Google DeepMind claims to have significantly improved computer-generated speech with its AI technology, paving the way forward for sophisticated talking machines like those seen in sci-fi films like "Her" and "Ex-Machina." The London-based research lab, acquired by Google in 2014 for a reported 400 million, announced on Thursday that it has developed a talking computer programme called "WaveNet" that halves the quality gap that currently exists between human speech and computer speech. Although WaveNet sounds more like a human voice than existing artificial voice generators -- known as "text-to-speech" (TTS) systems -- it requires too much computing power to make it practical, meaning Google won't be integrating it into its products any time soon, according to The Financial Times. Aäron van den Oord, a research scientist, at DeepMind said: "Mimicking realistic speech has always been a major challenge, with state-of-the-art systems, composed of a complicated and long pipeline of modules, still lagging behind real human speech. Our research shows that not only can neural networks learn how to generate speech, but they can already close the gap with human performance by over 50%.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. I don't know why this video of the Yellow Drum Machine popped up in my YouTube feed again, but hey, it's one of my favorite robots of all time: This video was recorded during a lucky run, usually the robot is not able to maintain balance for this long. The shaking is caused by poor state estimation (we only use onboard sensors). I'd love to see IHMC re-run the DRC Finals tasks at some point, just to illustrate how much improvement has been made in Atlas' autonomy and not-falling-over-ness.

Welcome to DeveloperEconomics' weekly news roundup. In this edition, Google cancels its modular smartphone project, Apple plans to delete abandoned apps from the App Store and Epic releases a new version of Unreal Engine 4. Read on for the full news rundown. Google has expanded its Early Access beta testing, allowing any developer apply for the program. Previously, Early Access was only available to 29 hand-picked developers, who got to test out their apps with early-adopters (although other devs were given different testing options). Google says the Early Access program generated over 1 million beta installs since launching in May and "demand is only growing."

The Institute of Complex Systems based in Paris is looking for an intern specialized in data science and machine learning to work on our Multivac Platform. Diploma required: Bac 5 in a quantitative field (applied mathematics, statistics, computing…) Internship starting date: As soon as possible Duration: 2 – 6 month Salary policy: the internship is paid according to the legal wage rates (approx. Interface between disciplines, but also between research organizations and higher education, the ISC-PIF is a place dedicated to the development of innovative and interdisciplinary research on complex systems. Since 2005, the institute is facilitating access to skills, trainings, work areas and pooled research resources based on high performance computing and big data. The institute is a unit of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), one of the largest french research organisation. Description: You will be working on Multivac Platform developed at ISCPIF.

As it pulls the plug on iPhone jacks, Apple is making what appears to be a concerted move into machine learning as it seeks to upgrade its next operating system to improve its Siri virtual assistant along with emerging machine learning applications expected to find their way into other Apple devices. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) watchers point to last month's acquisition of machine learning startup Turi for about 200 million as another sign that the consumer electronics giants is laying the groundwork for a machine learning push. The Seattle-based startup's machine learning platform focuses on rapid development of real-time services and applications based on embedded machine learning models. Turi is seen as a natural fit for Apple's machine learning push since its application toolkits based on the Python programming language are designed to simplify development of machine learning models that can be embedded into applications and quickly scaled.

Michael Hsieh is the president of Fung Capital USA. Sometimes one must look to the past to define the future. Once upon a time the milkman delivered milk directly to your home. The Avon and Tupperware ladies had private parties in the comfort of a neighbor's house. The Hoover salesperson demonstrated the vacuum cleaner on your living room carpet.

Mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson has had a career as varied as it has been successful. A former professor of physics at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, he has worked on the unification of the three versions of quantum electrodynamics invented by Richard Feynman, nuclear reactors, solid-state physics, ferromagnetism, astrophysics, biology, and the application of useful and elegant math problems. One of his ideas, the Dyson Sphere, was featured in a "Star Trek" episode. Today, Dyson frequently writes about science and technology's relationship to ethics and social issues. Business Insider sat down with him and talked about math, war, the human brain, the education system, and the Orion Project. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Elena Holodny: Who has most inspired you in either math or science? Dick Feynman ... he has now become famous, to my great joy, because when I knew him he was completely unknown. But I recognized him as being something special. He was only for a short time at Cornell when I was a student and he was a young professor. So I didn't work with him, but I just sat at his feet, literally, and listened to him talk. He was a clown, of course, and also a genius. It was a good combination.

When will iOS 10 be released in the UK? What are iOS 10's best new features, and what are the differences between iOS 10 and iOS 9? Which iPhones, iPads and iPod touch models can run iOS 10, and is it possible to install iOS 10 right now? It showcased the software as it had done at WWDC in June. We've got all the details about iOS 10 that you need to know: all of its best and most interesting features, how to install it, and a list of the iPads and iPhones that can run it. Since then Apple has released a series of beta versions of iOS 10, and the final public version will roll out on 13 September to iPhone 5 and later and the iPad mini 2, iPad 4, iPad Air and later generations. In this article you'll find: the 10 best new features in iOS 10; when iOS 10 will be released to the public, and how to download it ahead of the official launch; a list of iPads and iPhones that can run iOS 10; and everything else you need to know about iOS 10 and its imminent launch. Updated, 9 September 2016, with the news that the iOS 10 final release candidate is being rolled out; on 7 September, following 13 September release date; on 31 August with news of Apple's newly announced press event on 7 September; on 24 August with news of iOS 10 beta 7; and on 23 August with iOS 10 release date rumours courtesy of Barbra Streisand Update, 9 September 2016: Apple has notified all members of its iOS beta program that the final release candidate is being rolled out today. "We are pleased to give you access to the iOS 10 and macOS Sierra final release candidates," says Apple, in an email. "We will be shipping the final versions to customers worldwide in the coming weeks and appreciate you trying out the releases and providing feedback. You can install the iOS 10 GM candidate from Software Update."

Robots and drones have already started to quietly transform many aspects of agriculture. And now a new report is predicting the agricultural robotics industry, now serving a 3 billion market, will grow to 10 billion by 2022. The report, by IDTechEx Research in Britain, is called Agricultural Robots and Drones 2016-2026: Technologies, Markets, and Players. It analyses how robotic market and technology developments will change agriculture, enabling ultra-precision farming and helping address key global challenges. It describes how robotic technology will enter into different aspects of agriculture, how it will change the way farming is done and transform its value chain, how it becomes the future of agrochemicals business and modifies the way we design agricultural machinery.

Google's DeepMind unit, which is working to develop super-intelligent computers, has created a system for machine-generated speech that it says outperforms existing technology by 50 percent. U.K.-based DeepMind, which Google acquired for about 400 million pounds ( 533 million) in 2014, developed an artificial intelligence called WaveNet that can mimic human speech by learning how to form the individual sound waves a human voice creates, it said in a blog post Friday. In blind tests for U.S. English and Mandarin Chinese, human listeners found WaveNet-generated speech sounded more natural than that created with any of Google's existing text-to-speech programs, which are based on different technologies. WaveNet still underperformed recordings of actual human speech. Many computer-generated speech programs work by using a large data set of short recordings of a single human speaker and then combining these speech fragments to form new words.