Is there a next phase for cloud computing? During the past few years, cloud computing has become a mainstream element of modern software solutions just as common as websites or databases. The cloud computing market is a race vastly dominated by four companies: Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM with a few other platforms with traction in specific regional markets such as AliCloud in China. In such a consolidated market, it's hard to imagine a technology being disruptive enough to alter the existing dynamics. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the type of technology with the potential to not only improve the existing cloud platform incumbents but also power a new generation of cloud computing technologies.

Austria based ANYLINE, the leading OCR Optical Character Recognition) technology provider for mobile devices, is solely focused on fast and accurate text recognition. Whether reading text across a room, a license plate on a car, or a gas meter in a manufacturing plant, the ANYLINE technology is able to deliver a fast and robust alternative to inputting data via voice recognition, typing, or button scrolling. This type of data import is still difficult to accomplish, as it requires a higher processor power and camera resolution. ANYLINE will now leverage the ... Read more

A startup bankrolled by Bill Gates is about to conduct the first public trials of high-speed body scanners powered by artificial intelligence (AI), the Guardian can reveal. According to documents filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Boston-based Evolv Technology is planning to test its system at Union Station in Washington DC, in Los Angeles's Union Station metro and at Denver international airport. Evolv uses the same millimetre-wave radio frequencies as the controversial, and painfully slow, body scanners now found at many airport security checkpoints. However, the new device can complete its scan in a fraction of second, using computer vision and machine learning to spot guns and bombs. This means passengers can simply walk through a scanning gate without stopping or even slowing down – like the hi-tech scanners seen in the 1990 sci-fi film Total Recall.

When Bob Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, it shocked the humanitarian world. What's more, Dylan himself hasn't behaved like a traditional Nobel winner: he hasn't commented on the honor and has yet to give an acceptance speech. At least one member of the Nobel panel has called Dylan's silence "rude and arrogant," and the public has been reminded that if he doesn't give a lecture within six months, he won't receive the $900,000 prize money. Selecting Dylan as a Nobel laureate may be contentious, but it's mostly a sign of growth for intellectual society -- at least in Literature, no one is off-limits, not even mumbling masters of wordplay and songwriting. Growing pains are expected as the world of mainstream politics, activism and academia is suddenly forced to consider the potential of new industries, and vice versa.

Artificial intelligence and robots aren't coming for your job anytime soon, the U.S. White House's chief economic advisor says. Some technology experts worry about the economic impact of AI-powered computers and robots, but Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, predicts that AI will grow the economy instead of take jobs away. While some jobs may disappear, AI will create new jobs and consumer demand for new products and services, he said Wednesday at the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference in Washington, D.C. Some studies have suggested that automation will replace half of all jobs in the coming years, but Furman questioned those predictions. While some jobs may disappear, AI will create new jobs and consumer demand for new products and services, he said Wednesday at the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference in Washington, D.C.

GETTING computers to recognise other cars is surprisingly difficult. Earlier this year, the first fatal autonomous car crash happened when a Tesla Model S failed to distinguish a white truck against a brightly lit sky. Now a study has shown that self-driving cars can be taught the rules of the road by studying virtual traffic on video games such as Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V). Although firms like Google and Uber are teaching their software by physically driving millions of miles in the real world, they also train their algorithms using pre-recorded footage of traffic. But there's a catch: computers need hundreds of thousands of laboriously labelled images, showing where vehicles begin and end, to make them expert vehicle recognisers.

Carolina Huaranca is making a name for herself in Silicon Valley. During those three intensive days spent brainstorming new technologies, she realized she was not the only one. Huaranca was one of just two Latinos in a room of 100 people. Nonetheless, she gave birth to a start-up -- and a mission: to one day bring together Latinos so they, too, could have a shot at a career in the tech industry. Now as one of Silicon Valley's few Latina venture capitalists, Huaranca is making good on her promise by helping host Startup Weekend Oakland: Latinx Tech Edition.

Machine learning developers who want to use Google's Go language as their development platform have a small but growing number of projects to choose from. Rather than call out to libraries written in other languages, chiefly C/C, developers can work with machine learning libraries written directly in Go. Existing machine learning libraries in other languages have a far larger culture of users, but there's clearly an interest in having Go toolkits that take advantage of the language's conveniences. GoLearn, described as a "batteries included" machine learning library, is one of the most prominent. "Simplicity, paired with customisability, is the goal," the developers write in their introduction to the project.

Microsoft today is announcing the beta launch of version 2.0 of its open-source deep learning framework. Until now, the software has been called Computational Network Toolkit, or CNTK, but now Micorosft is changing the name to Cognitive Toolkit. Instead of just being accessible through the programming language C, Cognitive Toolkit now has native support for Python (specifically Python 3; Python 2 support is coming). The lack of Python has been the single biggest deficiency of Cognitive Toolkit, Microsoft chief speech scientist Xuedong Huang told VentureBeat in an interview. "That's why external adoption has been very small," Huang said.

Artificial intelligence programs have beaten chess masters and TV quiz show champions. Two exchange operators have announced plans to launch artificial intelligence tools for market surveillance in the coming months and officials at a Wall Street regulator say they are not far behind. Executives are hoping computers with humanoid wit can help mere mortals catch misbehaviour more quickly. The software could, for instance, scrub chat-room messages to detect dubious bragging or back slapping around the time of a big trade. It could also unravel complex issues more quickly, like "layering," where orders are rapidly sent to exchanges and then cancelled to move a stock price artificially.