Artificial intelligence is breathing down our necks: Software built by Google startled the field last week by easily defeating the world's best player of the Asian board game Go in a five-game match. Go resembles chess in the deep, complex problems it poses but is even harder to play and has resisted AI researchers longer. It requires mastery of strategy and tactics while you conceal your own plans and try to read your opponent's. Mastering Go fits well into the ambitious goals of AI research. It shows us how much has been accomplished and forces us to confront, as never before, AI's future plans.

Let's come straight to the point on this one – there are only 2 types of variables you see – Continuous and Discrete. Further, discrete variables can divided into Nominal (categorical) and Ordinal. We did a post on how to handle categorical variables last week, so you would expect a similar post on continuous variable. Yes, you are right – In this article, we will explain all possible ways for a beginner to handle continuous variables while doing machine learning or statistical modeling. But, before we actually start, first things first. Simply put, if a variable can take any value between its minimum and maximum value, then it is called a continuous variable. By nature, a lot of things we deal with fall in this category: age, weight, height being some of them.

The first 2 of them may appear similar at first glance, but actually they make totally different statements. In the first one (Data Science Venn Diagram 2.0) for example, mathematics and statistics are a real subset of Data Science, whereas in the second one Data Science is a real subset of Mathematics, which is a completely different statement. Another question from the first one is, whether Data Science really covers all of computer science, mathematics and statistics etc. This does not sound reasonable. The third diagram tries to explain what exactly is meant by mathematics and statistics.

Most marketing email gets personalized using a static template which limits the amount of information that can be tweaked for each recipient. Marketing automation company Boomtrain is launching a new platform, Boomtrain Editor, that adds advanced machine learning personalization regardless of email provider. It predicts the optimal email content for each recipient, and can then be applied by simply dragging and dropping it into a customizable template. Rather than displaying the same message for all subscribers, content can be personalized with recommendations for each individual user, regardless of the number of recipients. It can turn existing HTML newsletters into a dynamic, 1:1 personalized template, without needing software specialists to help.

As the nonplayable characters (NPCs) of squad-based shooter computer games share a common goal, they should work together in teams and display cooperative behaviors that are tactically sound. Our research examines genetic programming (GP) as a technique to automatically develop effective squad behaviors for shooter games. GP has been used to evolve teams capable of defeating a single powerf.ul This paper is an extension of our paper presented at the 2008 Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE'08). Its aim is to explore the effects of shared perception on the evolution of effective squad behaviors.

Artificial intelligence has been around for awhile, but in rudimentary forms. But only recently have artificial intelligence developments gotten close to really aiding, and possibly replacing, professionals like attorneys. One of the recent revolutions in AI is the proliferation of successful machine learning. Machine learning allows computer programs to develop independently, through observing, evaluating, and deciding over and over and over again -- getting better each time. IBM's Watson technology, for example, can learn what tastes you enjoy and create brand new recipes based on those.

The web is full of good explanations of machine learning algorithms. And every second applicant for a data science position has finished the Coursera course on machine learning. Theory will not help you choose good values for the 16 parameters a standard implementation of a random forest takes. The default values are good to get started, but which parameters should you modify depending on your data? Choosing the right features, algorithms and parameters is an art.

It may not look like one of Isaac Asimov's robots or sound like HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey," but artificial intelligence is here, and it is already having a huge impact on how the world works. From the way you shop for a pair of shoes online to how fast a Formula 1 team can push its car's engine, AI is helping businesses across the globe save millions by improving performance and efficiency. Still, problems like trust and security, not to mention fears of the so-called singularity, when artificial intelligence would overtake human thinking, remain hurdles that the technology must overcome before it goes mainstream. AI hit the news this week after a program called AlphaGo, developed by engineers at DeepMind, the AI startup acquired by Google in 2014 for 580 million, defeated the world's No. 1 Go player Lee Sedol. AlphaGo beat Sedol 4 games to 1, claiming a 1 million prize.

The field of intellectual property is rapidly evolving, both with respect to the law and the technologies being considered for protection. This session provides a primer about what a patent is, current best practices for protecting speech technologies and defending against assertion, and the recent evolution of intellectual property law in the United States, with emphasis on speech, software user interfaces, and mobile technologies. Fraudsters are using robodialing and ANI spoofing to wreak havoc on call centers. From the illegal practice of toll-free traffic pumping and international revenue-sharing fraud, to the more villainous acts of financial account fraud, identity theft, and drug trafficking, this seminar explores the unusual ways criminals are hacking our businesses. We also examine simple and cost-effective practices to protect our businesses, and our customers.

Technology showcased in the movie Minority Report, which enabled Tom Cruise to swipe through midair images in the 2002 film, could soon become a staple of hospital operating rooms. A new gesture-controlled computer interface aims to give surgeons easier access to medical images during marathon surgical operations. The experimental medical system takes advantage of Leap Motion controllers that can sense and track people's hand gestures. South Korean researchers developed their own "GestureHook" software that can translate the gestures captured by a Leap Motion device into commands for several different types of medical software. "We thought that using gestures as a new interface for controlling software in hospitals would provide access to computers for surgeons during procedures," says Ben Joonyeon Park, a software developer on the Medical Information Development Team at the Asan Medical Center in Seoul, South Korea.