The blockish and slightly dorky computer game Minecraft may turn out to be a great place for humans and AI to learn how to work together. An experimental new version of the game, released by Microsoft researchers this month, can be used to train an AI to perform all sorts of tasks, from crossing bridges to building complex objects. The new platform, called Project Malmo, makes it possible for a learning algorithm to control a Minecraft character that's normally operated by a human player. But it also provides ways for human players and AI agents to work together, and a chat window through which a person can talk with a nascent AI. "In the long run I want to work toward AI that can be taught by any user to help them achieve their goals," says Katja Hoffman, a researcher at Microsoft Cambridge in the U.K. who leads the project. Hoffman, who gave a demo of the software to AI researchers at an academic conference in New York last week, says that human-AI collaboration is a key goal for the project: "We've built in all the capabilities that a researcher would need in order to work toward collaborative AI." Malmo is geared toward testing reinforcement-learning algorithms, a way of training a computer to perform a task by providing simulated rewards.

The 4U4 card design of Inspur NF5568M4 is applicable to present electric power and heat dissipation designs of the data center, and is scalable to multi-machine and multi-card CPU computing clusters via the open-source Inspur Caffe-MPI becoming the mainstream CPU server used presently in the internet industry. Currently, Inspur's deep learning solution is being applied at Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Qihoo, iFLYTEK and JD and is supporting the "super brains" of various types of intelligentized services. As the neural network model grows in complexity, the computing performance necessary for the model training increases dramatically. The cluster-edition Caffe-MPI computing frame launched by Inspur achieves parallel computing of GPU server. It adopts high-performance mature MPI technology in computing -- carrying out parallel data optimization to the Caffe edition -- with the ability to organize multiple NF5568M4 into CPU parallel computing clusters via IB network.

Last month, in collaboration with the folks behind the fantastic Burner app, my company Voxable launched our latest chatbot project, Ghostbot for Burner. Ghostbot runs on top of Burner's "open" phone numbers as an agent inside your text message inbox, allowing you to "ghost" away from fleeting relationships by responding to unwanted or creepy texters on your behalf. Since the launch, Ghostbot has been covered in over one hundred media outlets. Chris Messina was also kind enough to post it to Product Hunt, calling it "the first bot-as-personal-firewall" he had seen. The opportunity to break new ground in the coming era of bot-mediated communication was what initially both excited and terrified us about the project.

Your next refrigerator may know more about diet than your doctor. How many objects do you have that are connected to the Internet? About a decade ago you probably would have said one or maybe two if you were an early adopter of smartphone technology. But today, oh, well I've got a work computer, I've got a personal computer, I've got a tablet, I've got a smartphone, I've got a video game console, I've got a media player, I've got a smart TV, I even have a smart refrigerator. Now extend this trend outward and what do we get?

"Mastering a field of knowledge involves not only'learning about' the subject matter but also'learning to be' a full participant in the field." This quote is a passage from the readings this week that really resonated with me. Social learning is a way to really engage in the subject matter because you are not only passively participating in the subject matter by reading it but also engaging in the subject by discussing it with your peers and in some instances with the instructor. The chapter also discusses surface learning in comparison with deep learning. Surface learning is when you know the basic facts of the material but don't understand it enough to use it out of direct context, or at least that was my understanding.

The firm used various network names, some essentially masquerading as other service providers, including "Google Starbucks", "Xfinitywifi", "Attwifi", "I vote Trump! free Internet," and "I vote Hillary! free Internet." The company didn't retain individual data, emphasizes Gagan Singh, Avast's president of mobile. But, he says, it was able to observe device names, such as "Gagan's iPhone," and names of visited domains on the network--enough to detect users playing Pokémon Go and accessing Tinder. To avoid leaking data to other network operators who might be more hostile, Singh recommends that traveling Wi-Fi users connect through a virtual private network, whether Avast's or another provider's. "Obviously we prefer ours, but a number of different reputable companies have VPN products out there," he says.

Microservers are a system-on-chip device featuring multiple single-socket servers sharing cooling fans, power supply, chassis, and other such hardware. This common platform allows microprocessors to achieve much higher power efficiency than conventional servers, since more tasks can be carried out on the same volume of power. Microservers were developed in order to integrate server motherboard tasks on to an easily portable and power-efficient unit. This eliminates the need for support chips complementing the server function, which has resulted in the power efficient and space-saving design of microservers. According to Transparency Market Research, the global microservers market was valued at more than US 1 bn in 2012. Due to the rapidly increasing adoption of microservers in diverse industries, the market is expected to exhibit a stellar 43.4% CAGR from 2013 to 2019, with the market's valuation expected to rise to US 30.2 bn over the period.

When creating bots you have to converse with the users and maintain context of the conversation so you can understand the intent of the users, do the necessary actions. In this tutorial we will see how to use Wit.ai to create conversational models and use them in Elixir.

Is there anything that Google DeepMind can't do? It can defeat Go champions, potentially help those fighting blindness, and now it's helping Google itself to become more environmentally friendly. Bloomberg reported that the technology giant was able to use the artificial intelligence to reduce power consumption in its data centers. According to a blog post, DeepMind was able to help reduce the amount of energy used for cooling by up to 40 percent, which equates to around an overall 15 percent reduction. This is impressive considering Google said it used around 4,402,836 MWh (megawatt-hours) of electricity in 2014. For perspective, that's around what 366,903 US homes use yearly.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the second phase of the electric carmaker's "master plan" on Wednesday, outlining a future in which individuals use solar power to provide their own energy, automated vehicles replace heavy-duty trucks and buses, and self-driving technology that could be "10 times safer than the U.S. vehicle average" becomes pervasive. Musk's plan, drawing on projects he's backed for years, represents an ambitious, public mission statement for a man and company known to reach for the improbable. "The main reason was to explain how our actions fit into a larger picture, so that they would seem less random," Musk wrote on Tesla's blog, noting that the company's first "master plan," was posted 10 years ago. "The point of all this was, and remains, accelerating the advent of sustainable energy, so that we can imagine far into the future and life is still good," Musk wrote. It's not some silly, hippy thing? it matters for everyone."