Convenience store chain Lawson Inc. might use artificial intelligence to help it make decisions on opening new stores, company officials said Sunday. Lawson aims to enhance the capability of stores to fulfill particular needs in each region by using AI to collect and analyze marketing data including household distribution patterns and traffic volumes, to predict the profitability of new stores in each target area. It would be the first such attempt to incorporate AI technology in the Japanese retail sector, the officials said. Demonstrations began at the end of last year, when it opened new Lawson Store 100 shops that sell fresh foods. It plans to expand the introduction of AI at other stores, including its conventional Lawson and high-end Natural Lawson outlets. An Lawson executive said the company is hoping that "AI will be able to search for places suitable for the opening of new stores" in the future.

But for those who have already got some basic ideas about the concepts of ML and the motivation for the theoretical justification of the algorithms, this is definitely should be the next book to read: it provides the rigorous proofs and presents the concepts and algorithms in clear mathematical language. There is no need to be scared though: the presentation of the stuff is excellent, the chapters are short enough in order to enable the reader to advance in reasonable steps (the book is derived from the lectures presented by both of the authors), there are excellent exercises.

Walmart may be grabbing headlines for its embrace of cutting-edge technologies, but at the heart of those changes are companies like Bossa Nova. The San Francisco-based robotics firm created the robots now roaming the aisles in 50 Walmart locations around the US. Bossa Nova's robots are able to perform tasks such as identifying when items are out of stock, locating incorrect prices, and detecting wrong or missing labels. We spoke to Martin Hitch, chief business officer at Bossa Nova, about the technology behind the machines and how they are being received by shoppers and employees. This article is part of a weekly series paired with our newsletter Clocking In, which covers the impact of technology on the future of work.

In this paper, we design and analyze a new zeroth-order online algorithm, namely, the zeroth-order online alternating direction method of multipliers (ZOO-ADMM), which enjoys dual advantages of being gradient-free operation and employing the ADMM to accommodate complex structured regularizers. Compared to the first-order gradient-based online algorithm, we show that ZOO-ADMM requires $\sqrt{m}$ times more iterations, leading to a convergence rate of $O(\sqrt{m}/\sqrt{T})$, where $m$ is the number of optimization variables, and $T$ is the number of iterations. To accelerate ZOO-ADMM, we propose two minibatch strategies: gradient sample averaging and observation averaging, resulting in an improved convergence rate of $O(\sqrt{1+q^{-1}m}/\sqrt{T})$, where $q$ is the minibatch size. In addition to convergence analysis, we also demonstrate ZOO-ADMM to applications in signal processing, statistics, and machine learning.

On February 8, we released the Amazon Polly plugin for WordPress, which enables you to easily voice content and publish podcasts directly from your website. By leveraging audio, you can provide your readers with an alternative way to consume your content and meet the needs of a larger audience. Today, we're excited to announce that the Amazon Polly plugin is now available on the popular Bitnami Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). On the AWS Marketplace, you can find the up-to-date WordPress image packaged by Bitnami and WordPress Multisite image packaged by Bitnami, which come preinstalled with the Amazon Polly WordPress plugin. Other Bitnami solutions, such as WordPress for Production or WordPress Multi-Tier, will also include the plugin soon.

Yet for many companies they remain vitally important as the epicenter of occupational fraud detection. So what are the most common tactics of employees looking to defraud companies on their expense reports, and how is the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence already helping stop them? For most of us, when we purchase, say, pillowcases at Walmart, we rightly expect to see the word "Walmart" spelled out clearly on our bank statements. To monitor these transgressions for employers, today's AI systems can automatically cross-check each expense report receipt with data from review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. For example, one machine learning program detected employee meals reimbursed at "K-Kel, Inc," which, it turns out, was actually a receipt for the Spearmint Rhino strip club in Las Vegas.

New Zealand-based artificial intelligence company IMAGR announced today that it's upping the grocery game by launching its innovative solution SMARTCART to a Four Square store in the Auckland suburb of Ellerslie. The move comes as retailers around the globe look for ways to give consumers more streamlined methods and checkout-less options for shopping, including the recent launch of Amazon Go in Seattle. The New Zealand store will be the flagship Foodstuffs retail outlet to trail SMARTCART, a computer vision technology retrofitted to shopping baskets and carts that recognises products as soon as they are placed inside, eliminating the need for barcode scanning, checkouts and queueing. "We're delighted Foodstuffs is the first retailer in the world that we're partnering with to make this happen This is the first significant step in enhancing the way we do our grocery shopping here in New Zealand and abroad," said IMAGR founder William Chomley. "It's great to see Foodstuffs embracing technology like this to empower customer experiences."

For some folks, President's Day is a time to honor U.S. presidents of old, like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. But for tech companies and online retailers, it's another opportunity to lay out some discounts and rake in some sales. We hope you're able to enjoy the weekend. If you happen to be in the mood to peruse, we've hand-picked some of our favorite tech deals from around the web. At the bottom of this article we've also included links to some of the more notable sales going on, in case you want to browse for yourself.

The toy company celebrates 30th Anniversary of the classic Q&A game with three party-ready offerings. TCG, under a licence from Irwin Toy, is launching the 20Q artificial intelligence (AI) game with a new range that marks the 30th anniversary of the brand's debut. Sporting a fresh new look and enhanced technology that builds on the original iconic interactive electronic game, 20Q has been updated for today's inquisitive minds. The all-new line-up, featuring 20Q Classic Edition, 20Q Rock & Roll Edition and 20Q Sports Edition, will be available this autumn at major retailers across the US and Canada. Jessica Gavin, VP marketing & licensing, TCG, commented: "We're thrilled to have 20Q in our line-up for 2018, and excited to introduce three different versions of the standout game to appeal to a wide range of players.

Today, deep learning techniques are poised to disrupt the retail industry. As artificial neural networks become more and more efficient, and as graphics processing units (GPUs) get more and more powerful, so does their influence on retail. Imagine a world in which deep learning-based systems know precisely what a customer wants. In such a scenario, retailers would cater to their customers more quickly and more efficiently. Imagine further a world in which deep learning techniques predict future preferences and needs.