The idea of artificial intelligence (AI) has dominated scientific and popular culture for decades. Most fictional works that explore the idea of AI focus on its dangers to humanity, with the premise often involving robots or super-advanced computer interfaces that have developed their own freewill and turned against humanity (a la HAL 9000 from Space Odyssey). But despite fearmongering around AI, scientists have been developing software and tech to make machines smarter than ever. We have already seen AI programs beat humans at complex games, computers that can reproduce classical works of art and robots that can play football (albeit not convincingly). One area where AI brings a lot of opportunity is the marketing industry.

The Jetsons lasted on TV for just three seasons, but its impact was far greater. According to Smithsonian Magazine, "The Jetsons stands as the single most important piece of 20th century futurism." As we stand on the cusp of a revolution in AI and robotics, it's amazing how much the show informed the way "Americans think and talk about the future." In the coming decades, we will see a world where every person has a team of robots working for them, all powered by AI and Deep Learning. These robots will take care of tasks like cleaning our homes, driving our cars, and acting as our personal assistants.

NVIDIA's (NVDA) quarterly revenues have been surging at double-digit rates in the last three quarters and, looking at the guidance for the next quarter, it's clear that the company is expecting the growth rate to continue unabated in the near future. One of the key factors that has added fuel to their engines is NVIDIA's new growth drivers: the data center segment and auto segment. In the most recent quarter, NVIDIA's data center unit reported 151 million in sales, a growth of 109.72% The growth in data center revenues is much higher than other segments, and there are several reasons why this growth can, in fact, continue its breakneck pace for several more quarters. NVIDIA's expertise in the GPU segment has given it a range of must-have products for hyperscale data centers.

If talking to Siri, Cortana and Alexa aren't cutting it for you, know that researchers are looking for a way to spice things up with characters from popular TV shows. A team of researchers at the University of Leeds--James Charles, Derek Magee and David Hogg--have turned to algorithms and machine learning tools for digitizing avatars of well known characters. The algorithms will have the ability to identify specific characters and catch individual facial expressions, speech patterns, body language and voice. Then, a machine learning tool will analyze scripts to learn how the character pieces words together. The final result will be a "virtually immortalized" version of the character that can create new sentences in the style and appearance of the character.

How do you explain machine learning to a child? Answer by Daniel Tunkelang, data scientist, search/discovery expert, led teams at LinkedIn and Google, on Quora. I'd pick a universally accessible binary classification problem: learning which foods are yummy and which are yucky. We want to teach a computer to recognize which foods are yummy and which foods are yucky. But the computer doesn't have a mouth or any way of tasting the food.

New Delhi: Former HCL Technologies Ltd chief executive officer (CEO) Anant Gupta on Friday launched a Rs100 crore investment fund TECHCELX, to invest in start-ups focused on digital technologies such as machine learning, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and analytics. HCL on Friday announced the elevation of its chief operating officer C. Vijayakumar to the top position in the company to replace Gupta. TECHCELX will invest between Rs50 lakh and Rs10 crore in disruptive technology ventures and the shareholding will range between 15% and 51%. "With TECHCELX, I am pursuing my long-term goals and passion towards promoting our country's entrepreneurship and innovation potential in the technology space," said Gupta, chairman and CEO, TECHCELX. Three other key partners from investment banking and technology sectors are backing this fund, the company said in a statement.

Note that, while there are numerous machine learning ebooks available for free online, including many which are very well-known, I have opted to move past these "regulars" and seek out lesser-known and more niche options for readers. Don't know where to start? If you are looking for something more, you could look here for an overview of MOOCs and online lectures from freely-available university lectures. Of course, nothing substitutes rigorous formal education, but let's say that isn't in the cards for whatever reason. Not all machine learning positions require a PhD; it really depends where on the machine learning spectrum one wants to fit in.

Driverless car are packed with state-of-the-art technology are considered information goldmines for an increasing number stakeholders, including car manufacturers, governments and hackers. In response, the American National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA, which is part of the Department of Transportation is first ensuring its own, most probably exclusive access to this rich data bank. In the recently released Federal Autonomous Vehicles Policy, the NHTSA states its intention to oversee the development, regulation and policing of self-driving cars inside the United States. The agency is hoping to expand the guidelines' reach through collaborating efforts involving America's only two land neighbors, Canada and Mexico. Autonomous vehicle companies will be pushed by these federal guidelines to begin sharing data regarding their failures with even rival companies, and also the government. This will be considered a serious shift already faced with stiff resistance from tech and auto companies that enjoy significant influence inside their respective governments.

Taiwan-based visual analytics company Viscovery has announced raising 10 million in funding from its lead investor China Development Industrial Bank, in a bid to accelerate the growth of the platform's global video data analytics and contextual advertising solution. GD1 Fund, H&Q Asia Pacific, and iStart (Softbank China's Venture Capital early fund) also participated in this round. The company's Viscovery Discovery Service (VDS) provides video data analysis, search optimisation and other value added services to clients across the region, including those in Taiwan, South Korea and China. The data is then analysed in order to determine the best context. According to the company, clients find this technique more effective in finding video content, instead of just searching through keywords in the title or description.

It wasn't so long ago that the idea of biped or quadruped robots delivering pizzas seemed like a real possibility. Such speculation was fuelled by Google's acquisition of Boston Dynamics--a company more associated with potential military applications, which earned notoriety for its scarily nimble Big Dog robots. Google, and then its parent company Alphabet, had to work out how to bring this technology to civvy street--a problem that certainly gnawed at the development team. The vision was perhaps too grandiose even for Alphabet and, earlier this year, it was reported that Boston Dynamics had been off the leash so it could sniff around for potential buyers. With that short-lived episode over, the roadmap for robotic deliveries is now back under debate, at least if you were expecting arms and legs. These are all at the prototype stage but they're definitely coming; in fact, there's a wide range of innovative technology under investigation by retailers to achieve a competitive edge, from drones to chatbots to redesigned Mars rovers and slasher robots.