popularity of body cameras at police departments across the country, a video analytics company is training up programs that could help automate some of the work it takes to get value out of the huge volume of visual data those cameras produce. Dextro, a New York-based company founded in 2013, has traditionally sold its services to the private sector. But now, according to an article from the Knight Foundation-backed news site Undark, the company is building up its artificial intelligence capacities to handle video from police departments. With companies such as Taser selling thousands upon thousands of cameras, many of them now producing high-definition video, police departments are beginning to compile terabyte-sized archives of data.

You know that artificial intelligence and machine learning are the fields of the future, right? Sure, they might also be the fields that spell mankind's demise, but let's try to stay positive and assume we're figure out how not to create machines who want to eliminate us. The point is, if you want to learn some soon to be very marketable skills, there's this Machine Learning with Python Course and E-Book Bundle right here that might interest you. There's a total of 4 e-books and 5 courses to help you come to grips with all the basics, as well as delving into some more advanced stuff. Considering the entire bundle is only $49, it's a very cost efficient way to explore a field that's in high demand for competency, and already offering some high-paying jobs.

"Twilight" actress Kristen Stewart is so much more than an actress that plays a role in a movie, as she recently published a research paper about Artificial Intelligence that she co-authored. She definitely offers more than what is expected from her and it has amazingly surprised her fans and the rest of the world. Just recently, Hollywood actress Kristen Stewart co-authored a research paper on neural style transfer which is a technique that is currently using artificial intelligence to reconfigure an image using another style. The paper is written by Bhautik J Joshi who is a research engineer at Adobe and is related to the short film and Stewart's directing debut entitled "Come Swim." The paper was recently submitted to the open access library at the Cornwell University last Wednesday.

It is supposed to be the futuristic household tool catering to the demands and whims of tech-savvy homeowners. But to those named Alexa, it appears the Amazon Echo makes life decidedly more frustrating. The gadget, which perform tasks including ordering shopping online through simple voice commands, has become the focus of annoyance to Alexas across the globe – because that is precisely the name to which the device answers. Amazon Echo is a voice-controlled smart speaker that works alongside a smartphone app. Using a virtual assistant called Alexa, the speaker can respond to voice commands from the user, such as setting an alarm or ordering a cab.

Sci-fi and tech movies have been around for a surprisingly long time. They frequently tackle similar themes of exploring consciousness or over-dependence on technology which almost everytime leads to disastrous results. But, which movies are the essential ones to watch? You might be asking "What is your selection criteria?". Well, that is a good question. We may not be able to give you a definitive answer for each movie but for most of the list; it is self-evident.

When you imagine the ideal chatbot, what do you picture? The bot in your mind's eye may resemble something along the lines of blockbuster movie favorites like Baymax from "Big Hero 6," "Wall-E's" EVE, or my personal hero, C-3PO. You probably didn't imagine a small tower that lives on your shelf, like Alexa; a virtual being that resides in the cloud and is accessed through your smartphone, like Siri; or even a pop-up chat window on your computer screen that can answer questions about your favorite products. Besides their looks, there's another major difference between today's artificial intelligence (AI) and our movie favorites: Our most beloved fictional chatbots all possess emotional intelligence (EI). As we move into the future, AI needs humanizing qualities to improve the way it interacts with us, meets our needs for information, and even controls the other technology around us.

Their machine-learning platform predicted a trio of reagents that was able to generate a never-before-seen cancer-like phenotype in tadpoles. The research, reported in Scientific Reports on January 27, shows how artificial intelligence (AI) can help human researchers in fields such as oncology and regenerative medicine control complex biological systems to reach new and previously unachievable outcomes. The researchers had previously shown that pigment cells (melanocytes) in developing frogs could be converted to a cancer-like, metastatic form by disrupting their normal bioelectric and serotonergic signaling and had used AI to reverse-engineer a model that explained this complex process. However, during these extensive experiments, the biologists observed something remarkable: All the melanocytes in a single frog larva either converted to the cancer-like form or remained completely normal. Conversion of only some of the pigment cells in a single tadpole was never seen; how, the researchers asked, could such an all-or-none coordination of cells across the tadpole body be explained and controlled?

Iconic filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola is asking the public to contribute $900,000 to aid him in his efforts to adapt his blockbuster war film "Apocalypse Now" into an interactive, psychological horror video game, according to a Kickstarter page set up on Wednesday. The video game will transpose the player into the shoes of the U.S. army Captain Willard (protagonist of the 1979 film, played by Martin Sheen) who is sent on a secret mission to exterminate renegade Colonel Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando). Over $93,000 has already been raised for the project being developed by Coppola's privately-held American Zoetrope film studio since it was announced Wednesday. "Forty years ago, I set out to make a personal art picture that could hopefully influence generations of viewers for years to come. Today, I'm joined by new daredevils, a team who want to make an interactive version of'Apocalypse Now', where you are Captain Benjamin Willard amidst the harsh backdrop of the Vietnam War," Coppola said in a statement, according to Reuters.

Actor Kristen Stewart, known for her portrayal of Bella in the "Twilight" movie franchise and director of "Come Swim" at the Sundance Film Festival, now has another line on her résumé: co-author of a computer science paper. The paper, published online in the preprint journal ArXiv, is called "Bringing Impressionism to Life with Neural Style Transfer in Come Swim." The authors describe a set of programming shortcuts that can make movie shots look as though they were painted or drawn in a certain style, such as impressionism or pointillism. The process relies on machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence, and gave certain shots in the film short, which uses allusive images to follow a man through his day, the look of an impressionistic painting. The shot described in the paper is about 15 seconds long, and the painting is by Stewart herself.

WorkFusion, the leading provider of intelligent automation, has closed a $35 million Series D financing round led by Georgian Partners with participation from existing investors Mohr Davidow Ventures, iNovia, Nokia Growth Partners (NGP), Greycroft and RTP Ventures, bringing total funds raised to $71 million. The funding will accelerate customer adoption of AI-powered automation as they realize the immense productivity gains from digitizing business processes. "We invested in WorkFusion not only because it aligns with our thesis that AI will transform business, but most importantly because the company has made machine learning practical and powerful for enterprise operations," said Justin LaFayette, Managing Partner at Georgian Partners. "WorkFusion has category leading products and a strong leadership aligned by a powerful vision of helping businesses drive rapid productivity improvements with AI." WorkFusion transforms operations through self-learning, process-level automation that eliminates up to 90% of manual back-office work and AI-powered chat bots that increase front office service center capacity by 5x. "IDC estimates the AI and cognitive systems market will grow from $8 billion in 2016 to over $47 billion in 2020 and businesses are looking to invest in the most innovative and comprehensive automation technologies on the market," said Max Yankelevich, WorkFusion CEO.