Grammy-nominee producer, Alex Da Kid, collaborated with IBM's Watson cognitive computing platform on his newest release. Da Kid used Watson to analyse the composition of five years' worth of Billboard songs along with cultural artefacts such as newspaper articles, film scripts and social media commentary. The aim was to capture the "emotional temperature" of the time period to inform the producer's creative process. "Watson scraped millions of conversations, newspaper headlines and speeches – all of which showed me how emotionally volatile we as humans are and have been, particularly over the last five years." Alex told Forbes, explaining how insights from the data contributed to his finished work.

The software industry lobby Nasscom is setting up centres of excellence on artificial intelligence (AI) and data sciences for a better understanding on the emerging technologies, a top official has said. With the tech world getting divided between whether or not to regulate AI, the body feels that technologies should be freely allowed to mature first before any regulation comes in, its president R Chandrasekhar has said. "We are setting up a centre of excellence on AI and data sciences in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. They will look at mapping the resources available in the country, promoting startups in that area and also best practices globally, including regulatory aspects," he told PTI recently. He, however, did not offer the investment that will go into these proposed centres nor a timeline as to when the first centre of excellence will be functional.

This demo is geared toward illustrators and designers who want to fit a lot of objects into a specific shape. It's a narrow use case, but the animation that happens roughly two-minutes into the video of cats forming the letter A is mesmerizing and worth watching even if you can't draw more than a stick figure. One thing that's very clear from these demos is that Adobe is prioritizing machine learning in its Sensei platform. Artificial intelligence touches every part of these demos and is already baked into just about every piece of photo, video, and illustration editing software in use. That's good news for bad artists--or good artists who just want to save time spent staring at selection tools or rendering progress bars.

I am currently taking a course in the verification of cyber-physical systems. When I say that, think formal and probabilistic verification of state machines for safety. It's a graduate course and the professor wants us all to do a large project. Anything that somewhat relates to the course material is fair game. I thought about mixing it together with machine learning.

The first time a stranger on the train told me I had a nice smile, I didn't believe her. Back then, I hadn't yet had my crooked teeth fixed, and my self-esteem wasn't anywhere as high as it is today. I was an ugly kid, and it took a shocking number of selfies to convince myself that I'm not an ugly adult. It may seem like a superficial pastime, but selfie-taking has real benefits. I'm not alone in believing there are psychological advantages here.

The BBC wants to leverage machine learning to improve its online services and the programmes it commissions every year. Today, the broadcaster announced a five-year research partnership with eight universities from across the UK. Data scientists will help the best and brightest at the BBC set up the "Data Science Research Partnership," tasked with being "at the forefront of the machine learning in the media industry." It will tackle a range of projects not just with the BBC, but media and technology organisations from across Europe. The larger aim is to take the results, or learnings, and apply them directly to the BBC's operations in Britain.

Energy, insurance, telecommunications, and many other industries could also have drones in their future.

Artificial intelligence (AI) takes the power of computing systems to a different level. It is amazing to even think that a computing system can emulate human beings. There are many fantastic examples of AI in various areas of our lives. That said, computing systems are still considered limited in their capabilities because they cannot think creatively like human beings. While AI can process and analyze complex data, it still does not have much prowess in areas that involve abstract, nonlinear and creative thinking.

We'll recap this week's news highlights, plus big stories from Friday like Project Loon-distributed internet going live in Puerto Rico. Former Google X Lab (and now Alphabet X innovation lab) resident Project Loon is getting its first use in the US, as it's partnering with AT&T to provide service in Puerto Rico. As part of the restoration efforts, the high-flying balloons are launching from Nevada and floating over the island, all in hopes of beaming LTE to areas still without service a month after Hurricane Maria. The first Cortana speaker sounds amazing.Harman Kardon Invoke review The good news about this $199 smart speaker is that it sounds great, and Microsoft's Cortana voice assistant is a natural addition. The bad news is that as a latecomer to the game, it has fewer music service integrations, and right now, Cortana isn't as capable as competitors like Amazon's Alexa. You say replicant, we say repli-can.Bad Password: Apps and gadgets for the'Blade Runner' future we didn't ask for This week, Violet Blue explains how technology can help make the best of our dystopian present -- at least until Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling show up to fix things.

Isabelle Olsson, Google's Head of Industrial Design for Home, speaks about the Google Home Mini during a launch event in San Francisco, California, U.S. October 4, 2017. Q: With the Equifax breach, I am worried that hackers can steal money from my bank account. A: The sheer number of victims is massive, and it keeps climbing with every new report. Meanwhile, Equifax has done a miserable job of comforting its customers, and the fallout has left far more questions than answers. The best thing you can do for your security is to establish two-factor authentication on your bank account.