Despite major advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) in a number of sectors, like the AI that beat the world champion at Go, its progress in the creative realm has yet to be fully proven. Once in awhile, news about an AI getting shortlisted for a literary prize will come up (no, seriously), but so far, achievements and milestones in the arts are few and far between. Alas, we don't have a fantastic robot-Picasso just yet, but Google is working to fix that. They just announced Magenta--a research project that will explore how AI can be used to produce art. According to a member of the research team, the group will first study what algorithms will be able to generate music.

I remember the day like it was yesterday. I walked into this cavernous auditorium with 1,000 other wide-eyed freshmen and found my place. Front row, balcony center, where I sat twice a week for an entire quarter and listened to a renowned professor -- whom I never actually met or even saw his face (the big screen with fascinating supply-and-demand overheads was plenty to capture my attention). Thank goodness for my TA, who helped me understand important concepts that I use today like, uh, the difference between classical and Keynesian economic theory. Ah, the trusty college teacher's assistant; that person who adds the human touch to college by helping students navigate the mundane and not-s...

Xiaomi, the world's second-most-valuable startup, launched its first consumer drone on Wednesday and it didn't disappoint. The Mi Drone can capture 4K video, automatically avoids any obstacles and costs 300 less than the best-selling comparable product on the market. It seems like a sure-fire hit and a way for Xiaomi to recoup losses from slowing smartphone sales. The only problem is that Xiaomi's drone may never be seen outside China and the company's inability to scale globally continues to hinder growth. Consumer drones are arguably the first consumer electronics category where Chinese companies are defining the market and dominating sales.

These bizarre images, created by users via Russian website Ostagram, are the product of an art technique known as Inceptionism, where images are combined using neural networks to generate a single mind-bending picture.

From medical diagnosis, speech, and handwriting recognition to automated trading and movie recommendations, machine learning techniques are being used to make critical business and life decisions every moment of the day. Each machine learning problem is unique, so it can be challenging to manage raw data, identify key features that impact your model, train multiple models, and perform model assessments. In this session we explore the fundamentals of machine learning using MATLAB. Through several examples we review typical workflows for both supervised learning (classification) and unsupervised learning (clustering). About the Presenter: Shashank Prasanna is a product marketing manager at MathWorks, where he focuses on MATLAB and add-on products for statistics, machine learning, and data analytics.

I started off life with many heroes. Thanks to my grandparents, I had enough and more from mythology. And then of course, there was Hercules. Then I grew a little older, became monotheistic and concentrated all my worship on Alan Turing. The pattern of the monomyth or the'hero's journey' is always the same - mysterious adventures into supernatural worlds, supernatural encounters, fantastic victories and of course, they all come back with the greater powers to help common folk like you and me.

Two engineers who helped build Siri, the famous voice assistant built into every iPhone, have claimed to have gone one step better with an all new digital assistant nicknamed Viv. Unlike her predecessor promiscuous Viv flirt will not be locked down to one ecosystem – an advantage which is likely to set it apart from the likes Facebook's M, Microsoft's Cortana, Google Now and Siri itself by Apple. Anyone familiar with existing voice assistants will feel instantly at home with the latest version, which relies on users clicking on a'Viv' button before posing it a question or voice command. Unlike prior iterations however Viv promises to be a whole lot more advanced; as Dag Kittlaus, co-founder and chief executive of Viv demonstrated by querying: "Will it be warmer than 70 degrees Fahrenheit near the Golden Gate Bridge after 5 pm on the day after tomorrow?" For which he received a detailed answer within 10 milliseconds.

Apple is looking to broaden Siri's footprint and usefulness with help from third party app developers and a software development kit. The big question is whether the move will be able to thwart rivals such as Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa. From connected light bulbs, to plant sensors, to smart locks, and beyond, smart home tech is growing and evolving rapidly. Here you'll find the latest product reviews, news, and how-tos to help you connect your surroundings to the internet in the smartest way possible. The Information is reporting that Apple is opening up Siri to third-party applications.

Welcome to Mossberg, a weekly commentary and reviews column on The Verge and Recode by veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg, now an Executive Editor at The Verge and Editor at Large of Recode. Fifteen years ago, when the time became ripe for post-PC devices that put a premium on integrating software and hardware, Apple was the best-positioned company to lead the charge -- and it did. The company's vertical integration, its attention to detail and innovation in both software and hardware, and its willingness to make big bets gave it an edge. And it used that edge to reel off its now-familiar string of game-changing products like the iPod, the iPhone, the MacBook Air, and the iPad. Now, the iPod is essentially gone, and the other products are in mature or maturing markets, with either pretty flat or dropping sales.