But that is not to say it is perfect by any stretch of the imagination. "Deep learning has led to some big advances in computer vision, natural language processing, and other areas," Tommi Jaakkola, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of electrical engineering and computer science, told Digital Trends. "It's tremendously flexible in terms of learning input/output mappings, but the flexibility and power comes at a cost. That is it that it's very difficult to work out why it is performing a certain prediction in a particular context." This black-boxed lack of transparency would be one thing if deep learning systems were still confined to being lab experiments, but they are not.

Microsoft will be making PowerApps and Flow, two of its power-user development tools, generally available as of November 1. PowerApps is for building web and mobile business applications without coding. Flow, Microsoft's version of IFTTT (If This Then That), is its business-process automation tool. The November 1 timing is not coincidental, as both PowerApps and Flow are set to be included with Dynamics 365, some pieces of which will be available for purchase starting November 1. The Common Data Model at the heart of Dynamics 365 initially was part of PowerApps. Microsoft has been testing PowerApps and Flow for a while now.

Autonomous underwater vehicles identify and kill invasive starfish at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Robots can help undo some of the damage that has been done to our environment. Unmanned aerial vehicles are already being used to track endangered wildlife and assist land conservation efforts by mapping ecosystems and monitoring protected areas. Meanwhile at sea, autonomous sailing drones are monitoring ocean water to detect any pollution and track changes in temperature and pH. Now, underwater robots are also working to restore biodiversity by hunting invasive species.

What do these new digital workplaces as platform need to entail to succeed? As business applications continue to proliferate in the workplace, enterprises have begun to realize that their ever-more complex landscape of digital tools for their workforce should be more effectively organized and integrated to better deliver their full value and provide returns on their often significant cumulative investment. The consumerization of the workplace in recent years has had many implications for worker productivity and effectiveness: There are now just too many disjointed digital messages to handle and digital tools to manage for the typical worker, especially as as I've found shadow IT has grown substantially in just the last couple of years alone, opening new floodgates of apps and message flows. Enterprise applications power the heart of business productivity, but they are traditionally difficult to implement, upgrade, and innovate. We look at how the next generation of enterprise apps could change the game.

Columnist Ed Baig reviews Pixel, which features the high-IQ Google Assistant and a competitive, high-end smartphone camera. A. When Google introduced its Pixel and Pixel XL phones in early October, it picked a hybrid distribution strategy. Instead of selling these $649-and-up smartphones only on its own site, as it had with its earlier Nexus phones, it also signed up Verizon Wireless as a distribution partner. To judge from the ads during the World Series, only the second purchase option exists. They keep touting the Pixel -- "a winner for anyone looking for an excellent phone," USA TODAY's Ed Baig wrote -- as "only on Verizon," something Verizon's own page about the phones repeats.

Jefferson Graham reports on the new, higher price-tags for Apple computers, and compares them to Windows and Chromebook competitors on #TalkingTech. SAN FRANCISCO -- A funny thing happened when Microsoft and Apple held dueling product events last week. In Cupertino, Calif., the iPhone maker was making a small tweak to the way we work today with the unveiling of a slim interactive function bar to its MacBooks. In New York, the onetime software giant was unveiling tools for the way we will work that included a massive interactive drafting table and 3-D design software. But evidence is mounting that the software giant, a foil to Apple for decades, is now the more compelling, innovative company with forays into virtual reality and artificial intelligence.

Robots are learning to create zombie faces and apocalyptic landscapes, and with your help, they can make them even more terrifying. Researchers from MIT and Australia's CSIRO have created the Nightmare Machine, an AI algorithm that can transform a normal face or landscape into nightmare fuel. The AI analyzed 200,000 normal human faces and was soon able to generate its own, but the team wanted to take it in another, freakier direction. "We want to produce scary faces," Dr. Manuel Cebrian told the Sydney Morning Herald. "So we take a zombie face –- a really scary one –- and feed it into the neural network."

Legislators have approved a bill that would block all porn in Israel unless people ask to view it. The Israeli Ministerial Committee for Legislation unanimously approved the bill, which forces internet companies in the country censor adult websites by default. Backers of the new legislation claim that it is a way of stopping young people getting online. Under the terms of the bill, anyone wanting to access pornography online would have to tell their internet service provider, either by writing to them, ringing them or getting in touch their website. An employee shows a Samsung Electronics' Gear S3 Classic during Korea Electronics Show 2016 in Seoul, South Korea Visitors experience Samsung Electronics' Gear VR during the Korea Electronics Grand Fair at an exhibition hall in Seoul, South Korea Amy Rimmer, Research Engineer at Jaguar Land Rover, demonstrates the car manufacturer's Advanced Highway Assist in a Range Rover, which drives the vehicle, overtakes and can detect vehicles in the blind spot, during the first demonstrations of the UK Autodrive Project at HORIBA MIRA Proving Ground in Nuneaton, Warwickshire Chris Burbridge, Autonomous Driving Software Engineer for Tata Motors European Technical Centre, demonstrates the car manufacturer's GLOSA V2X functionality, which is connected to the traffic lights and shares information with the driver, during the first demonstrations of the UK Autodrive Project at HORIBA MIRA Proving Ground in Nuneaton, Warwickshire In its facilities, JAXA develop satellites and analyse their observation data, train astronauts for utilization in the Japanese Experiment Module'Kibo' of the International Space Station (ISS) and develop launch vehicles The robot developed by Seed Solutions sings and dances to the music during the Japan Robot Week 2016 at Tokyo Big Sight.

There's not much that hasn't changed in Apple's Macs over the last 20 years. But one thing has stayed: the distinctive chime that plays when you turn them on. But the new MacBook Pro, released last week, will no longer make that sound. And it appears to suggest that the noise – which arrived with the iMac G3 in the late 90s – is on its way out. The new computer doesn't make any sound at all when it's turned on.

People listen to the radio as the results of the presidential elections are announced in Kireka, Uganda, in February. Many rural Ugandans don't have Internet access, and the radio is a central source of news -- and platform for citizens' opinions. People listen to the radio as the results of the presidential elections are announced in Kireka, Uganda, in February. Many rural Ugandans don't have Internet access, and the radio is a central source of news -- and platform for citizens' opinions. Its omnipresence can make it easy to forget that making this technology has been really, really hard.