In 1958, the Monotones asked, "Who Wrote the Book of Love?". If we fast forward 58 years to the present day, would the'Algorithm of Love' be a more accurate title? It is certainly a valid question; such is the popularity of the modern online dating website. Users can forego the inevitable awkwardness of blind or speed dating altogether, having found out every last detail about their date before they ever have to meet them in person. Most dating websites utilise some form of collaborative filtering or a'Netflix style' recommendation algorithm that matches people with their potential partners based on shared interests and hobbies or mutual likes and dislikes.

Artificial Intelligence is a term the public is increasingly familiar with. After all, in 2003, a computer programme was causing mass mayhem. It was rapidly and successfully overwriting core programmes within a global network and almost achieved complete control – well, in the film The Matrix Reloaded at least! Far-fetched and futuristic as that film seemed all those years ago, and whilst we are not yet seeing'Agent Smith' levels of Artificial Intelligence or a post-apocalyptic future where machines rule humans, robots taking over networks are not a figment of imagination anymore. Last December, 'BlackEnergy' malware targeted power companies in western Ukraine with great speed and precision, causing a blackout that affected more than 225,000 civilians . Before that, 'BlackEnergy' had overwritten file extensions within Ukrainian media companies, rendering their operating systems unbootable.

Late Night host Seth Meyers sits down with USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham to talk tech--why Facebook is funnier than Twitter, his thoughts on drones and hyperloops, his home app of choice and why he won't buy the Amazon Echo. "I couldn't live without my iPhone, but if I have to hit a reply, I'm so much happier having a Blackberry," says Meyers in a #TalkingTech interview here. He likes iPhone for surfing and quick replies, but the physical keyboard of the BlackBerry for writing jokes and longer e-mail replies. The host of NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers (Monday through Friday, 12:35 AM) regularly turns to tech in his monologues, where gadgets, apps and websites are often just as relevant as the day's headlines. He recently took on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the segment "Hillary Clin-Tron Tech Genius," for not being as tech savvy as he would have liked, roasting her for such sins as admitting that she didn't know how to charge an Apple iPad or operate the fax (yes, fax) machine. The former Saturday Night Live troupe player and writer describes himself as "pretty good for a 42-year-old, and pretty terrible for an 18-year-old.

Google has launched a project to use artificial intelligence to create compelling art and music, offering a reminder of how technology is rapidly changing what it means to be a musician, and what makes us distinctly human. Google's Project Magenta, announced Wednesday, aims to push the state of the art in machine intelligence that's used to generate music and art. "We don't know what artists and musicians will do with these new tools, but we're excited to find out," said Douglas Eck, the project's leader in a blog post. "Daguerre and later Eastman didn't imagine what Annie Liebovitz or Richard Avalon would accomplish in photography. Surely Rickenbacker and Gibson didn't have Jimi Hendrix or St. Vincent in mind." Google has already released a song demonstrating the technology.

Douglas Eck, the project leader, posted Welcome to Magenta on its website on Jume 1st but had disclosed rather more about the project at Moogfest the previous week. He revealed that the inspiration for Magenta had come from other Google Brain projects, like Google DeepDream, where AI systems were trained on image databases to "fill in the gaps" in pictures, trying to find structures in images that weren't necessarily present in the images themselves. In the Magenta project Eck and his team want to see if, given enough training data, a machine could create music that would be engaging and exciting for a person to listen to. Eck also suggested that computer-created music could be used therapeutically, suggesting a scenario in which a person's wearable device tracking her heart rate sends a signal to her smartphone that she is stressed and an AI system could generate appropriately soothing music to alleviate the stress.

Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam," processed through Google DeepDream (image via Kyle McDonald/Flickr) Can artificial intelligence create art? In recent years, we've seen plenty of attempts to answer this question, from portrait-painting robots to Aaron, a computer program that makes neon abstractions. Now, Google is launching Magenta, an effort to generate original music, video, images, and text using machine intelligence. Part of Google Brain, the company's deep learning research project, Magenta will explore whether artificial intelligence can create art. "There's a couple of things that got me wanting to form Magenta, and one of them was seeing the completely, frankly, astonishing improvements in the state of the art. And I wanted to demystify this a little bit," Google researcher Douglas Eck said during a panel at MoogFest, a technology and music festival.

While the world has been fixated on following the soap opera of financial markets, a more profound and ubiquitous development has been taking place worldwide - the rapid development in artificial intelligence and the fourth industrial revolution, which we think will mark an endless wave of disruptions. We believe artificial intelligence (AI) is almost ready for wider adoption by businesses, in turn providing opportunities, but also risks for investors. With corporate longevity already on the decline - according to McKinsey, one in five listed companies in the US may not last beyond the next five years - the integration of AI into business applications will have significant investment implications in the years to come. Similar to how companies with no core assets could become leaders in their industries today, AI companies have the potential to become tomorrow's industry leaders. As noted by Mr Tom Goodwin of the French media group Havas, who would have imagined just a few years back that the world's largest taxi firm (Uber) would own no vehicles, the world's largest accommodation provider (Airbnb) would operate no rooms, while the world's most valuable media company (Facebook) would create no content?

To expand: according to my naive understanding, boosted trees are basically an ensemble of decision trees which are fit sequentially so that each new tree makes up for the errors of the previously existing set of trees. The model is "boosted" by focusing new additions on correcting the residual errors of the last version of the model. The "gradient" comes in afterward as the parameters of the tree ensemble are optimized to minimize the error of the whole "base learner". I think of this as fine tuning of the boosted tree ensemble using a gradient-based optimization.

This week's top Machine Learning stories, including AI agents that compose music, watch movies, surf Facebook, and more! Machine Learning is one of the most exciting fields in the world. Every week we discover something new, something amazing, something revolutionary. It's incredible, but it can also be overwhelming. That's why we created This Week in Machine Learning!

The beloved trio of Top Gear presenters is long gone, but another pillar of the BBC's most popular show endures: spectacular stunts in exotic locales, with cars that drill dimples into your cheeks. That explains why even in the, let's just say mixed reviews of the new crew's first episode, no one complained about the American's star turn. In a 10-minute segment, new host Matt LeBlanc took the dirt-spitting Ariel Nomad for a run through the Moroccan desert, dodging "villains" riding motorcycles, flying drones, and doing whatever it is you do with a paramotor. The 47,000 Nomad is the off-road sibling to the bonkers Atom, so it obviously struck the Top Gear guys as something "we can have a lot of fun with," says series producer Alex Renton. He's been with the show for 11 years and got the top job for this, its 23rd season. Putting LeBlanc behind the wheel brought a dose of comedy to an already silly car and the 30-person "traveling circus" that descended on Northern Africa for three days in February.