In the past few years, the terms machine learning (ML) and deep learning have begun showing up frequently in many technology news and websites. The major difference between machine learning and other statistical methods, like data mining, is a popular subject of debate. In laymen's language, ML and data mining process use many of the same algorithms and techniques but one major difference lies in what the two methods predict. While data mining is used to uncover previously unknown patterns and knowledge, Machine learning is used to reproduce known patterns and knowledge. ML provides algorithms that resolve the problem based on the data, and the solution improves with time.

I've been blogging about companies desiring to re-examine their assumptions around what work should be done offshore and their desire to do more work onshore and explaining some cost-effective techniques for achieving these objectives. It's clear that emerging digital models allow companies using digital technologies to re-examine their assumptions of where business process work should be done. Leading companies are re-imagining their call centers and customer experience to integrate digital models into their voice models. Work volumes are shifting from voice call centers into new channels such as chat apps, email, tweets and other social channels. Companies are adopting these new ways of communicating with customers and integrating them into their customer service models.

A new Harvard Business Review Analytic Services and IBM study shows 72% of line of business leaders believe they are susceptible to disruption within three years but only 14% are prepared to respond. This presentation provides a lens into the thinking of 600 business executives and examines the...

NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) announced its fourth-quarter earnings last week, and this has gotten many investors excited about the company's future growth potential. In the era of artificial intelligence (AI), NVIDIA's Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) platform has emerged as the dominating force buoying NVDA stock. The stock gained almost 30% in the last three months in contrast to the nine percent returns posted by the S&P 500 Index. NVIDIA Corporation reported phenomenal growth in most of its businesses in the Q4 of fiscal 2017. The record revenue posted during the fiscal quarter was boosted by the impressive growth in its "Gaming," "Professional Visualization," "Datacenter," and "Automotive" divisions, The quarterly revenue stood at $2.2 billion, which was an increase of 55% year-over-year and eight percent sequentially.

IBM wants to bring machine learning to its traditional mainframe customers, and eventually to any technology with large data stores hidden behind a company firewall in what IBM calls a "private cloud." Yes mainframes, those ginormous computing machines from an earlier age, are still running inside some of the world's biggest companies including banks, insurance companies, airlines and large retailers. In fact, according to IBM, a modern IBM z Systems mainframe is capable of processing up to 2.5 billion transactions per day – the equivalent of roughly 100 Cyber Mondays every day. IBM wants to bring some core Watson machine learning smarts to its mainframe clients -- and eventually to any computing done inside the data center -- to allow them to take advantage of all that data in a more modern machine learning context. "Over 90 percent of the data in the world can't be Googled. It resides behind firewalls on private clouds. How do we automate intelligence [for these data sources]?,"

It's clear artificial intelligence (AI) and automation will dramatically affect the job market, but there's conflicting ideas on just how soon this will happen. Some believe it's imminent -- possibly fueled by developments like the Japanese insurance company replacing over 30 employees with robots -- but it's not that cut and dried. Many of the jobs that will be automated are the same jobs companies have been outsourcing for years: customer support, data entry, accounting, etc. Others are jobs they simply cannot fill due to decreases in headcount. Either way, as transactions and expectations for real-time output increase, businesses are struggling to meet this demand and must digitize their operations to remain competitive.

"If you wish to build a ship, do not divide your people into teams and send them to the forest to cut wood. Instead, teach them to long for the vast and endless sea." (Often attributed to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.) There are many excellent robot products that aim to teach children to code. Those robots build the ship. We see the curiosity-driven play of bots_alive to be the prior step: building a passion in children for the human-centered design, technology, engineering, and math that drives the robots.

More than two hundred years ago, a French weaver named Joseph Jacquard invented a mechanism that greatly simplified textile production. His design replaced the lowly draw boy--the young apprentice who meticulously chose which threads to feed into the loom to create a particular pattern--with a series of paper punch cards, which had holes dictating the lay of each stitch. The device was so successful that it was repurposed in the first interfaces between humans and computers; for much of the twentieth century, programmers laid out their code like weavers, using a lattice of punched holes. The cards themselves were fussy and fragile. Ethereal information was at the mercy of its paper substrate, coded in a language only experts could understand.

While you can connect more content and devices to your TV than ever before, a new problem is emerging: you need a roadmap to navigate all your disparate set-top boxes, dongles and sticks connected to your TV's rapidly filling HDMI ports. A new solution to this overcrowding is Caavo, and yes, it's yet another set-top box, but don't hold that against it. The point of Caavo is to connect all your devices -- including your DVR -- through a single gateway so you can call up all their content within a single, seamless interface. The team behind this überbox includes has lots of product experience (one of its founders worked for Dish and Microsoft) as well as the man who invented the Slingbox (although he passed away last year). They unveiled Caavo at yesterday's Code Media event after two years of under-the-radar development.

Halfway through talking to two of Nintendo's most high-powered executives, one of them pulls a playing card from his pocket. It's a strangely low-tech demonstration – especially given that they are here to talk about the Nintendo Switch, perhaps the company's most important console ever made. But that card makes beautiful sense for at least two reasons. The first: that Nintendo actually started out as a business making handmade playing cards in 1889, and the Switch is a conscious attempt to reconnect with some of the companies long and celebrated history. But more importantly it is a way of understanding the very essence of what the Switch is about, or at least how Nintendo conceives of it – it's best compared not with the PlayStation or Xbox's run of blockbuster gaming experiences, but with the fun, social thrill of a game of poker.