Xuedong Huang, Microsoft's chief speech scientist, said he and his team were anxious to make faster improvements to how well computers can understand speech, and the tools they had to work with were slowing them down. So, a group of volunteers set out to solve this problem on their own, using a homegrown solution that stressed performance over all else.

Regression is still one of the most widely used predictive methods. If you are unfamiliar with Linear Regression, check out my: Linear Regression using Excel lesson. It will explain the more of the math behind what we are doing here. This lesson is focused more on how to code it in Python. What we have is a data set representing years worked at a company and salary.

The words "machine learning" might conjure images of hyper-intelligent robots in the distant future, but the technology is a reality now. Algorithms powered by machine learning and drawing on big data enable us to solve tough problems that improve people's daily lives. Let's start, for instance, with something many people rely on every day: driving directions. It's pretty well known that our navigation apps rely on GPS satellites to pinpoint our location and complex algorithms to figure out the most direct route to get wherever we want to go. Most of the time, this works just fine.

WIRE)--Cornerstone OnDemand (NASDAQ:CSOD), the global leader in cloud-based talent management software solutions, today announced the launch of its suite of people analytics products, all of which are available today. This includes the introduction of Cornerstone View, an interactive data visualization application that gives business leaders deeper intelligence about their people, as well as Cornerstone Planning, an intuitive workforce planning application that helps organizations easily create, manage and execute accurate hiring plans over multiple time horizons. The company also added two new dashboards to Cornerstone Insights, its predictive and prescriptive analytics solution that equips business leaders with the intelligence to better recruit, train, manage and develop their people. Cornerstone's portfolio of analytics offerings applies sophisticated data science and the most refined machine learning system for talent management to help organizations harness the power of real-time people data. The Cornerstone Analytics suite is built on top of the world's largest network of shared talent data, representing more than 16 years of workforce management activity across 25 million users globally, nearly 2,700 organizations across all industries and seven talent management dimensions –recruiting, onboarding, training and development, performance management, compensation management, succession planning and workplace collaboration.

It's probably years away from being used in West Virginia, but computer-based artificial intelligence appears to be helping law enforcement officers find wildlife poachers. Researchers are combining AI with something called "game theory" to plan patrols based on the topography, game movements and past instances of illegal activity in a given area. "In most parks, ranger patrols are poorly planned, reactive rather than pro-active, and habitual," said Fei Fang, a Ph.D. candidate in the computer science department at the University of Southern California. In other words, the horse is usually out of the barn by the time the law arrives -- and if the law does happen to arrive before law breakers do their thing, officers execute their patrols so predictably the bad guys often are able to avoid them. The National Science Foundation and the Army Research Office are supporting research into using AI to put patrols on the ground before poachers have a chance to poach.

Watson, IBM's computer brain, has a lot of talents. It mastered "Jeopardy!," it cooks, and even tries to cure cancer. On Tuesday, IBM Security announced a new cloud-based version of the cognitive technology, dubbed "Watson for Cybersecurity." In the fall, IBM will be partnering with eight universities to help get Watson up to speed by flooding it with security reports and data. The plan as of now is for Watson to process up to 15,000 documents about digital security a month -- including everything from blog posts to videos -- so that it can get a feel for the sometimes esoteric terminology of the cybersecurity world.

The Bank of St George, founded in 1407 in the Italian Republic of Genova, is one of the world's oldest banks. It was so powerful that it governed many of Genova's possessions on the republic's behalf. This power was based on accumulated capital. The power of accumulated capital can still dominate international affairs, but a new form of power is also emerging, that of accumulated data through loyalty cards, text messages, credit card transactions, web browsing and social networking. Data is the new currency.

Shrap Talos lent backward into his outdated interface, closing his eyes as the wall-sized array hijacked his visual cortex and an image took shape. He could see the archive as a highly detailed three dimensional sphere from every angle at once, as if he had a thousand eyes orbiting it like satellites around a planet. That had taken him a while to get used to six long months ago when the technology had first come out. If it wasn't for the daily regime of drugs he was taking to enhance his neuroplasticity, he might never have managed. His plumage shifted a fraction as the thought of being left behind sent a chill across his skin. His role in all this was of the chief architect and maintainer of the archive.

Computers don't have the ability to understand English language, and to address this issue, this is where the Google's free AI software dubbed Parsey McParseface, based on SyntaxNet machine learning framework comes in. The search engine giant announced on Thursday that it will release a new piece of software that will understand written English. More interestingly, Google will release the AI software as open-source which means developers can freely use the software to train computer programs with ability to process natural language. Google says its latest innovation will be equipped with Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to parse written English sentences with up to 94 percent of accuracy. Google added that trained human linguists can only achieve up to 96 percent of accuracy. As an AI machine to achieve such milestone, it is a huge breakthrough in the field of artificial intelligence.

Collaboration With STFC Hartree Centre Taps into IBM Watson to Improve Patient Experience. Alder Hey Children's NHS Foundation Trust today announced a ground-breaking multi-year collaborative programme with the Science and Technology Facilities Council's (STFC) Hartree Centre, supported by IBM (NYSE: IBM), to create the United Kingdom's first'cognitive' hospital by harnessing'big data' and the power of IBM's Watson technology platform. This is the first time that Watson technology will be applied to improve patient experience in the United Kingdom. Alder Hey and the Hartree Centre believe that by applying Watson -- an innovation in computing technology -- it will enhance patient care and potentially generate savings for both the hospital and the NHS (National Health Service) as a whole. Using Watson to analyse any feedback that is voluntarily and securely provided by the patients, with appropriate consent as needed, it is anticipated that Alder Hey will be able to greatly enhance patient experience by; identifying patient anxieties and providing information and reassurance on-demand; reminding young patients and their parents about appointments and about aftercare; and providing insightful feedback to clinicians based on the tone and sentiment of these interactions.