With the push of a button this spring -- Google was instantly using 40% less energy to cool a handful of its data centers. The achievement, which Google hails as a major breakthrough, points to how artificial intelligence can be used to make data centers, power plants, energy grids and manufacturing plants more efficient. As these huge, energy-intensive operations use power more efficiently, fewer greenhouse gases are emitted. "We're really thrilled about the environmental impact," said Mustafa Suleyman, who leads applied AI at Google DeepMind, a group of London researchers behind the project. DeepMind has leapt to prominence by building computer systems capable of mastering everything from Atari games to the board game Go.

The release continues, "NBRI's analysis of the data revealed a few findings: AI adoption is imminent, despite marketplace confusion – 38 percent of the survey group are using AI technologies, and of the respondents that don't have AI technologies deployed, 56 percent of the group plan to do so by 2018. Predictive analytics is dominating the enterprise – 58 percent of respondents confirmed use of the technology. The shortage of data science talent continues to affect organizations – 59 percent of respondents named'shortage of data science talent' as the primary barrier to realizing value from their big data technologies. Companies that generate the most value from their technology investments make innovation a priority – 61 percent of the respondents who have an innovation strategy are using AI to identify opportunities in data that would be otherwise missed while only 22 percent of respondents without a strategy could say the same thing."

This week, the White House and New York University's Information Law Institute hosted Artificial Intelligence Now, a symposium exploring the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies across social and economic systems. We were pleased and honored to have Kate Crawford, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research and Senior Research Fellow, New York University Information Law Institute represent Microsoft as she joined to discuss social inequality, labor, healthcare, and ethics in AI technologies. The symposium focused on the near future (5-10 years) in technology, with input from leaders in technology, industry, academia, and civil society. We've gathered some of the best moments from the symposium -- in tweets -- below: "Sorry, we're not going to be talking about the singularity tonight" says Kate Crawford – focusing on today's real challenges instead #AINow Tech moves so fast and policy moves so slow – there is a mismatch. I want every drop of benefit we can squeeze out" with oversight & protections.

When Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley penned the cult classic Frankenstein, she referred to the story's ill-fated protagonist as "The Modern Prometheus," directly referencing the Greek Titan known for creating mankind. Prometheus loved humans, so much so that he stole the gift of fire from Mount Olympus and passed it on to the lowly humans who were neglected by the Gods. His generosity, however, was to undue him and curse him for the rest of his existence. Frankenstein would also share this fate after taking on the role as creator, a responsibility that ended up being too much to bear. And now, after centuries of reiterating the same theme, we too are becoming the modern Prometheus.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) encompasses everything from machine learning to the Internet of Things (IoT). Thanks to these tech advancements, AI systems are now able to perform tasks that previously required human intelligence, such as visual and speech processing, decision-making and language translation. From self-driving cars to automated assistants, AI is rapidly evolving and finding its way into surprising daily use cases, leading people to underestimate how it's fundamentally transforming our world. It's disrupting and improving organizations across all industries, and now it's headed for insurance. Below, we've rounded up AI applications with the greatest potential to impact the insurance industry.

Google dramatically cut its energy usage for cooling its datacenters by up to 40%, with the help of its DeepMind artificial intelligence, the company announced Wednesday in a blog post. Alphabet's Google began using machine learning two years ago to save energy and money at its data centers. Over the past few months, Google added artificial intelligence from its DeepMind research and significantly improved on its results. Google was able to cut up to 40% of its energy usage from cooling its data centers and, overall, improve its power usage effectiveness (PUE) by 15%, after accounting for other non-cooling inefficiencies and electrical losses. For Google, its energy reduction results could bode well should it decide to launch something as a source of revenue.

I am trying to predict the probabilistic location of a person, given a time series of various sensor readings (from accelerometers and cameras). Based on these readings, I want to output the probability of the presence of the person in different zones, whose locations I know. Since LSTMs learn from the context, I think they are suited for this task. However, almost all the tutorials I've encountered come from an NLP point of view. Translating these examples to time series is not exactly one to one.

This will be the definitive forum on the shape of the next economy. Be part of the discussion and understand how the technological revolution will shape the future of work and business. "Could a machine do your job?" ask Michael Chui, James Manyika, and Mehdi Miremadi in a recent McKinsey Quarterly article, "Where Machines Could Replace Humans and Where They Can't Yet." "As automation technologies such as machine learning and robotics play an increasingly great role in everyday life, their potential effect on the workplace has, unsurprisingly, become a major focus of research and public concern. The discussion tends toward a Manichean guessing game: which jobs will or won't be replaced by machines? In fact, as our research has begun to show, the story is more nuanced. While automation will eliminate very few occupations entirely in the next decade, it will affect portions of almost all jobs to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the type of work they entail."

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Working at Black Duck Software affords me a unique perspective on the ways container technologies and open source software continue to radically alter the application security landscape. But it's at conferences and tradeshows where I the most feel part of the wider software development community. While at work (particularly working with OpenHub), I can see and analyze new trends in software development; at these conferences, I experience those shifting tides. Recently I attended RailsConf in Kansas City, Missouri and OSCON in Austin, Texas. I came away from these conferences with a few key insights into how software development has changed since I began working in the field oh-so-long ago.