Experts and futurists will argue endlessly about whether we're entering the anthropocene, an age in which creativity is the driving force (like agriculture or industry have been before), or a technology age, in which technology is the driving force. If the latter, we face an uncertain culmination to all this advancement. Will technology be the great equalizer (a topic I have covered in my post on'Automated Luxury Communism') or continue to widen the gap between the digital haves and have-nots? The Internet of Things is less about convenience than it is about commerce. Not only do companies sell us the gadget, but we continue to pay rent to the company by giving them our data, which they can mine to sell us more things, or sell the data itself to another company that wishes to sell us more things.

A Robocop army taking over major military missions around the world is still far from being a reality, but that does not mean that the world's military powers are not working hard to make that scenario into reality as soon as they can. If you think that remotely controlled or semi-autonomous vehicles are too much to take, wait and see what the future of AI and IoT will deliver to those who seek to fight the battles of the future with "thinking machines". A recently published study, produced for the United States Department of Defence, explains that "there are both substantial operational benefits and potential perils associated with the use of autonomy." In a nutshell, AI gives the military an upper hand over its enemies, as long as those enemies do not have the same or more advanced technological capabilities, of course. On paper, having an AI military force provides advantages such as a reduction in the number of humans who may be in harms way – tell that to the unknown victims of US drone operations -, increased speed in the completion of those missions, and undoubtedly, autonomy.

As a marketer, it can sometimes seem like the work my engineering colleagues are doing is magic -- pure computer science sorcery. I mean, they're building a chatbot that can communicate using human language and learn from the conversations it's having. AI can be a tough topic to wrap your head around. And with all of the various branches -- machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing -- it's not a topic that you can hope to master by reading a single blog post. So the purpose of this post isn't to provide you with an exhaustive, engineering-degree-level understanding of AI.

Beauty pageants have always been political. After all, what speaks more strongly to how we see each other than which physical traits we reward as beautiful, and which we code as ugly? It wasn't until 1983 that the Miss America competition crowned a black woman as the most beautiful woman in the country. So what if we replaced human judges with machines? As shallow as the whole thing is, would a computer at least be able to see past skin colour and look at, potentially, more universal markers of attractiveness?

Tom Frangione is the chief operating officer of Greylock Partners. Today more than ever, technology is transforming how enterprises do business. The IT profession has evolved from being reactionary to proactive, and CIOs now have a seat at the table to drive company strategy. Greylock COO Tom Frangione catches up with Kim Stevenson, Intel COO for the Client and Internet of Things Businesses and Systems Architecture Group, to discuss how startups can sell to larger enterprises, the importance of IT innovation and what the future of machine learning means for enterprise companies. CIOs are becoming the expert source on enterprise trends and new innovative solutions to help companies gain and maintain a competitive advantage.

What are the advantages of different classification algorithms? For instance, if we have large training data set with approx more than 10,000 instances and more than 100,000 features, then which classifier will be best to choose for classification? This list may seem a bit daunting because there are many issues that are not straightforward to answer. The good news though is, that as many problems in life, you can address this question by following the Occam's Razor principle: use the least complicated algorithm that can address your needs and only go for something more complicated if strictly necessary. To read the full article (posted as a Quora question, including 22 answers), click here.

A few years ago, a young man named Kyle Behm took a leave from his studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He was suffering from bipolar disorder and needed time to get treatment. A year and a half later, Kyle was healthy enough to return to his studies at a different university. Around that time, he learned from a friend about a part-time job. It was just a minimum-wage job at a Kroger supermarket, but it seemed like a sure thing. His friend, who was leaving the job, could vouch for him. For a high-achieving student like Kyle, the application looked like a formality. But Kyle didn't get called in for an interview. When he inquired, his friend explained to him that he had been "red-lighted" by the personality test he'd taken when he applied for the job. The test was part of an employee selection program developed by Kronos, a workforce management company based outside Boston.

In less than a month since launching their powerful new website (http://www.2016tweets.live) In addition to this epochal milestone, the company recently began tracking and reporting on the number of bots that follow, like, and retweet the two major accounts. As bots can confuse and often mislead voters into thinking one party has more support than the other, this analysis allows the public to see the competing candidates on a more even playing field. So far Aicial has analyzed over 109,000 unique Twitter accounts that are engaging with Clinton and Trump. Aicial Co-Founder and CEO, Troy Kelly said the company is committed to further development of the social engine and is quite interested in discussing potential partnerships with news and media outlets.

Retailers are looking towards artificial intelligence (AI) such as image recognition technologies to help enhance sales staff productivity as well as make them be more competitive against their peers. Alexander Laugomer, project manager digital merchandising at consumer and industrial goods firm Henkel, says: "The major benefit of the AI technology is that it not only provides us with information on our own and our competitors' products, but it also gives us an actionable report straight to our mobile devices. "This allows our sales reps to improve our brands' situation in-store there and then, without the time-consuming task of manually compiling data." Henkel outsources this function to retail image-recognition firm Trax. The technology works by being able to recognise more than eight million images on a shelf.

Scientists at the Stanford University have released the first report of their One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100), in which they try to predict the potential impacts of artificial intelligence on human life in the long run. Known as "Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030," the report comes just two years since the researchers began their work. It focuses on the history of AI technology and how it is being used in various fields today, such as in the development of robots for medical purposes and self-driving vehicles for transportation. Experts believe the Stanford study is important not only for researchers but for policymakers as well who may need to create new laws that would better cater to such technological advancements. AI100 is the brainchild of Eric Horvitz, managing director of Microsoft Research's Redmond laboratory.