Illinois Structured Learning Package (Illinois-SL) is a general purpose JAVA library for performing structured learning. It houses learning algorithms like averaged Structured Perceptron and Structured SVM with L2-Loss, and provides a minimal interface for your structured learning needs. The training algorithm employed for training SSVM is dual coordinate descent(DCD), which has been proven to have very good convergence properties. Illinois-SL comes with an efficient implementation of DCD with support for multi-threading. Illinois-SL provides a simple and neat framework for developing applications using structured prediction models.

Given the conference calls, Girl Scout events, volleyball practices, dental checkups and social outings, Google Calendar--and let's not forget the alarm clock--is my friend. This orchestration begs the question: what about the tasks that aren't scheduled, or the unsung chores that don't warrant a permanent spot in the cloud but still take up valuable time? After all, those reams of paper towels don't magically appear on their own. They get replenished because I mindfully put them in a cart, either virtually or in person. What if there was a tool that stocked me up automatically?

The arrival of bots to Facebook's Messenger app has the potential to transform how people communicate with brands, but analysts said the fight for consumers' attention in this emerging space is just beginning. "There will be a lot of excitement about the potential for these bots," said Macquarie analyst Ben Schachter. "We are somewhat more cautious." As the marketplace for apps rapidly matures -- most people spend 84% of their time in just five apps each month, according for Forrester -- companies will increasingly try to get user's attention via those most-popular apps. Facebook has a big advantage here, because brands and companies naturally want to be where users are, and Facebook's Messenger app currently has 900 million monthly active users and Facebook's WhatsApp has more than a billion monthly active users.

Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi plans to enter the artificial intelligence (AI) market by becoming an AI component provider for traditional electronics manufacturers looking to make their products intelligent, according to a top executive. "Our artificial intelligence technology will be everywhere," co-founder and vice-president Wong Kong Kat told the South China Morning Post on Wednesday. He expects the company's thrust to result in a wider adoption of intelligent devices in the future. "Even a chair can be smart enough to understand you and move to where you would be seated," said Wong, who now leads the company's efforts in AI and virtual reality. They are the twin focuses of the recently established Xiaomi Exploration Lab, a department in Xiaomi similar to Google's X (formerly known as Google X) that develops products using advanced technologies.

Getting useful information from unstructured data is a notoriously difficult and time consuming task, but the launch of a new intelligent crowdsourcing platform could be about to change that. The Spare5 platform uses a known community of specialists to accomplish custom micro-tasks that, filtered for quality, allow product owners to train powerful artificial intelligence models, improve their search and browse experiences, augment their directories and more. According to IDG, unstructured data is growing at the rate of 62 percent annually and by 2022, 93 percent of all data will be unstructured. The Spare5 platform applies a combination of human insights and machine learning to solve the increasingly complex problem of using unstructured data, including images, video, social media content and text messages. Among the company's first wave of customers are Avvo, Expedia, Getty Images, GoPro, and Sentient Technologies. "The old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words is true, but it's just the beginning.

Stop me if this sounds familiar: You have the TV on, the clicker in hand, the popcorn made, the lights dimmed, and you're ready to watch a movie. You fire up Netflix, and start scrolling. Suddenly you've blown half of your two-hour window just looking for something to watch, drowning in a sea of star ratings and Western Movies With Strong Female Protagonists. Hate to break it to you, but you've come down with a case of Netflix Paralysis. A new app called MightyTV (iOS-only for now, Android soon) aims to solve this problem using a unique concoction of Tinder-style swiping, machine learning, and a collaborative personalization mechanism that can not only find something for you to watch right now, but can account for the tastes of everyone on the couch and find something you'll all love.

In a world where digital tools support virtually every part of our lives, why is it that the full power of such tools has yet to be unleashed to those who might benefit most - educators and learners? In the latest of its series of publications concerning digital learning, Intelligence Unleashed: An Argument for AI in Education, Pearson, in collaboration with the UCL Knowledge Lab, maps out how artificial intelligence in education (AIEd) can be used to create learning tools that are more efficient, flexible and inclusive than those currently available; tools that will help learners prepare for an economy that is swiftly being reshaped by digital technologies. The authors, led by Professor Rose Luckin of the UCL Knowledge Lab, highlight existing and emergent technology that could be leveraged to address some of the most intractable issues in education, including achievement gaps. For example, technology available today could be applied to support student learning at a scale previously unimaginable by providing one-on-one tutoring to every student, in every subject. Existing technologies also have the capacity to provide intelligent support to learners working in a group, and to create authentic virtual learning environments where students have the right support, at the right time, to tackle real-life problems and puzzles.

U.S. bank regulators struck a major blow against some of the largest banks in the country Wednesday, rejecting the so-called living wills of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America, Wells Fargo, State Street and Bank of New York Mellon. The banks' resolution plans, which outline how systemically important financial institutions would navigate a bankruptcy without splintering the financial system or costing taxpayers, have become a central focus of bank reformers since the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act authorized regulators to judge the submissions. The failing grades at five of the nation's eight largest banks reveal newfound consensus between the two regulators responsible for the assessments, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission, which had diverged in previous rounds of analysis. The stricter judgments released Wednesday are likely to add momentum to advocates of big-bank breakups, such as presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. "No firm yet shows itself capable of being resolved in an orderly fashion through bankruptcy," said FDIC Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig in a statement.

An iPhone is connected to a 2016 Chevrolet Malibu equipped with Apple CarPlay apps, displayed on the car's MyLink screen. With 220 million Internet connected cars expected to be on the roads within five years, a national security expert on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, urged automakers to be mindful of the growing cyber-security threats posed by terrorists, information crooks and spies who could potentially try to hack into wired vehicles. DETROIT -- In its quest to build connected and self-driving cars, the automotive industry is facing a daunting task that national security experts say is a must: Design a car that's terrorist-proof -- or at least try. With 220 million Internet connected cars expected to be on the roads within five years, a national security expert visited Detroit on Tuesday and urged automakers to be mindful of the growing cyber-security threats posed by terrorists, information crooks and spies who could potentially try to hack into wired vehicles and cause mayhem of all sorts. " 'What are the bad buys thinking?' We've seen them be creative before," said John Carlin, assistant attorney general for national security, who met with auto executives and law enforcement personnel at Cobo Center at a presentation titled, "Emerging National Security Cyber Threats and Their Implications for the C-Suite."

Despite working on self-driving cars, virtual reality, and other side projects, Google still makes most of its money from the web. That's why the company pays so much attention to protecting users from malicious content online. In recent years, Google has beefed up its Safe Browsing initiative to protect Chrome users--as well as users of other browsers--from a wide array of devious online threats. If you've ever used Chrome you've likely seen this protection before, which appears as a giant red warning screen where you expected to see a webpage. You can still visit the page by clicking through via the details link, but Google's advice is to stay away until the site creators fix the problem.