Okay, they didn't literally run for any hills. But the EFF wrote a very panicked blog post warning of the dangers to come if an AI trained to hack wasn't parented properly. The histrionic post made a few headlines, but missed the point of the competition entirely. If the AI playing Def Con's all-machine Capture The Flag had feelings, they would've been very hurt indeed. The seven different AI agents were projects of teams that hailed from around the world, coming together to compete for a 2 million purse.

It is surprising how much ink is spilled on theories that banking is about to be wiped out by a tsunami called fintech, resulting in the alleged mass closure of banks and unemployment of financial services professionals. Last time I was in New York, Wall Street was intact and thriving and specialized financial crime lawyers like myself were busier than ever. First, the law stands in the way of fintech displacing even one dollar of financial services. A fintech company is not a Brooklyn pizza stand – it cannot survive without being connected to the financial system, which requires a banking partner and a banking relationship. In other words, fintech cannot disrupt anything unless the banks and lawyers (as regulators) let them.

Maybe I'm being a bit pessimistic, but can AI really create jobs just by taking over old ones? Sure we could train some new "data analysts [and] trip optimizers", but in the end can we really mass replace low skilled blue collar jobs with higher skilled ones with the wave of a wand? In the period between when robots can automate the majority of low skill jobs and virtually all jobs, there is very likely to be some sort of significant turmoil as our economy undergoes a paradigm shift of sorts, and I don't think "just retrain workers" is that viable of a solution.

Pokemon Go can make it seem like a cute Caterpie is sitting right there in your cup of coffee (eww). It's clearly just a cartoon image superimposed over the image your phone is capturing. But what if that Caterpie could react to the coffee, splash it around or drink it, as if it really were swimming in your Starbucks cup? Though the videos have been live since August 2, attention from Reddit sparked fresh interest on Friday. Lead researcher Abe Davis, a computer science Ph.D. candidate working in computer graphics, even stopped by the site to chime in.

Blog Post:This week, an Econsultancy article examined five ways that artificial intelligence (AI) can help marketers enhance the customer experience, according to its latest "Marketing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" report. The article explains that by streamlining purchase processes and supply chains, improving recommendations, and enriching the customer experience in related ways, AI can help foster stronger relationships between brands and customers. You may be thinking, "This all sounds well and good, but what does it have to do with me? How am I supposed to leverage AI, right now, to improve my brand's customer relationships?" The article made me think about certain capabilities in Adobe Target Premium that can already help you realise many of these benefits. Streamlining the path to purchase Sales funnels are no longer channel-specific.

China is planning to use artificial intelligence (AI) technology to build the next generation cruise missiles that will be tailor-made for specific combat situations, media reported on Friday. The multi-functional missiles will aid to future combat missions that will require weapons to be both cost-efficient and flexible. "We plan to adopt a'plug and play' approach in the development of new cruise missiles, which will enable our military commanders to tailor-make missiles in accordance with combat conditions and their specific requirements," Wang Changqing of the China Aerospace and Industry Corp told China Daily newspaper. Changqing added that for future combat, modular design based on AI will be a good solution. "Our future cruise missiles will have a very high level of artificial intelligence and automation," he was quoted as saying.

You can get a pretty good idea of a country's wealth by seeing how much it shines at night -- just compare the intense brightness of China and South Korea to the dark mass of North Korea that's sandwiched between them. But nighttime lights don't tell you which neighborhoods or villages within a large region are merely poor and which are home to people living in abject poverty. That's the level of detail policymakers need when they decide where to deploy their economic development programs. You could get that detail by sending legions of survey-takers into crowded slums and sparsely populated rural areas. But that would be hugely time-consuming and cost tens of millions of dollars or more.

It is fairly straight-forward to build chatbots that send reminders, ask (and record) basic information, and answer common questions. For example, the US government tracks veterans who are receiving chemotherapy and recovering at home. Particular inputs to an automated system can trigger human support systems to get more involved. This can be a useful way of generating training data but that training data is a byproduct of the real goal, which is to help individual, caregivers, and healthcare providers to give the best care possible. AI doctors are unlikely to replace doctors anytime soon–neither the technology nor society are ready for that.

Machine learning is technology which trains software so developers don't have to code it by hand. The number of new companies in the category has grown exponentially over the past few years. Here are 10 machine learning startups worth a closer look. Machine learning companies are being snapped up in droves by tech giants cognizant that these startups represent a new wave of technology innovation. This month alone, Intel announced plans to acquire deep learning startup Nervana Systems.