Whether you realize it or not, machine learning is making your online experience more efficient. The technology, designed by computer scientists, is used to better understand, analyze, and categorize data. When you tag your friend on Facebook, clear your spam filter, or click on a suggested YouTube video, you're benefitting from machine learning algorithms. Machine learning algorithms are designed to improve as they encounter more data, making them a versatile technology for understanding large sets of photos such as those accessible from Google Images. Elizabeth Holm, professor of materials science and engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, is leveraging this technology to better understand the enormous number of research images accumulated in the field of materials science.

There is a huge debate about the ethics of creating true AI. Some people think it will be too powerful and destroy humanity on a whim, and others don't think it will ever be smart enough attain human level intellect and aggression. As our smartest people learn increasingly esoteric things they can only draw upon so much knowledge. Many of our greatest innovations are from a great many people pooling their knowledge together to come up with ideas and innovations to in some way push the human race forward. Imagine if we took all of human knowledge ever attained and crammed it into one person's mind and then point them towards a bunch of problems we need to solve.

'Machine learning', a type of computer modelling, can detect areas of brain damage (lesions) associated with drug-resistant epilepsy. This is according to a new study published in the scientific journal PLOS One. During the study, researchers led by Dr Carole Lartizien, from the University of Lyon, developed a complex system that is able learn features associated with healthy brain MRI scans. It can then be used to assess other MRI scans for abnormalities (i.e. The scientists focused on two parameters, detectable on MRI images, that are associated with lesions linked to epilepsy.

Within five years robots and so-called intelligent agents will eliminate many positions in customer service, trucking and taxi services, amounting to 6 percent of jobs, according to a Forrester report. "By 2021, a disruptive tidal wave will begin," said Brian Hopkins, VP at Forrester, in the report. "Solutions powered by AI/cognitive technology will displace jobs, with the biggest impact felt in transportation, logistics, customer service, and consumer services." Intelligent agents, chat bots and digital assistants include Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, Alphabet's GoogleNow and Facebook's Messenger bots. They are powered by artificial intelligence and they can already understand a person's behavior, interpret their needs and even make decisions for them.

IBM introduced a series of new servers and the media were fast to dub them'x86 killers'. The servers, designed to give a significant boost to artificial intelligence, deep learning and advanced data analytics, were picked up by the Chinese telecommunications company Tencent, and IBM claims the results are basically out of this world. "A large cluster of the new IBM OpenPOWER servers was able to run a data-intensive workload three times faster than its former x86-based infrastructure," IBM said in a press release. "While reducing the total number of servers used by two-thirds." The first of the three, and obviously the flagship server, is the IBM Power System S822LC for High Performance Computing.

The latter will allow machines receive a cognitive ability which could even surpass that of humans. Technology experts fear that machines will end up becoming criminals, leaving human powerless to stop them. Dr. Ron Chrisley, director of the Centre for Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex, told Sputnik that while mankind is unlikely to face killer robots or rogue artificial intelligence taking over the world anytime soon, a human criminal in possession of AI-grade technology might be a much more real and tangible threat than some of us could imagine. "We need to be worried about criminals using AI in three different ways. One is to evade detection: if one has some artificial intelligence technology, one might be able, for instance, to engage in certain kinds of financial crimes in a way that can be randomized in a particular way that avoids standard methods of crime detection. Or criminals could use computer programs to notice patterns in security systems that a human couldn't notice, and find weaknesses that a human would find very hard to identify… And then finally a more common use might be of AI to just crack passwords and codes, and access accounts and data that people previously could leave secure. So these are just three examples of how AI would be a serious threat to security of people in general if it were in the hands of the wrong people," Chrisley explained.

Conde Nast publications, one of the most recognizable global brands when it comes to trends, fashion and lifestyle, will partner with the IBM Watson-enabled platform Influencer to gain more personal connections and a deeper relationship with key audiences, the company has announced. With top titles like Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour and GQ, Conde Nast's partnership heralds a key step merging targeted influencer marketing and artificial intelligence in the fashion and lifestyle industry. The platform will be used to help advertiser clients improve how they connect with audiences over social media and gain measurable insights into how their campaigns resonate. "Partnering with Influential to leverage Watson's cognitive capabilities to identify the right influencers and activate them on the right campaigns gives our clients an advantage and increases our performance, which is paramount in today's distributed content world," said Matt Starker, general manager, digital strategy and initiatives at Condé Nast. "We engage our audiences in innovative ways, across all platforms, and this partnership is another step in that innovation."

Reuters is the latest major news agency to embrace content automation. But the news organization has struck partnerships with Graphiq Inc. and Wibbitz Ltd., to automate the creation of simple graphics and video clips, respectively, to run alongside relevant, human-reported Reuters news content on the third party sites that pay for and run it. Graphiq Inc. based in Santa Barbara, Calif., has integrated its free-to-use visualizations platform with Reuters News Agency to make the simple graphs and visualizations it creates in thousands of Reuters articles wherever they run on 3rd party sites. According to Graphiq CEO Kevin O'Connor, Graphiq works with hundreds of publishers, including TechCrunch and now Reuters, to put dynamically generated infographics into articles. The company's systems ingest data from public and private sources to create instant infographics.

Tech columnist Jennifer Jolly takes a spin in a self-driving Ford Fusion and gets the scoop on how the technology works. Mercedes-Benz, whose engineers have been working on self-driving car technology, is eager to increase the size of its engineering team both in Silicon Valley and in Germany. SAN FRANCISCO -- So you say you want join the automotive revolution? Over the past few years, only elite roboticists have been positioned to heed the self-driving car's call to action. Armed with degrees from places such as Carnegie Mellon University and experience at institutions such as NASA, these tech whizzes have been highly sought after by technology and automotive companies looking to build the future.

Robots and other artificial intelligence will replace humans for many service industry jobs as some of the world's technology companies expand their improving research, according to a business consulting firm's new report. New York-based Forrester Research says six percent of jobs could be filled by "early-stage intelligent agents," or IAs, by 2021 as tech giants like Facebook, Amazon, and Apple continue to develop smarter, algorithm-based bots like Siri and Alexa. It also named industries like trucking and taxis, which could see revolutionary technology like self-driving cars replace humans. "By 2021, a disruptive tidal wave will begin," Brian Hopkins, vice president at Forrester, wrote in the report. "Solutions powered by AI/cognitive technology will displace jobs, with the biggest impact felt in transportation, logistics, customer service, and consumer services."