The O'Reilly AI Conference will cover all the most essential--and intriguing--topics in applied AI. And you'll meet the brightest minds in applied AI, including keynotes from Microsoft's Lili Cheng, Peter Norvig of Google, and Facebook's Yann LeCun. Urs Muller from NVIDIA will address learning for autonomous driving. Google's Martin Wicke will dive into scalable machine learning. Hilary Mason will describe her work implementing AI at Fast Forward Labs.

On October 14-15, 2016, the NYU Center for Bioethics in conjunction with NYU Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness will host a conference on "The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence". Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) makes questions about the ethics of AI more pressing than ever. Existing AI systems already raise numerous ethical issues: for example, machine classification systems raise questions about privacy and bias. AI systems in the near-term future raise many more issues: for example, autonomous vehicles and autonomous weapons raise questions about safety and moral responsibility. AI systems in the long-term future raise more issues in turn: for example, human-level artificial general intelligence systems raise questions about the moral status of the systems themselves.

Google's artificial intelligence division, DeepMind, has teamed up with a hospital in England on a research project that could lead to detecting vision loss and other eye problems sooner, Popular Mechanics writes. The article says the project calls for giving DeepMind's computer more than a million anonymous eye scans to let it learn patterns and make predictions. DeepMind's idea is to train AI to detect early signs of age-related macular degeneration as well as vision loss related to diabetes.

This spring, IBM opened a new center in Cambridge for its "cognitive intelligence" software, also known as Watson. Watson is ready to analyze vast quantities of data and spit out deep insights. All that intelligence, according to an IBM release from September, represents nothing less than "a new era in computing." Thirty years earlier, IBM was setting up another office a few blocks away to focus on the then-trendy realm of artificial intelligence. In the summer of 1986, IBM executive Herbert Schorr told an AI conference, "We look at artificial intelligence as an extremely timely technology that is ready for commercial applications."

Neural Networks are a family of Machine Learning techniques modelled on the human brain. Being able to extract hidden patterns within data is a key ability for any Data Scientist and Neural Network approaches may be especially useful for extracting patterns from images, video or speech. The following blog aims to explain at a high level how these methods work and key things to bear in mind. At first these weights should be randomized. In a basic neural network, you train the system by running individual cases through one at a time and updating the weights based on the error.

Seattle-based machine learning startup Dato, which originally launched as GraphLab, announced today that it has changed its name again. Now, the company is known as Turi, an ode to computer science legend Alan Turing. This past September, Turi -- then Dato -- found itself in a trademark infringement argument with fellow tech startup Datto after Dato changed its name from GraphLab in January 2015. Datto, which has been offering data backup and recovery services from its Connecticut headquarters since 2007, first complained about Dato's new name just weeks after the company finished its rebranding from GraphLab. Datto argued that Dato's new name would cause confusion.

Scientists are closer to creating a computer with emotions. Researchers in Russia are expected to reveal an emotional computer within a year and a half, which will be able to think like a person and build up trust, its creators say. The system, called'Virtual Actor', is being created by the National Research Nuclear University in Moscow. Computers are machines used for practical reasons, without any emotion involved. The AI, called'Virtual Actor', is expected to be online within the next year and a half.

Soon, when restaurant-goers hear "May I take your order?" those words may be coming from a robot. Some restaurants have started experimenting with human-like robots instead of human cashiers, allowing consumers to pay for their meals without interacting with another person. Although many restaurants have allowed digital ordering, either online, by kiosk or on tablets at the table, the practice of using humanoid, or human-like robots, is still in its earliest stages, and it's primarily happening in Asia so far. Experts say the robots could benefit restaurants and lead to wider adoption -- if diners aren't too freaked out by them. Pizza Hut YUM, 1.74% is the latest company to try a robot cashier, in a partnership with robotics company SoftBank Robotics and MasterCard MA, 0.76%, which has created the payment app. The application works only with MasterCard's MasterPass, a digital wallet that allows payment by MasterCard cards, as well as credit, debit or prepaid cards from Maestro, American Express AXP, 2.84%, Diner's Club, Discover DFS, 3.36% and Visa V, 2.46% .

Project Malmö is a platform for Artificial Intelligence experimentation and research built on top of Minecraft. We aim to inspire a new generation of research into challenging new problems presented by this unique environment. Launch Minecraft with our Mod installed. This is also available in the readme.html in the release zip. If you want to build from source then see the build instructions for your OS: Windows, Linux, MacOSX.

Editor's note: Before continuing, you may first want to read part 1 of this in-depth overview here. NovuMind and Numenta were the only AI companies we visited during this Silicon Valley trip, but even though we were only there for a limited time, we were still able to gain some insights on the developmental trends of AI and deep learning. After Dr. Wu departed from Baidu, he founded the startup NovuMind to focus on deep learning and AI technologies. I accompanied TalkingData's CEO Leo Cui, Mr. Che Pingjue, and Beijing GZT Network Technology's Vice Chairman, Mr. Li Yangshong on their visit to NovuMind. Leo is an excellent go player (ranked at amateur 5-dan).