Training a model with the MNIST dataset is often considered the "Hello world" of machine learning. That's been done many times over, but unfortunately, just because a model does well on MNIST, doesn't necessarily mean it is predictive of high performance on other datasets, especially since most image data we have today are considerable more complex than handwritten digits. Zalando decided it was time to make MNIST fashionable again, and recently released a dataset called fashion-mnist. It's the exact same format as'regular' MNIST except the data is in the form of pictures of various clothing types, shoes, and bags. It is still across 10 categories and the images are still 28 by 28 pixels.

Smart home speakers have quickly become the hot gadget people didn't know they wanted. They can answer your movie trivia questions, call a cab, turn your heating on and do your shopping for you. They're gaining new features every day, but are more than just a utility product. These speakers are a ripe platform for all kinds of screen-free entertainment, and I'm not just talking about streaming a Spotify playlist. Earplay is a popular Alexa skill that tells interactive stories, for example, and never one to be late to a fledgling medium, the BBC has taken note.

I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but trust me, if you rely on your phone to help you navigate, it just might someday. My wife and I were en route from Raleigh to St. Louis, having enjoyed crossing the Smokies and the Cumberlands and just coming up on Paducah, Kentucky. Having been routed around a massive traffic jam in Knoxville by my phone, I was much pleased with it, and so listened carefully when it described a similar problem ahead in Paducah. The result: Following my phone's directions, I pulled off the interstate and began taking a series of roads through Paducah, just as I had done in Knoxville. My phone kept sending me down smaller and smaller roads, and soon we were out in the country, presumably bypassing the massive interstate jam ahead.

Getting to the steamy stuff – you know what we're talking about – just got a little easier. Audible recently launched a feature for some romance audiobooks that lets listeners skip to "the good part." The Amazon company launched the Audible Romance Package, which allows users to "binge to your heart's content" thousands of audiobooks included. Because parsing through the masses can be daunting, there are a few ways to narrow the search, including recommendations from the "Take Me to the Good Part" tool. It offers listeners the option to jump to certain places in select audiobooks based on 10 categories.

No matter what your job is, it's likely that a machine will someday do it better. And, for many American workers, that day may come sooner than later. According to a paper published by researchers at Ball State University, roughly half of the jobs American workers perform could be automated in the near future; the study also found low-income work as the category most susceptible to automation. While change is inevitable in the more physical professions, it's increasingly apparent that knowledge-based jobs -- those requiring some special skills or expertise -- are equally at risk. In fact, some of those positions are already being replaced. As a college professor, I spend most of my days reading, writing and thinking about theoretical topics.

After the last post where carlos demonstrated his utter lack of knowledgability in statistics while attempting to comment on stats fundamentals, I was already disinclined to pay him any mind, and this post is equally devoid of real insight. Why are people like this writing textbooks?

I love it when I get feedback from a blog that I've written. I appreciate the different perspectives and insights that others bring to a topic of interest. And no blog that I've written has drawn more comments than my blog, "Isaac Asimov: The 4th Law of Robotics." The section of the blog that fueled the most comments stem from a scene in the movie I, Robot where Detective Spooner (played by Will Smith) is explaining to Doctor Calvin (who is responsible for giving robots human-like behaviors) why he distrusts and hates robots. He is describing an incident where his police car crashed into another car and both cars were thrown into a cold and deep river – certain death for all occupants.

Artificial Intelligence technology – which British physicist Stephen Hawking says can "outperform humans" – could be joining the gymnastic judges' …

At least that was one wine critic's opinion of the new Sumika brand from Marks & Spencer. After all, sometimes you just want to have fun at home. In fact, companies have been developing all kinds of interesting products and services to make the leisurely side of our home lives more connected and more enjoyable. Streaming music services like Pandora and Spotify, as well as multi-room wireless speaker systems like Sonos, for example, allow people to enjoy the pleasures of synchronized whole home audio without the costs and hassles of running wires all over your house. Thanks to recent upgrades from Amazon and Google, households with multiple Echo or Google Home smart speakers can also start to benefit from this surprisingly enjoyable feature--once limited to high-end custom homes. For this to work, you'll need to configure your speakers to function together as a multiroom group in the respective Alexa and Google Home apps, but the process is straightforward.

Since our bio-inspired machine learning technology "Dynamic Boltzmann Machine (DyBM)" debuted in the fall of 2015, we received many comments on the music demo and human evolution image that we used to show how an artificial neural network learns about different topics in different formats. Many developers expressed interest in using the code to let DyBM learn other music or animation. This request for more "openness" made us wonder if we should dramatically change DyBM's bio-oriented design. It learns patterns like neurons: at each moment of a song or an image, DyBM adjusts its internal parameters. The more data fed into DyBM, the better it will master what it's trying to understand.