When you get the opportunity to ask world-renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson absolutely anything about the known universe, odds are you'd have some pretty important questions. Like, we don't know, are we alone in the universe? Are alternate realities a thing? And comedian Andy Samberg got this chance last night when he was a fellow guest on The Late Late Show with James Corden. Okay, in Samberg's defense, he also asked about all that other stuff (and also in his defense, we kind of want to know about the robot sex thing too, now that it's out there…).

Long gone are the days of swapping tapes with friends after school, reading about the latest bands in your weekly magazine or tuning into Top of the Pops at the end of the week for the chart countdown. The excitement of discovering new music has definitely declined as the digitalisation of music has taken over the industry. Spotify is the most popular music streaming service out there and as such, harnesses the most valuable asset a company like this can have – data. Used by over 100 million people, with 30million of those paid subscribers and 55% of those linking their accounts to social media. Around 5million playlists are created or edited daily and in 2015 Spotify users streamed over 20bn hours of music.

A new movie that depicts AI making problems for humanity was released this week. While it's certainly not the first such movie--Hollywood has been profiting off of our reservations about AI for decades--this was the first movie to have a trailer created by AI. In keeping with the theme of the film in which a corporate risk management consultant must make the difficult decision of whether or not to kill an artificially intelligent being, IBM decided that they would consult their deep learning machine, Watson, to create the perfect trailer for the film. Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence in which machines are programmed to analyze massive amounts of input to search for patterns. To teach Watson to create a trailer for a horror movie, IBM had it "watch" 100 classic horror movies so it could understand what horror is, and what components in a film triggers a fear response in humans.

Robot" Season 2, Episode 11, "eps2.9_pyth0n-pt1.p7z" was the perfect way to usher in the final episode of the season. It offered a lot of questions. And there was even a little treat at the end. The episode opened with Dom (Grace Gummer) having her cuts and bruises checked after the shooting at Lupe's. She's adamant that she doesn't need to be treated and that it would be better if she were working at the crime scene. Her boss is not sold on the idea of letting her go back to work, though, so she's forced to take some time off. But not before she learns that China has loaned E Corp trillions of dollars. Phillip Price's (Michael Cristofer) plan to be the most powerful man in the world seems to be proceeding perfectly. Meanwhile, Dom was uneasy the entire time she was at home. The desperation and loneliness was palpable. One has to wonder what the significance of learning about Dom's loneliness is. Will it be something someone will use against her? Will it drive her to do things you ...

Each artificial intelligence (AI) technology is developed to solve a particular problem. Once it solves a problem, however, it's no longer considered AI anymore. Everything from simple calculators and computers, to innovations such as voice recognition on the phone, are just everyday tools that would hardly be considered all that "intelligent". It's almost as if the term AI refers to the science and engineering of making computers do things they can't do yet. Or so suggests Prof Peter Stone from the University of Texas: chair of a panel of academic and industrial thinkers who co-authored the first offering from the 100 Year Study on Artificial Intelligence, an ongoing project hosted by Stanford University to help inform society on how best to manage and respond to developments in smart software, sensors and machines.

Is HBO's new show "Westworld" considered a Western series or a sci-fi series? If lead star Evan Rachel Wood, who plays robotic host Dolores Abernathy, were to be asked, it's a little bit of both. "It's science fiction, it's a Western, it's an existential drama and an intellectual nightmare," Wood told the Rolling Stone, adding, "and I've never really read or seen anything quite like this -- including the movie. And for those of us playing the hosts, it was also like the Acting Olympics: 'I need you to have a panic attack, and then I need you to be in character, and then I need you to go into computer mode, and then I need you to breathe, and then I need you to be downloading…'" Show creators Jonathan Nolan and his wife Lisa Joy really wanted to deliver something new to television. In most sci-fi movies, humans are always the protagonists, while robots or machines are trying to bring them down.

Tesla says it can't verify whether a vehicle autopilot system is to blame for the death of a Chinese man whose father claimed on state television that the driver-assist feature was active.

Machine learning used to take place behind the scenes: Amazon mined your clicks and purchases for recommendations, Google mined your searches for ad placement, and Facebook mined your social network to choose which posts to show you. But now machine learning is on the front pages of newspapers, and the subject of heated debate. Learning algorithms drive cars, translate speech, and win at Jeopardy! What can and can't they do? Are they the beginning of the end of privacy, work, even the human race?

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced THINK Marketing, a new one-stop destination for marketers to gain knowledge, learn skills and ultimately drive a digital transformation within their business. Designed to help Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) and their teams build proficiency and experience, THINK Marketing delivers news and thought leadership content from the industry's top marketing influencers and news outlets. Through these assets, marketers can gain a deeper knowledge and, when ready, match their needs with solutions from IBM and more than sixty marketing technology companies from around the globe including Sprinklr, Mirakl and MediaMath. THINK Marketing will rapidly grow to include new industry specific content, collections of content on additional marketing functions and double the number of third-party solutions. THINK Marketing will also include a developer marketplace where start-ups and developers can virtually brainstorm, try solutions and also create and bring to market new cognitive and cloud apps that address important marketing challenges.

Around the Institute Data, Tech, LearningThe Enabling Connected Learning initiative has been exploring student data collection/analysis and technological development, digging into the hype and fear around tech in education, the tangled issues of privacy, equity, and efficacy. The conversation around student data and "EdTech" can be contentious and… Link to Full Article: 9.14: data, tech, learning; artificial intelligence