Bayesian inference is a way to get sharper predictions from your data. It's particularly useful when you don't have as much data as you would like and want to juice every last bit of predictive strength from it. Although it is sometimes described with reverence, Bayesian inference isn't magic or mystical. And even though the math under the hood can get dense, the concepts behind it are completely accessible. In brief, Bayesian inference lets you draw stronger conclusions from your data by folding in what you already know about the answer. Bayesian inference is based on the ideas of Thomas Bayes, a nonconformist Presbyterian minister in London about 300 years ago. He wrote two books, one on theology, and one on probability. His work included his now famous Bayes Theorem in raw form, which has since been applied to the problem of inference, the technical term for educated guessing. The popularity of Bayes' ideas was aided immeasurably by another minister, Richard Price.

They are wise-cracking companions, able to communicate in more than six million languages. Others are bent on enslaving or destroying humanity, deeming themselves better, more rational caretakers of the Earth in light of our irrational behaviors. Pilot or garbage man, soldier or slave, hero or villain--robots have played every role imaginable in popular science fiction for nearly a century. In the 21st century, real-life robots inspired by their fictional counterparts are beginning to take starring roles in everyday life. Several companies, Google among them, are testing autonomous cars (unfortunately, there is no indication that they will be able to travel into the past or future anytime soon).

Want to make your own film soundtrack in minutes? Fancy creating a track to help you sleep? With the AI music maker, Jukedeck, this is all possible. Jukedeck allows anyone to make music. Simply select the genre, such as folk, rock or cinematic; the'mood', which can be uplifting or aggressive, and the length of time for the track.

Google recently introduced the $130 Home as the latest member of its hardware family for the connected home. Early impressions indicate it is capable of imperfect voice assistant with a decent speaker. It also plays nicely with Pixel and Chromecast, but could be improved if Google adds support for services like Netflix or HBO Go. Despite the Home's new veneer, iFixit says it experienced a moment of déjà vu when it reached the motherboard, which features many of the same chips as the 2015 Chromecast, with the exception of a new amplifier. "We're having déjà vu with these chips, as most of them (CPU, flash, and RAM) made an appearance in last year's Chromecast," iFixit notes.

Facebook's long-term roadmap is focused on building foundational technologies in three areas: connectivity, artificial intelligence and virtual reality. We believe that major research and engineering breakthroughs in each of these areas will help us make more progress toward opening the world to everyone over the next decade. Our work in AI is helping us move all these projects forward. We're conducting industry-leading research to help drive advancements in AI disciplines like computer vision, language understanding and machine learning. We then use this research to build infrastructure that anyone at Facebook can use to build new products and services.

Written by C. Raja Mohan Updated: November 8, 2016 12:21 am Media reports say an artificial intelligence (AI) system called MogIA, developed by Sanjiv Rai, an innovator based in Mumbai, has predicted that Donald Trump will win Tuesday's presidential elections in the United States. Unveiled in 2004, the system apparently got it right in the last three presidential elections. It also predicted that Trump and Hillary Clinton will be the nominees of the Republican and Democratic Parties respectively. Rai is quoted as saying that the algorithm got even better as it has "learnt" from the last few rounds. MogIA is named after Mowgli from The Jungle Book.

What better way to create a movie trailer about an artificially enhanced human than to use the reality behind the premise; artificial intelligence (AI). That's just what a partnership between IBM Research and 20th Century Fox recently set out to do, when they used machine learning techniques to produce what they described as the "first ever cognitive movie trailer." You'll have to judge the merits of the result yourself, but what is beyond doubt is this is just one example of the many ways AI and machine learning techniques are already changing the face of the entertainment industry. It's only makes sense that creative industries are leading the pack when it comes to the adoption of and experimentation with AI. Media, entertainment, and advertising are all the on the cutting edge when it comes to the adoption of AI and machine learning.

Will the technology be coming for your job next? The question of whether marketing is more science or art has never seemed more relevant now that highly sophisticated cognitive learning technology is able to assume many of the tasks involved in marketing -- in some cases, even doing them better than a human could. But visions of a completely automated campaign may be premature, according to executives from IBM and other companies at the forefront of AI who weighed in on the technology's impact during a panel discussion at ad:tech New York last week. In good news for creative directors, the experts said cognitive technology has the ability to free up marketers to spend more time tackling bigger picture responsibilities, such as finding the inspiration for the right voice and vision to make an emotional connection with consumers. By laying the groundwork for significantly more sophisticated one-to-one marketing, AI could even create a need to beef up analytics, content and other areas for businesses that are able to gain a competitive edge through customer-centric marketing.

What better way to create a movie trailer about an artificially enhanced human than to use the reality behind the premise; artificial intelligence (AI). That's just what a partnership between IBM Research and 20th Century Fox recently set out to do, when they used machine learning techniques to produce what they described as the "first ever cognitive movie trailer." You'll have to judge the merits of the result yourself, but what is beyond doubt is this is just one example of the many ways AI and machine learning techniques are already changing the face of the entertainment industry. It's only makes sense that creative industries are leading the pack when it comes to the adoption of and experimentation with AI. Media, entertainment, and advertising are all the on the cutting edge when it comes to the adoption of AI and machine learning.