His high school programming club was arguing about whether artificial intelligence could ever accomplish tasks better than humans. Barrat thought the answer was obvious. A few of his peers, however, weren't so easily convinced and asked for proof by the club's next meeting. "All of the sudden I had a week to make a neural network that could rap," Barrat said. Barrat's story is possible because Silicon Valley has decided AI is becoming indispensable, and big companies need to cultivate more talent to fill the growing demand--Google, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM and other giants like GE are shelling out multi-million dollar salaries for AI programmers. To upend the perceived shortage of talent, tech companies have begun to evangelize for open-source AI code, or software that's free to use, modify, and improve upon.

The second man to set foot on the moon thinks colonizing Mars is humanity's destiny. Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 11 astronaut, may now be 87, but he's keeping his mind focused on the next space frontier. For decades now, he's thought about how to get astronauts to Mars, becoming more vocal about his plans in recent years. He's also a fan of virtual reality as a medium to communicate his vision: He partnered with NASA to build a Mars Hololens experience last year, and now he's hosting a 10-minute VR experience that walks you through his vision of how to get to Mars. Now it's up to CongressTrump's budget proposal means big cuts for NASA, climate change programs The president's proposed 2018 budget has been revealed.

Intellexer is a set of innovative linguistic tools elaborated by EffectiveSoft, a custom software development company. With Intellexer you obtain access to sophisticated intellectual tools needed for textual data processing (search, extraction, and systematization). Relish an opportunity to efficiently retrieve and manage knowledge from your documents. Intellexer API allows developers to embed the Intellexer semantic platform into consumer/enterprise applications or web-services. This API can be used with any software components that make HTTPS requests.

Scientists at Oxford say they've invented an artificial intelligence system that can lip-read better than humans. The system, which has been trained on thousands of hours of BBC News programmes, has been developed in collaboration with Google's DeepMind AI division. "Watch, Attend and Spell", as the system has been called, can now watch silent speech and get about 50% of the words correct. That may not sound too impressive - but when the researchers supplied the same clips to professional lip-readers, they got only 12% of words right. Joon Son Chung, a doctoral student at Oxford University's Department of Engineering, explained to me just how challenging a task this is.

User interfaces have come a long way since the design of typewriters to prevent people from typing too quickly and then jamming the device. Current technology has users viewing monitors and wiggling mouse, or tapping on small touchscreens to activate commands or to interact with a virtual keyboard. But is this the best method of interaction? Designers are asking themselves if it better to talk to a mobile device to get information, or should a wearable vibrate and then feed information into an augmented reality display. Is having an artificial intelligence modify an interface on the fly, depending on how a user interacts, the best course of action for applications or websites?

We already know that algorithms are ruling the world. Consider it kind of God or Ghost from the machine powering them all, for good or evil -- you decide. Soon Machine Learning Algorithms will be able to accurately guide forward-looking business decisions and reveal behaviors never before seen. Gartner says that Automation and Machine Learning will shape the future of governments. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is the Trend no 1 in Garner's Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2017 Can computers really learn mom's art of cucumber sorting?

For those who aren't familiar with the show, it depicts an all-seeing AI that can predicts crime and other immoral acts before they even happen and passes on the information to the Government. One of the episodes of the show illustrates the origin of the Machine, where its creator -- Harold Finch -- is teaching it to distinguish between good and bad by showing it "examples". This is a perfect example of Supervised learning -- we have a data-set or example set with the right answers given. Afterwards, we expect the computer to predict things based on the data-set. Now, to be a bit more specific, the above scenario depicts "Classification", meaning that the predicted output will fall into one of two or more discrete categories -- "good" and "bad" in our case.

Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) is one of the main companies that are trying to build a strong position in the promising market of artificial intelligence. In this article, I explain why I think investing in Baidu can be also a good way to gain exposure to AI. Artificial Intelligence offers a large number of functions that can strengthen Baidu's current businesses, but also gives the company the possiblity to exploit "new" markets such as autonomous driving and AI applications for financial services and healthcare. I have been long Baidu more or less for 3 quarters but the stock hasn't gained much since I started my position. The market is still scared by the weak performance of the company's non-core divisions, while the recent need to adjust advertising practices has weighed on sales in the short-term. The core search market, despite a rise in revenue per customer, suffered from a reduction in the number of customers as a result of stricter regulations for online advertising.

Matt Coatney is a technology executive, business advisor, entrepreneur, author, and speaker. His focus is on bringing advanced artificial intelligence and analytic technologies to market. He has co-founded three companies, advised several others, and contributed to the early success of two different tech startups. Matt has also launched data analytics products designed for the fields of life sciences, healthcare, government, finance, and law. Currently Matt is the VP of Services for Exaptive; he previously was the IT strategy lead for global law firm WilmerHale, and was in charge of technology and operations for a legal search product at LexisNexis.

Deep learning is giving industry leaders a boost that puts them head and shoulders above the competition. In order to meet this raised bar, companies must stay on the "bleeding edge" of machine learning techniques. In this video, Matt Coatney explains how neural networks can handle heightened levels of abstraction to identify even partially obscured facial features. Executives, managers, and entrepreneurs from either technical or business backgrounds will walk away with a better understanding of recent advances in deep learning and how they can be leveraged in the modern digital economy. Beyond personal photos, innovators can apply the techniques outlined in this video to an array of scenarios, from satellite imagery to warehouse and supply chain management.