SAN FRANCISCO – September 8, 2016 – TechCode, a global network of startup incubators and entrepreneur ecosystems, today announces its new accelerator program called the Global AI Accelerator. This new accelerator program is now accepting applications and is open to startups across all industry verticals who are utilizing artificial intelligence in their technology, such as voice recognition, machine learning, natural language processing and more. Applications for the accelerator program are due no later than October 10, 2016. "This program is unlike any other, as it not only has a niche focus on artificial intelligence, but is also the first global accelerator program, which means startups can participate from a number of different locations all over the world," said Luke Tang, General Manager of TechCode's U.S. Accelerator program. "Our global presence puts us in a unique position to offer this type of accelerator and help startups in the fields of robotics, virtual and augmented reality, smart home, IoT, medical devices, wearables and more, to build international relationships."

There is a new generation of companies exerting such great influence on society that they're essentially becoming utilities. Google, Amazon, Facebook and Uber are near monopolies that provide services as integral to our modern life as power, telephone and transportation systems were a century ago. But there is a key difference between last century's utilities and today's: Instead of simply delivering a service, today's utilities use algorithms to shape our entire life experience. From the news we see and the routes we drive, to the price we pay for goods and services, algorithms influence them all. Uber efficiently dispatches its drivers during rush hour, Facebook displays the most relevant stories to its users and Amazon can suggest the right product at the optimal time to drive a purchase.

At Apple's iPhone 7 unveiling in San Francisco on Wednesday, the tech powerhouse revealed a host of new and updated hardware and software, including a new type of headphone jack and souped-up camera. As expected, iPhone is removing the standard analog headphone jack and forcing headphones to use its "Lightning" connector, which plugs into the phone's charging port. The iPhone 7 will come with an adapter so older earphones can still be used. But Apple is pushing Apple AirPods, which CEO Tim Cook says are a "breakthrough design," wireless headphones that sync across all Apple devices and respond to touch that can access Siri. The AirPods are shipping in late October and cost 160.

Intel has planted some solid stakes in the ground for the future of deep learning over the last month with its acquisition of deep learning chip startup, Nervana Systems, and most recently, mobile and embedded machine learning company, Movidius. These new pieces will snap into Intel's still-forming puzzle for capturing the supposed billion-plus dollar market ahead for deep learning, which is complemented by its own Knights Mill effort and software optimization work on machine learning codes and tooling. At the same time, just down the coast, Nvidia is firming up the market for its own GPU training and inference chips as well as its own hardware outfitted with the latest Pascal GPUs and requisite deep learning libraries. While Intel's efforts have garnered significant headlines recently with that surprising pair of acquisitions, a move which is pushing Nvidia harder to demonstrate GPU acceleration (thus far the dominant compute engine for model training) for deep learning, they still have some work to do to capture mindshare for this emerging market. Further complicating this is the fact that the last two years have brought a number of newcomers to the field--deep learning chip upstarts touting the idea that general purpose architectures (including GPUs) cannot compare to a low precision, fixed point, specialized approach.

BuildingIQ, a provider of energy management software headquartered in California, provides tools to commercial building owners and managers to improve the energy efficiency of their building operations. BuildingIQ offers solutions that use technology originally developed by the Energy Division of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia's national lab. The average commercial building wastes 30% of the energy it uses. Even simple changes, such as adjusting temperature settings and ensuring that lights are not on when no one is around, can produce substantial savings. BuildingIQ has responded by developing an energy management system driven by artificial intelligence (AI) that optimizes HVAC systems for maximum efficiency.

Traditionally, creating a movie trailer is a labor-intensive, completely manual process. Teams have to sort through hours of footage and manually select each and every potential candidate moment. This process is expensive and time consuming – taking anywhere between 10 and 30 days to complete. As with any AI system, the first step was training it to understand a subject area. Using machine learning techniques and experimental Watson APIs, IBM Research team trained a system on the trailers of 100 horror movies by segmenting out each scene from the trailers.

A pair of artificial intelligence experts from Cornell University have joined a nationwide effort to ensure the nightmare science fiction scenarios -- the ones involving corrupted human-killing computers -- don't become a reality. "We are in a period in history when we start using these machines to make judgments," researcher Bart Selman, a professor of computer science at Cornell, explained in a news release. Joseph Halpern, a professor of computer science at Cornell and also a "decision theory" expert, says providing an artificial intelligent agent with as much information as possible will make these difficult decisions more manageable. Scientists at Georgia Tech have been working to instill human values by teaching robots fairy tales.

A pair of artificial intelligence experts from Cornell University have joined a nationwide effort to ensure the nightmare science fiction scenarios -- the ones involving corrupted human-killing computers -- don't become a reality. The effort is organized by the Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence, based at the University of California, Berkeley. To keep computers behaving properly as they take on more and more responsibility and autonomy, researchers are working to instill their software with human values. Researchers want the algorithms that govern the AI decision-making process to include an understanding of human ethics. "We are in a period in history when we start using these machines to make judgments," researcher Bart Selman, a professor of computer science at Cornell, explained in a news release.