Schedule and Syllabus Unless otherwise specified the course lectures and meeting times are: Wednesday, Friday 3:30-4:20 Location: 200-219 This syllabus is subject to change according to the pace of the class.

He's been there for three weeks now -- though he is quick to point out that he was out of the office for one of them so it's really only been two weeks -- but that's not stopping Quartz from launching one of the Bot Studio's first experiments, a Twitter bot to help attendees of the NICAR conference. People going to #NICAR17 can ask a Twitter bot. Keefe says the Bot Studio, which is funded by a $240,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, will focus on two main areas: How bots and artificial intelligence can help journalists do their jobs better and how news consumers can use them to access news and information. Keefe joined Quartz after spending 16 years at WNYC. We spoke about the lessons he learned from public radio, his goals for the Bot Studio, and what it'll take for bots to catch on.

The effect that information has on security prices has been at the heart of financial economics research for decades. The general consensus is that superior returns can be achieved with superior information. "Timely processing of structured and unstructured data and understanding the complex interrelationships embedded in such information is critical for the success of any active investment strategy." However, monitoring what fuels stock performance is a constant challenge for active investment managers. Active managers are constantly attempting to find inefficiencies in the markets.

That's a phrase none of us has uttered yet, but the day when voice assistants go beyond helping us simply complete transactions to facilitating deeper human-to-human relationships is rapidly approaching. In fact, Amazon and Google are rumored to be adding voice calling to Echo and Google Home. While today people might ask Alexa for their bank balance, voice is ultimately about human conversation, which might lead you to doing something like connecting with your financial advisor. The news that Amazon and Google are working on adding voice calling to Alexa and Google Home isn't a harking back to simpler times, nor is it a concerted effort to kill the home landline. Rather, it's an acknowledgement that while voice assistants are great at completing transactional tasks, people still want to have human conversations, such as getting someone's opinion or walking through a complex purchase.

The insideBIGDATA Guide to Deep Learning & Artificial Intelligence is a useful new resource directed toward enterprise thought leaders who wish to gain strategic insights into this exciting area of technology. In this guide, we take a high-level view of AI and deep learning in terms of how it's being used and what technological advances have made it possible. We also explain the difference between AI, machine learning and deep learning, and examine the intersection of AI and HPC. We present the results of a recent insideBIGDATA survey that reflects how well these new technologies are being received. Finally, we take a look at a number of high-profile use case examples showing the effective use of AI in a variety of problem domains.

Each Friday, I embrace the adage that "a picture is worth a thousand words" and hand-select compelling graphics to put important investment news into perspective. All it takes is a quick glance and you'll be up to speed. The company behind popular messaging app Snapchat priced its IPO on Wednesday and began trading yesterday. As Reuters reports, "Investors set aside concerns about its lack of profits and voting rights for a piece of the hottest tech IPO in years." As I previously warned, Snap is hardly a "fist-pounding buy." And let's get real, Reuters.

A smartphone app that uses deep learning lets people with Parkinson's disease test their symptoms at home in just 4 minutes. The app could help people monitor the disease's progression more closely, and uncover how lifestyle factors may affect their symptoms. "There's very little understanding as to how Parkinson's arises, and patients say that every day the condition is different," says George Roussos at Birkbeck, University of London. People report symptom changes related to everything from exercise to socialising to diet, but it's not yet possible to build a solid picture of how these factors interact. "To understand these differences, we need to monitor the condition regularly, in a quick and easy way, over a long period of time," says Roussos.

The thing about technology evolution that the movies don't quite tell you is that it desperately relies on adoption. The most amazing invention on the planet could be created and if there's not widespread consumer demand, or if it's prohibitively expensive for businesses, that breakthrough isn't going to actually break through. The old Henry Ford quote is more relevant than ever: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." However, by demonstrating the value and efficiency of new tools, we can push modern business forward exponentially – unignorably. Read about the new best practices for the ERP systems and how to tackle the growth of ERP integrations.

Ten years on from its first 1.0 release, OpenCV (Short for Open Computer Vision) is a C library that lets you create software with real-time computer vision. Originally developed in Russia for Intel, it's fully open source and includes machine learning. It's BSD licensed so can be used freely. This is a very large library, with over 200 MB in various DLLs though you can also statically link to it if you prefer. It has several hundred algorithms in C with C, Python, Java and MATLAB interfaces and runs on Windows, Linux, Android, iOS and Mac OS.