Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) and other rivals of Alphabet (GOOGL)-owned Google had better raise their game in artificial intelligence. So said Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive, Thursday in an open letter. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin normally write the founder's letter, in the tradition of Berkshire Hathaway's (BRKA) Warren Buffett. But Pichai wrote this year's note. Pichai says that AI is key not only to its core search business and mobile computing, but also to Google's push into the enterprise (corporate) market and cloud computing.

"Can the brain do back-propagation?" Speaker Abstract and Bio can be found here: http://ee380.stanford.edu/Abstracts/1... Colloquium on Computer Systems Seminar Series (EE380) presents the current research in design, implementation, analysis, and use of computer systems. Topics range from integrated circuits to operating systems and programming languages. It is free and open to the public, with new lectures each week.

OpenAI announced its first product, OpenAI Gym, on Wednesday. OpenAI Gym is a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement learning algorithms in different environments, according to the company. OpenAI is the nonprofit AI research company founded late last year with the goal of advancing digital intelligence without concerns about profit. The project touts investors like Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Infosys and AWS. OpenAI Gym is designed to be a proving ground for algorithms for reinforcement learning, which involves training machines to run trial and error tests.

A few months ago, Elon Musk and a few other big players in Silicon Valley announced their creation of OpenAI, a non-profit research firm that would provide an open platform for researchers to share and compare algorithms for artificial intelligence. "Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return," the team wrote in their introductory blog post. Now, the creators of OpenAI have announced a new platform for the organization, called OpenAI Gym. It's "a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement learning algorithms," as stated on the website. Interestingly, OpenAI Gym won't include leaderboards or competitions based on who can create the top scoring algorithm.

Forget personal computer doldrums and waning smartphone demand. Google thinks computers will one day cease being physical devices. "Looking to the future, the next big step will be for the very concept of the'device' to fade away," Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai wrote Thursday in a letter to shareholders of parent Alphabet Inc. "Over time, the computer itself -- whatever its form factor -- will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your day." Instead of online information and activity happening mostly on the rectangular touch screens of smartphones, Pichai sees artificial intelligence powering increasingly formless computers. "We will move from mobile first to an AI first world," he said.

"The implications for this victory are, literally, game changing -- and the ultimate winner is humanity," Pichai wrote. "This is another important step toward creating artificial intelligence that can help us in everything from accomplishing our daily tasks and travels to eventually tackling even bigger challenges like climate change and cancer diagnosis." Pichai's comments come at a time when artificial intelligence has been the source of intense debate among technologists. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, physicist Stephen Hawking and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have all hesitated to endorse the technology or have warned of its dangers, while others, like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, have said we should not be afraid of AI. Right now, Google works across screens, Pichai said, not just computers, but phones, wrists, cars and virtual reality devices.

Oxford's Global Priorities Project has compiled a list of catastrophes--both natural and self-inflicted--that could kill off 10 percent or more of the human population. It's a real buzzkill of a report and it says that any of these catastrophes could happen within the next five years. Titled "Global Catastrophic Risks 2016," the report ranks the most dangerous threats facing our civilization according to probability. The likeliest risks include nuclear war and pandemics (both natural and deliberately engineered), followed by disasters stemming from runaway climate change, geoengineering run amok, and disruptions posed by artificial intelligence. The report also included low-probability--but high impact--events, like asteroid impacts and supervolcanic eruptions.

Google's self-driving car just got a boost from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. SAN FRANCISCO -- Federal auto safety and standards regulators should set rules governing self-driving cars -- not state agencies that may not have the technological know-how to assess the rapidly evolving technology. That was the message delivered to federal administrators Wednesday by Chris Urmson, the chief architect of Google's seven-year-old autonomous car program. Urmson was one of a variety of auto experts speaking at a Stanford University forum organized by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is soliciting comments as it aims to establish guidelines later this summer for companies developing autonomous cars. The event took place the day after Google announced it was part of the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, a lobbying group of autonomous-car focused companies that also includes Ford, Lyft, Uber and Volvo.

Each year, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin write a letter to share their thoughts on what the company stands for and where it's going. But this year's Founders' Letter is different: it wasn't written by a founder. Last year, Google become Alphabet, news that was itself shared in a letter. We joked at the time that Alphabet was so big it actually owns Google. Now, to let Google have its time in the spotlight again, Page and Brin have handed the Founders' Letter over to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Good features are informative, independent, and simple. In this episode, we'll introduce these concepts by using a histogram to visualize a feature from a toy dataset. I'd love to release these episodes faster, but I'm writing them as we go. That way, I can see what works and (more importantly) where I can improve. We've covered a lot of ground already, so next episode I'll review and reinforce concepts, introduce clearer syntax, spend more time on testing, and continue building intuition for supervised learning.