Software faults raise questions about the validity of brain studies (arstechnica.com) Is "Python Machine Learning" by Sebastian Raschka a good book?

The result is that the massive computer power so harnessed helps us to analyse what has happened in the past and, with the use of predictive analytics techniques, opens a window leading to accurate predictions. Undoubtedly, artificial intelligence is fast becoming a major technology for prescriptive analytics, the step beyond predictive analytics that helps us determine how to implement and/or optimise optimal decisions. In business applications, it can assess future risks and quantify probabilities, giving us insights into how to improve market penetration, customer satisfaction, security analysis, trade execution and fraud detection and prevention, while proving indispensable in land and air-traffic control, national security and defence, not to mention a host of healthcare applications such as patientspecific treatments for diseases and illnesses. Typically, the giant search engine firm Google is a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, developing self-driving automobiles, smartphone assistants and other examples of machine learning, while it is no secret that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and actor Ashton Kutcher recently invested 40 million in a project focusing on developing artificial brains. In science fiction films such as Matrix, we have seen how futuristic devices will facilitate facial recognition, interpret human comments and perform complex language translations.

According to some prominent voices in the tech world, artificial intelligence presents a looming existential threat to humanity: Warnings by luminaries like Mr Elon Musk and Professor Nick Bostrom about "the singularity" - when machines become smarter than humans - have attracted millions of dollars and spawned a multitude of conferences. But this hand-wringing is a distraction from the very real problems with artificial intelligence today, which may already be exacerbating inequality in the workplace, at home and in our legal and judicial systems. Sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination are being built into the machine-learning algorithms that underlie the technology behind many "intelligent" systems that shape how we are categorised and advertised to. Take a small example from last year: Users discovered that Google's photo app, which applies automatic labels to pictures in digital photo albums, was classifying images of black people as gorillas. Google apologised; it was unintentional. But similar errors have emerged in Nikon's camera software, which misread images of Asian people as blinking, and in Hewlett-Packard's Web camera software, which had difficulty recognising people with dark skin tones.

Liraz Margalit serves as customer experience psychologist for Clicktale, which helps businesses optimize visitor interactions with their websites. Welcome to the bot-centric future, which is set to make smartphone users -- i.e. almost everyone in the Western hemisphere -- navigate the internet in a chit-chat fashion with a virtual assistant. But "assistant" will soon become too impersonal… Alexa, Siri and others will cross the line from impersonal robots to entities that know our habits, routines, hobbies and interests just as well as, if not better than, our closest friends and relatives. For companies, this is a winning formula: Smartphone users have proved they are only willing to download and spend time in a limited number of apps. As such, businesses might be better off trying to connect with consumers in the apps where they are already spending plenty of time.

It's not always easy to know when you're under attack, or when your security has already been breached. If you're capable of detecting a breach, you might find it in as few as 10 days, but survey after survey finds that breaches that are detected by someone outside the business typically take over 100 days to find. For one thing, between ecommerce, company websites, email, mobile users and overseas divisions, your company is doing business 24/7; however, your IT security team probably works business hours. That's one way 60 percent of attackers are able to compromise an organization in minutes, according to Verizon's 2015 Data Breach Investigations Report. But only a third of businesses can detect a breach within a few days.

Cannes Lions this year saw the ad industry expanding its creative capabilities. Over 13,500 delegates from about 90 countries descended on Cannes again this year hoping for a Lion in one of 17 categories. With awards honoring work from design to creative data to radio, the ceremonies reflected a complex industry drawing on a broader range of creative disciplines than in the past, but also facing unprecedented challenges in making campaigns work across channels. "There's never been so many channels or points of interactions, or agencies working on various parts of that," said Keith Weed, chief marketing and communications officer at Unilever. "It's important to make sure the brand experience does not get fragmented."

Echobox, a London-based AI startup targeting the publishing industry, has secured 3.4 million from Mangrove Capital Partners and LocalGlobe. The startup's AI service is used by publishers to enhance their reach and distribution on social media. The startup claims its tech can predict if an article will go viral and when the optimal time to publish content is. Axel Springer and Le Monde are among its clients. "Having worked at a well-known publisher, I was amazed by how they were investing vast resources in trying to perfect the science of content distribution in-house with data scientists and analytics tools to guide decision-making," said Echobox CEO Antoine Amann.

Artificial intelligence is being used all around us and in the automotive market especially. Companies are fighting it out to develop the next revolutionary product featured around autonomous driving. This is already becoming apparent with the rise in the number of artificial intelligence (A.I) devices being used throughout various industries. The IHS, who are a company specializing in producing reports and statistics, have been conducting reports based upon this field, and the numbers are quite staggering. They have projected that the use of A.I based systems will rocket from 7 million (2015 figure) to 122 million by 2025, with over 100% (some cars will have multiple A.I devices) of them being installed in new vehicles.

Get started with machine learning today and help advance neuroscience! Please see this keynote video from CVP Joseph Sirosh announcing this competition at the Strata conference.

Prateek Joshi is an Artificial Intelligence researcher and a published author. He has over eight years of experience in this field with a primary focus on content-based analysis and deep learning. He has written two books on Computer Vision and Machine Learning. His work in this field has resulted in multiple patents, tech demos, and research papers at major IEEE conferences. People from all over the world visit his blog, and he has received more than a million page views from over 200 countries.