What will we do with all the data we accumulate from photos? On a daily basis, Internet juggernauts like Google, Yahoo, Facebook or Microsoft use highly sophisticated deep learning engines to better understand the content of billions of images uploaded, liked and shared. For now, it is to better serve advertising, but what else can be done? For one, we could generate custom-made photos. Automated photo generating A.I. using all the knowledge acquired about photography -- including which image types helps sell more products, which dominant colors appeal to viewers, and which composition is the most effective -- would build a perfect photo according to your needs.

Artificial intelligence researcher and Managing Director of Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, research lab Eric Horvitz has just won the ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award, Microsoft shared on a blog post today. The award acknowledges his groundbreaking contributions in artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction as well as "his persistent focus on using those discoveries as the basis for practical applications that make our lives easier and more productive." Horvitz first got interested in practical applications of artificial intelligence when he was pursuing his Ph.D. on principles of bounded rationality, as he wanted to "understand how computing systems immersed in the real world could make the best decisions in time-critical situations." Since then, Horvitz has combined multiple computer science disciplines through his work and he has been leading the research in exploring the interrelationships between artificial intelligence and fields like decision science, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Horvitz even collaborated with NASA's Mission Control Center to help them providing flight engineers with the most valuable information about space shuttle systems under intense time pressure.

Jamie Metzl is a Senior Fellow for Technology and National Security at the Atlantic Council. After 4 billion years of evolution by one set of rules, our species is about to begin evolving by another. Overlapping and mutually reinforcing revolutions in genetics, information technology, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and other fields are providing the tools that will make it possible to genetically alter our future offspring should we choose to do so. Nearly everybody wants to have cancers cured and terrible diseases eliminated. Most of us want to live longer, healthier and more robust lives. Genetic technologies will make that possible. But the very tools we will use to achieve these goals will also open the door to the selection for and ultimately manipulation of non-disease-related genetic traits -- and with them a new set of evolutionary possibilities.

I thought a little deviation from my usual output was well overdue. This week saw Microsoft step into the world of API integration with the release of Microsoft Flow. Flow bridges APIs from different companies allowing data to flow from one company to another. For example, you may want to take your tweets from Twitter and save them to Dropbox. Normally, this would require you as an end user to learn programming, however, Flow has already done the coding allowing you just to provide your credentials and some configuration.

It's a long established tradition for startup founders to fudge their numbers, exaggerate projections, and cherrypick data in meetings with investors. But Venrock health investor Bob Kocher says this approach won't fly with him. "I hear spin every day. I believe I'm lied to more often in Silicon Valley than at the White House," says Kocher, who formerly worked as a special assistant to President Obama to help shape the Affordable Care Act. "I'm looking for entrepreneurs who will level with me."

Nice; however, I see also 3D printing along with machine learning being part of any cosmetic procedures and surgeries. With an ever-increasing volume of electronic data being collected by the healthcare system, researchers are exploring the use of machine learning--a subfield of artificial intelligence--to improve medical care and patient outcomes. An overview of machine learning and some of the ways it could contribute to advancements in plastic surgery are presented in a special topic article in the May issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). "Machine learning has the potential to become a powerful tool in plastic surgery, allowing surgeons to harness complex clinical data to help guide key clinical decision-making," write Dr. Jonathan Kanevsky of McGill University, Montreal, and colleagues. They highlight some key areas in which machine learning and "Big Data" could contribute to progress in plastic and reconstructive surgery.

Artificial intelligence has never been as pervasive as it is today. From Google's self-driving cars from to Hilton's new Watson-powered hotel concierge, we are witnessing an explosion of AI capabilities. But while it may appear that machines are taking over, they are still tied to their human masters for one very important task: training. "We're in the middle of the'Big Bang' moment of AI," NVIDIA's Senior Product Manager Will Ramey says in the AISummit's new ebook on the topic. "We now have the deep neural networks, the explosion of big data, and now thanks to the leap in processing power with enhanced GPUs, we have the full package to see a real shift in the development of commercial real-world AI applications."

The rich and famous Elon Musk has launched a beta version of a gym for the training of AI systems. These include robots of all kinds. The gymnasium comes under the rubric of his non-profit agency. Termed the OpenAI Gym, it had its ribbon-cutting ceremony a few days ago. The gym provides AI developers with a workstation from which they can apply their algorithmic technology to enhance its worth and caliber. Among the environments offered by this cyber-gym are robots with simulation and even Atari games platforms.

Situated at the intersection of food and technology, NotCo (The Not Company) used artificial intelligence to create the world's smartest chef. Nicknamed Guiseppe, the advanced algorithm examines the molecular structures of meat and dairy products and attempts to replicate them using plant material. The company says the secret to creating notably good-tasting vegan meats, eggs, milk and cheeses is to find plants that have similar molecular structures. The final product should have almost identical flavors and textures. When Guiseppe creates a recipe, the algorithm not only considers the relative availability of various plants, it also tries to enhance nutrition by including additional sustainable ingredients.

Some of the most intelligent minds in the country are taking a closer look at artificial intelligence, and if the student surpasses the master in this scenario, the world will have some pretty impressive machines on its hands. The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a government institution that concerns itself with large-scale research efforts, has awarded a 28 million grant to Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Harvard's Center for Brain Science (CBS), and its Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. The sizable grant to these three departments is meant to help the famed Boston institution develop "advanced machine learning algorithms by pushing the frontiers of neuroscience." The goal of the latest research effort is to better understand the human brain so that machines may emulate our biological capabilities. Today, our minds and our machines each excel at two differing functions -- while humans are able to quickly recognize patterns and learn, machines are far better at processing large amounts of data.