SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 7, 2016) - Databricks, the company behind Apache Spark, today announced that DNV GL, a provider of classification and technical assurance along with software and independent expert advisory services to the maritime, oil & gas and energy industries, has selected Databricks for large-scale energy data analytics. With Databricks, DNV GL utilizes innovative machine learning techniques to quantify the relationship between smart meter and weather pattern data. Through predictive models, it is able to accurately predict energy demand based on massive amounts of historical weather data, a process sometimes referred to simply as "weather normalization." This new analytics capability enables millions of households to quantify their energy savings. DNV GL delivers testing and expertise to companies throughout the energy value chain.

Salesforce, creators of the world's leading CRM platform, has acquired MetaMind, a deep learning startup to leverage its expertise in artificial intelligence (AI) to better tailor and automate customer support. Founded in late 2014, by Richard Socher, MetaMind focused on creating recursive neural networks which Socher actively worked on while pursuing his Ph.D. at Stanford University. The terms of the deal are yet to be disclosed, but the acquisition was backed by Marc Benioff, Co-Founder and CEO, Salesforce. Richard Socher, Co-Founder, CEO, MetaMind, wrote in his blog, "With MetaMind and Salesforce coming together, we'll be able to offer customers real AI solutions with breakthrough capabilities that further automate and personalize customer support, marketing automation, and many other business processes. We'll extend Salesforce's data science capabilities by embedding deep learning within the Salesforce platform."

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Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, which includes creating and delivering technology for people of all abilities. As a part of this effort, last week at the Microsoft Build Conference, we debuted a new research project in development – Seeing AI – aimed at helping people who are visually impaired or blind to understand more about who and what is around them. Seeing AI will use computer vision, image and speech recognition, natural language processing and machine learning from Microsoft's Cognitive Services and Office Lens to help describe a person's surroundings, read text, answer questions and even identify emotions on people's faces. Seeing AI might be used either as a mobile app or via smart glasses from Pivothead. Although Seeing AI would not replace mobility aids such as guide dogs and canes, it will add another layer of information that could further enable people of all abilities to use technology in a more personal and enjoyable way.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Nvidia for much of its two-plus decades of life made most of its money by manufacturing and selling GPUs for gaming systems. While the bulk of the company's revenues still come from its mainstream graphics technologies, Nvidia over the past several years has been aggressively pushing into new growth areas, particularly virtual reality (VR), connected cars, and deep learning and artificial intelligence (AI). That pivot into these emerging markets has been on full display here this week at the company's GPU Technology Conference (GTC), an event whose growth has mirrored the rise in importance of GPUs in such areas as accelerated computing and high-performance computing (HPC). In 2012, 2,350 people attended GTC; this year, more than 5,000 are here. In his keynote address April 5, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang made announcements in all the new target areas, from technologies designed to make VR worlds more real to products aimed at accelerating innovation in deep learning.

Innovate UK is the new name for the Technology Strategy Board - we're the UK's innovation agency, accelerating economic growth. We know that taking a new idea to market is a challenge. We fund, support and connect innovative businesses through a unique mix of people and programmes to accelerate sustainable economic growth.

Since we established our new European Headquarters in Valencia last July, we have been carrying the Machine Learning banner at all major tech events in the city. This time we were proud sponsors of the third edition of PyConES, the marquee Python event held in Spain. During the weekend event, almost 400 developers attended the conference.

Next time you schedule a meeting and an assistant named Amy or Andrew Ingram sets up the logistics, here's a pro tip: You may be chatting with a robot. And if it's one of x.ai's bots, you might never know the difference. That was my experience when I exchanged emails with "Andrew" to set up an interview with x.ai's CEO. After I emailed x.ai's press contact, she referred me to Andrew to hammer out the details. Andrew proposed a time, thanked me when I accepted and sent out a calendar invitation.

Facebook recently wrapped up its Recruitment competition on Kaggle. This was by far the richest data I have seen on Kaggle. The amount of information which was available in this competition was simply beyond imagination. If not, here is what will make you jump on the table: You get the Bid level interaction data of these bidders for a significant time to identify who among the bidders is bot. I performed reasonably well on the public board, however the private board did no justice to my entry on Kaggle.