The reality did not live up to the expectations set by science fiction. Accordingly, for many years, the majority of people's understanding of A.I. was confined to university laboratories, corporate skunk works, research parks, and that movie with Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law. Attempts to introduce A.I. products and services into the marketplace and for the broader benefits of society were ill-fated. Computing power was insufficient, and the abundance of structured data -- let alone a knowledge of what to do with said data -- was not yet upon us. A.I. has been on the cusp of the mainstream for the past 40 years, but 2016 is the year it's become a buzzword -- incorporating machine learning, natural language processing, voice recognition, and data mining, to name a few technologies.

The Global Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Summit has opened in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Our reporter Ge Yunfei went to China's southern technology center to find out more about the potential of the budding industry. The success of Alpha Go in defeating the human mind has aroused the world of artificial intelligence. But at the Global Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Summit in Shenzhen, it's limitations have been projected. Michael Wooldrige -- who is leading a cooperation initiative between Oxford University and Google on artificial intelligence -- said although Alpha Go is unique in its own right, it's not THAT smart.

Due to similar problems, some even prefer to steer away from AI, preferring to simply call it machine intelligence. It's simply no longer artificial intelligence in as much as technically it remains so. Looking beyond these marketing pitches, there are some really serious developments of seismic proportions that are taking place around the idea of artificial intelligence. What is even more intriguing is that the developments taking place around AI have potentially far reaching consequences on just about every soul on the planet.

Intel is now set to compete against NVIDIA in the deep learning and AI arena, acquiring AI startup Nervana. Nervana specializes in processor-based "deep learning as a service" through technology like its upcoming Nervana Engine, a dedicated AI hardware accelerator due out in early 2017. Intel wants to utilize Nervana's expertise to help its AI performance on its Xeon and Xeon Phi processors, as it sees AI as a big future for the company. NVIDIA is already knee deep in deep learning, with self-driving cars, AI, and more. NVIDIA could face serious competition in the deep learning and AI space if Nervana can help Intel tune its processors for machine learning tasks.

The opportunity for fintech companies to disrupt traditional financial institutions is best observed today in millennials' habits. Millennials have a clear preference for accomplishing tasks through digital applications and services -- something fintech companies are better at providing than banks in terms of speed and personalization. More disturbing, Gen Y customers are far less loyal to their banks: only 45% of North American millennials said they plan to stick with their current bank, compared to 85% of North American respondents from all other age groups. While banks have steadily built up their online and mobile channels -- in part to appeal to millennials -- the products and services they offer in those channels are built on top of legacy systems and fail to provide the level of speed and personalization millennials expect. A customer might be able to deposit a check from anywhere with their mobile device, but it can take several days for that deposit to post to the user's account.

Shopping has never been the same experience from person to person, and merchants are constantly searching for a service that creates the ultimate personalized experience. While a few companies are using some machine learning to tailor things for consumers, NeoWize believes there's a better solution. It thinks that its use of artificial intelligence can offer better customization in real time. The company has launched and is offering its services to ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Magento. Founded by Omer Nevo, Yoav Cafri, and Ronen Ness, this Y Combinator-backed startup leverages active machine learning, a process that looks at a person's journey on a site or app and continuously analyzes their behavior -- did they scroll past a particular product?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is certainly in the vogue as continues to make inroads into various sectors ranging from medicine and cybersecurity to aerospace engineering and motoring. And, The Washington Post is now looking to use the technology to automatically produce hundreds of simple, quick news reports about the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio as well as the upcoming US elections. Announced on 5 August, The Post will join the growing number of media publications utilizing similar technology to expand their news coverage, produce more stories automatically and free up their reporters to do more in-depth pieces. The publication will use an in-house tool called Heliograf that was developed by its engineering team to quickly churn out automatic reports on scores, event schedules, medal counts and other data-centric news for the Rio Games. The automated reports will be then included in the company's main Olympics liveblog that will also feature stories written by The Post's sports reporters.

ISLAMABAD – The U.S. drone strike that killed the Islamic State group's commander for Afghanistan and Pakistan was the latest blow to the Middle East-led movement's ambitions to expand into a region where the long-established Taliban remain the dominant Islamist force. The Islamic State group has enticed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of jihadi fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan to switch loyalty and has held a small swath of territory in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, where leader Hafiz Saeed Khan was killed on July 26 by a U.S. drone, Washington confirmed late Friday. But outside that pocket of territory, security officials and analysts say that the group remains -- for now -- more of a "brand name" than a cohesive militant force in much of the region. "Groups around the world want to jump on that bandwagon and cash in on their popularity and the fear they command," said a Pakistani police official based in Islamabad, on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media. Anxiety over the Islamic State group -- also known as ISIS or "Daesh" -- in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been building since the al-Qaida breakaway movement seized portions of territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014 and began promoting itself worldwide.

This post is part of a series covering the exercises from Andrew Ng's machine learning class on Coursera. The original code, exercise text, and data files for this post are available here. We've now reached the last post in this series! It's been an interesting journey. Andrew's class was really well-done and translating it all to python has been a fun experience.

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