Update: Machine Learning is Fun! Part 3 is now available! In Part 1, we said that Machine Learning is using generic algorithms to tell you something interesting about your data without writing any code specific to the problem you are solving. This time, we are going to see one of these generic algorithms do something really cool -- create video game levels that look like they were made by humans. We'll build a neural network, feed it existing Super Mario levels and watch new ones pop out!

Along the way, I'll introduce Deep Learning, and add context and background on why the classifier works so well. Here are links to learn more, thanks for watching, and have fun! You can follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/random_forests for updates on episodes, and of course - Google Developers.

Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence concerned with the design of data-driven programs which autonomously demonstrate intelligent behavior in a variety of domains. Machine learning systems are all around us. When you deposit a check, scan your fingerprint, or post a picture on social media, autonomous algorithms are deployed on the spot to sift through and make sense of your constant interactions with our technology. Machine learning silently underpins the fabric of our digital infrastructure, discriminating spam e-mail and banking fraud, making light-speed transactions in the global financial market, recommending music and films for customers to buy, deciding what search results are relevant to your queries, and countless more of the daily interactions with electronic media that we take for granted. Machine learning is the backbone that powers self-driving cars, content recommendation in social media, face identification in digital forensics, and countless other high-level tasks.

Between the Terminator movies, Ava from'Ex Machina', Google's AlphaGo beating the world's best human Go players, machines mimicking Rembrandt's style to paint portraits, debates about morality and privacy, and Stephen Hawking's warnings about the consequences of intelligent machines manned by idiot humans; it's no wonder that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already made people a little uncomfortable. In the marketing world, it's caused the customary outbreak of confusion. Thus resulting in a series of obtuse declarations like "AI will change everything. EVERYTHING!" that are typical of the industry. Any time anything new threatens to upset business as usual, comrades in the marketing and advertising industry especially lunge headlong into an existential crisis. For instance, "Will AI make the creative kind obsolete?"

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The researchers applied machine learning methods to special type of MRI called arterial spin labelling imaging.

Tesla Motors's statement last week disclosing the first fatal crash involving its Autopilot automated driving feature opened not with condolences but with statistics. Autopilot's first fatality came after the system had driven people over 130 million miles, the company said, more than the 94 million miles on average between fatalities on U.S. roads as a whole. Soon after, Tesla's CEO and cofounder Elon Musk threw out more figures intended to prove Autopilot's worth in a tetchy e-mail to Fortune (first disclosed yesterday). "If anyone bothered to do the math (obviously, you did not) they would realize that of the over 1M auto deaths per year worldwide, approximately half a million people would have been saved if the Tesla autopilot was universally available," he wrote. Tesla and Musk's message is clear: the data proves Autopilot is much safer than human drivers.

The jobs at highest risk are those in the transport and retail sectors. In fact the transport sector could have 1.5 million jobs, that's 74% of the current workforce, replaced with automation and 60% of retail. Not surprising when you see how popular online shopping has become - who needs a high street shop? Almost 750,000 have been lost in manufacturing to automation just in the last 15 years alone. Even Stephen Hawking the renowned scientist fears that AI or Artificial Intelligence could eventually spell the end of the human race.

The Turing test, developed by legendary computer scientist Alan Turing and used to test the artificial intelligence of computers, has a major flaw. A new study, published in the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, points out that the test, which was devised in the 1950s, could be successfully passed if the computer pleaded the Fifth Amendment and remained silent. Authors Kevin Warwick and Huma Shah from Coventry University argue that a machine could plausibly pass the test by saying very little, or nothing at all. Previous attempts at defeating the Turing test have seen computers pretend to be children, but no matter how great their general knowledge, they are often unable to convince a human interacting with them (over typed messages) that they are also a human. A critical point raised by the study is how the Turing test is based around a machine being discovered as a human based on what it does wrong, rather than what it does right.

It's a sad commentary that the public has become so technophobic that we are even taking these sci-fi claims seriously. The view that smart machines will kill us overstates the pace of technological progress, particularly because the processing power of silicon computer chips is slowing down and progress in AI outside of deep learning is relatively modest. Moreover, machines and the human mind are completely different systems, and even major advances in computing are highly unlikely to produce a machine with humanity's intellectual capacity, imagination, or adaptability. As MIT computer scientist Rodney Brooks puts it, "We generalize from performance to competence and grossly overestimate the capabilities of machines -- those of today and of the next few decades." Just as importantly, even if human-level intelligent machines could be built, which is unlikely, they will remain under the control of humans, because we would never build them unless they are largely safe, with the benefits outweighing the costs (just as we do with all technologies in the marketplace).