I thought that this interview deserved a repost here at Data Science Central. It is with the man responsible for Artificial Intelligence at Facebook: the AI director Yann Lecun; and might be of interested and appeal to the knowlegeable of AI here. IEEE Spectrum: We read about Deep Learning in the news a lot these days. What's your least favorite definition of the term that you see in these stories? Yann LeCun: My least favorite description is, "It works just like the brain."

Sure, most of us only have to deal with it once in a while, but for CNN foreign correspondent Will Ripley it's a frequent foe. "Blackout curtains and melatonin" are a must according to Ripley. "I take a lot of vitamins. You're staying in different hotels, you're eating different foods; you want to make sure that you stay healthy and have stamina for working around the clock." Since becoming the American cable news network's Tokyo bureau chief in March 2014, the 35-year-old Connecticut native has been sent to the Middle East twice, China around a dozen times and North Korea seven times.

Microsoft has apologised after a robot it made "tweeted wildly inappropriate and reprehensible words and images" that included support for Hitler and genocide. The company launched Tay, an artificially intelligent robot, on Twitter last week. It was intended to be a fun way of engaging people with AI – but instead was tricked by people into tweeting out support of Hitler and genocide, and repeated white power messages. Microsoft said that it had no way of knowing that people would attempt to trick the robot into tweeting the offensive words, but apologised for letting it do so. Microsoft said that it had launched Tay after success with a similar robot, XiaoIce, in China.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is on its way, according to a report. Developers Rockstar have begun work on the follow up to GTA 5, which was released in 2013 and is by many measures the most successful and expensive game in history, according to a report from TechRadar. The company hasn't yet settled on a location and it isn't clear exactly when the new game will be released. It might not be released for some years yet – GTA V came five years after its predecessor. The game is unlikely to be set outside of the US, according to the same report.

If venture capital and research funding are any indication, artificial intelligence will play a leading role in shaping our future. And few tech innovators in the private or public sector have been as prominent in defining that role as Andrew Ng, chief scientist at China's search giant Baidu. Ng has taught AI at Stanford, led the Google Brain project, founded online education pioneer Coursera, and just last year took his post at "China's Google" in hopes of figuring out how to teach computers to see and hear, and to do that for the world's most populous country. Small wonder why China represents such a huge opportunity for machine intelligence applications. Baidu is the world's fifth most trafficked website.

Machine learning is the automation of discovery, and it is responsible for making our smartphones work, helping Netflix suggest movies for us to watch, and getting presidents elected. But there is a push to use machine learning to do even more--to cure cancer and AIDS and possibly solve every problem humanity has. Domingos is at the very forefront of the search for the Master Algorithm, a universal learner capable of deriving all knowledge--past, present and future--from data. In this book, he lifts the veil on the usually secretive machine learning industry and details the quest for the Master Algorithm, along with the revolutionary implications such a discovery will have on our society. Pedro Domingos is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, and he is the cofounder of the International Machine Learning Society. This Authors at Google talk was hosted by Boris Debic.

This is the fourth in our AI in Fintech Week series. You can see the intro post describing the current state of the art in AI here. Today we look at a job that very few people understand. It is a job that requires an aptitude for math and statistics plus knowledge of complex domains such as life expectancy, healthcare, accidents, weather, wars & terrorism. Fundamentally it is a job that requires math and statistics; our AI friend Hal is heard to say, "I am good at math and statistics, give us a job".

Google is looking to sell robotics firm Boston Dynamics after concluding that it's unlikely to produce any marketable robot in the next few years, according to people familiar with the company who spoke to Bloomberg News. Boston Dynamics has become famous for its impressive (and impressively creepy) videos featuring it torturing its robotic creations with pushes, kicks, shoves and heavy weights, to demonstrate their versatility and reliability. Those creations include the quadrupedal "Big Dog" robotic mule, its lighter and quieter sibling "Spot" and the bipedal robot "Atlas". But the firm, which was acquired by Google in 2013, has failed to live up to the aspirations placed upon it. Its machines, which were largely created in response to military contracts, haven't been easy to adapt for potential commercial sale. And while Google had promised that Boston Dynamics wouldn't take any further military projects, the company still suffered a blow when the US Marine Corps rejected the Big Dog robot, saying it was too noisy for practical use.

But while the idea of sinking your teeth into a tasty slice can be appealing, the bummer is the pesky delivery guy, who loiters in the doorway judging your slovenly outfit and your measly tip. They're fully enclosed, four-wheeled carbohydrate-dispensing machines, complete with heated and cooled, lockable compartments that require the purchaser to enter a passcode to retrieve their delivered food. Its space-age, Kubrickian exterior styling is sure to appeal to middle-age sci-fi geeks as well as neighborhood paintball enthusiasts. Domino's Pizza--which happens to share its hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, with Car and Driver--has a long history of delivery innovation, including in recent years electric vehicles and Chevrolet Spark–based custom delivery wagons. When it came time to go robotic, Domino's called in Australian technology startup Marathon Targets to help in the creation of its autonomous delivery vehicles.

Anyone who's ever shaken their head over the utterances coming out of Donald Trump's mouth will surely be glad to know that they're now being improved with deep learning. DeepDrumpf is a Twitterbot created by a postdoctoral researcher in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab that uses a deep-learning algorithm to make even Trumpier statements than Trump himself. Based on an artificial-intelligence algorithm trained on transcripts of Trump's victory speeches and debate performances, the bot shows a remarkable proficiency for taking the hyperbole even further. "I'm what ISIS doesn't need" is one creation of the bot, for example. "Great manufacturing, bring back our jobs, bring back our manufacturing, because my file, you know, I don't need anybody's money. The bot creates its tweets one letter at a time, apparently following Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again."