THE world reeled when Lee Sedol – one of the great modern players of the ancient board game Go – was beaten by Google's DeepMind artificial intelligence (AI) program, AlphaGo. The AI managed to outmaneuver Lee at his own game, one which rewards players' strategic judgment and creative analyses. To achieve this, DeepMind provided AlphaGo with the basic framework of the game, recordings of previous games and made it play itself continuously. The software mimics the processes of human learning – and as it went along, AlphaGo learned to be a better player over time. The day of the face-off, AlphaGo beat Lee four games to one and was awarded the highest Go game-master ranking.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used as an unbiased judge, for matters ranging from insurance to economic efficiency. But can it ever truly be unbiased? When Remy Descartes first wrote the phrase cogito ergo sum –'I think therefore I am'– in the 1600s, he could not have been aware of the philosophical questioning that would erupt with the onset of artificial intelligence (AI) in the 20th and 21st century. Every Google search, every video suggested on YouTube and every Siri recommendation is built on machine learning algorithms designed to learn everything about your online habits, in a bid to offer targeted content that you might like. Even outside of consumer-level decisions, AI and algorithms are increasingly being used to root out hidden meanings in billions of lines of genetic code, in the hope of finding a cure to a disease or building machines that can talk for themselves.

Chia-Chiunn Ho was eating lunch inside Facebook headquarters, at the Full Circle Cafe, when he saw the notice on his phone: Larry Zitnick, one of the leading figures at the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research lab, was teaching another class on deep learning. Ho is a 34-year-old Facebook digital graphics engineer known to everyone as "Solti," after his favorite conductor. He couldn't see a way of signing up for the class right there in the app. So he stood up from his half-eaten lunch and sprinted across MPK 20, the Facebook building that's longer than a football field but feels like a single room. "My desk is all the way at the other end," he says. Sliding into his desk chair, he opened his laptop and surfed back to the page.

Save the Date: June 10-11, 2017 Galvanize, San Francisco! The SETI Institute invites all citizen data scientists and technologists to join us as collaborators in our mission to find radio signals from intelligence beyond our Solar System. We are issuing a worldwide public code challenge and accompanying hackathon for the purpose of expanding our radio telescope signal classification tools, using the latest developments in machine- and deep learning. With help from our partners at IBM and Galvanize, we will be launching this code challenge and hackathon this summer. The hackathon will last two full days at the Galvanize office in San Francisco.

Talent acquisition can be one of the most time consuming and frustrating aspects of business. Harsh deadlines and specific requirements, not to mention the piles of applications and resumes, is tough for any recruiter. Tack on retention accountability, candidate experience and employer branding and the job becomes even harder. The emerging HR technology throughout the last decade has strived to take away these many frustrations while improving candidate experience and quality of hire. The buzz around artificial intelligence this year is being shrugged off by many as just a new word HR got ahold of, but what would happen if AI was actually embraced by the recruiting and hiring world?

Intelligent personal assistants are being tested at Marriott hotels, pointing to a future of automated hotel rooms. Marriott International, one of the world's largest hotel chains, is testing iPads running Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa-powered Echo at its Aloft hotel in Boston's Seaport district, according to a report in Bloomberg. Both of those technologies are based on artificial intelligence (AI) that responds to voice commands. The devices would be used to operate lights in the room, control room temperature, and interface with the TV via voice commands. "This is about what next-generation travelers might want and how they would use their own devices at home and how that would translate to their travel experience," Toni Stoeckl, Global Brand Leader, Lifestyle Brands at Marriott International, told Fox News in a phone interview.

Approximately half of adult Americans' photographs are stored in facial recognition databases that can be accessed by the FBI, without their knowledge or consent, in the hunt for suspected criminals. About 80% of photos in the FBI's network are non-criminal entries, including pictures from driver's licenses and passports. The algorithms used to identify matches are inaccurate about 15% of the time, and are more likely to misidentify black people than white people. These are just some of the damning facts presented at last week's House oversight committee hearing, where politicians and privacy campaigners criticized the FBI and called for stricter regulation of facial recognition technology at a time when it's creeping into law enforcement and business. "Facial recognition technology is a powerful tool law enforcement can use to protect people, their property, our borders, and our nation," said committee chair Jason Chaffetz, adding that in the private sector it can be used to protect financial transactions and prevent fraud or identity theft.

A lot of sectors and industries are worried as to what the impact of an increasingly capable AI is going to be. There is no doubt that a lot of skilled jobs will disappear and be done by AI-powered robots. Is there room for AI and machine learning to make a difference? The answer is yes, however, the role of machine learning and AI will be more about assisting Doctors and augmenting their knowledge rather than replace them completely. This is something that is well on its way to happening and a lot of well-known companies are working on solutions to help Doctors dispense better treatment than ever before.

This book has been called "The best book on programming ever written". I'd have to agree--it is certainly the best that I've ever read. William Zinsser said, "The essence of writing is rewriting" and the same can be said for writing computer programs. Norvig's book presents this process--how the limitations of a program are overcome by revision and rewriting. What sets Norvig apart as a writer is that, amazingly enough, he can write about debugging (the most dreaded part of computer programming) and make it a fascinating read!

For centuries, humans have been fretting over "technological unemployment" or the loss of jobs caused by technological change. Never has this sentiment been accentuated more than it is today, at the cusp of the next industrial revolution. With developments in artificial intelligence continuing at a chaotic pace, fears of robots ultimately replacing humans are increasing. We're inviting 250 to exhibit at TNW Conference and pitch on stage! However, while AI continues to master an increasing number of tasks, we're still decades away from human jobs going extinct.