Introduction This is the first in a series of posts exploring artificial neural network (ANN) implementations. The purpose of the article is to help the reader to gain an intuition of the basic concepts prior to moving on to the algorithmic implementations that will follow.

Christopher Crosbie is a Healthcare and Life Science Solutions Architect with Amazon Web Services. This post is co-authored by Gopal Wunnava, a Senior Consultant with AWS Professional Services. SparkR is an R package that allows you to integrate complex statistical analysis with large datasets. In this blog post, we introduce you running R with the Apache SparkR project on Amazon EMR. The diagram of SparkR below is provided as a reference, but this video provides an overview of what is depicted.

A new release out of Evans Data reports, "Over a third (36%) of all developers who are actively working on Big Data or advanced analytics projects now use elements of machine learning according to Evans Data's recently released Big Data and Advanced Analytics survey report. While the market for machine learning is still fragmented, those developers actively working with machine learning are most likely to be targeting financial sectors, Internet of Things, or manufacturing. The survey of over 500 developers actively working with Big Data also showed that decision trees are the most used analytical model which links in closely with artificial intelligence and machine learning development. Linear regression and logistics regression were the next most cited analytical models. Logistics, distribution, or operations were the company departments most likely to be using advanced data analytics or Big Data solutions."

People on the streets of London, Düsseldorf, Bern, and other European cities will soon see robots rolling along the sidewalk to deliver prepared food, parcels, and retail goods to nearby customers. Starship Technologies, a robotics company launched two years ago by Skype cofounders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, says it plans to announce on Wednesday four industry partners that will be testing its delivery robots: Just Eat, a European food delivery company; Hermes, a German parcel delivery company (not to be confused with the similarly named French luxury goods maker); Metro Group, a major German retailer; and Pronto.co.uk, a food delivery service based in London. The four companies later this month will begin tests with real customers to assess the viability of automated product deliveries. A similar program is being developed for cities in the US. Starship has been conducting proof-of-concept tests without real customers for the past nine months.

Artificial intelligence that can understand and answer any work-related question it is asked has been made available in the UK for the first time. The computer software, called Starmind, uses machine learning to understand queries, then source answers from previous staff conversations on a subject or track down experts within the company who are able to help. Its creators refer to it as'brain technology', adding its aim is to become a central knowledge bank within any company, an instant database of information that can be accessed by anyone. AI software which understands and answers work-related questions has been made available in the UK. Starmind is an artificial intelligence software for the workplace, designed in Switzerland.

For more than a decade the company formerly known as Google, latterly rebranded Alphabet to illustrate the full breadth of its A to Z business ambitions, has engineered an annually increasing revenue generating empire which last year pulled in 75 billion. And it's done this mostly by mining user data for ad targeting intel. Slice it and dice it how you like but Google's business engine needs data like the human body needs oxygen. Most of its products are thus designed to remove friction to accessing more user data; whether it's free search, free email, free cloud storage, free document editing tools, free messaging apps, a fuzzy social network that no one loves but which is somehow still hanging around, free maps, a mobile OS platform that OEMs can load onto smartphone hardware without paying a license fee… Most of what Google builds it opens to all comers to keep the data pouring in. The bits and bytes must flow.

Drowsy driving is notoriously tough to detect. There's no test to prove it, the way a breathalyzer can prove someone was driving drunk. But technology to detect drowsy driving is in the works. In commercial transport, one industry is leading the way: mining. The stakes are particularly high in this field since the enormous haul trucks used in mining are several times the height of a person.

Yactraq's machine learning driven audio mining offering makes custom vocabulary based speech analytics affordable for any organization, including SMB's and enterprise business unit's. Yactraq has been selected in a Gartner Cool Vendor (Smart Machines) 2016 among the first 20 companies to be showcased by IBM Watson's Cognitive Gallery and is an IP for Defense partner of Intellectual Ventures, the world's largest patent bank. Q: You've developed a breakthrough artificial intelligence platform for audio-mining and speech analytics; can you give us more insights into your technology? A: Beyond basic functionality offered by legacy audio-mining systems, Yactraq's OmniTraq audio mining product offers revolutionary machine learning driven capabilities that enable our clients to detect customer sentiment and monitor service quality in new and powerful ways, across a range of verticals. OmniTraq can be viewed as an analytics, reporting and search layer that depends on two key technology platforms.

Two recent accidents involving Tesla's Autopilot system may raise questions about how computer systems based on learning should be validated and investigated when something goes wrong. A fatal Tesla accident in Florida last month occurred when a Model S controlled by Autopilot crashed into a truck that the automated system failed to spot. Tesla tells drivers to pay attention to the road while using Autopilot, and explains in a disclaimer that the system may struggle in bright sunlight. Today the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it was investigating another accident in Pennsylvania last week where a Model X hit the barriers on both sides of a highway and overturned. The driver said his car was operating in Autopilot mode at the time.

Facebook's recent chatbot announcement about delivering ecommerce to the service's extensive user base has put artificial intelligence into the spotlight again. For years, software design has traditionally consisted of three fields, but there may soon be a fourth. Joining UX, UI, and graphic and interaction design is an idea known as "consciousness design" that will emerge as A.I. assistants grow in popularity. Amazon Echo and other A.I. assistants are among the pioneers of virtually "interface-less" experiences that make consciousness design central to product success. The idea is not so much to offer a simple search that delivers less-than-desired results, which is what Facebook bots basically do, but rather to offer a real customized experience that harnesses artificial intelligence to power the coming revolution.