There's a new era of social self-expression and mobile entertainment happening, enabled by always-on cameras, real-time computer vision, social media, and other tech. Several of these phenomena -- from emoji to stickers to filters to cultural memes -- emerged in Asia or were popularized in messaging apps there before they made their way into global products. Well, livestreaming is currently exploding in China. And while it's been around in the U.S. for years in various forms, it hasn't really taken off at mainstream scale… yet. So what can we learn as livestreaming evolves in China (and perhaps here too)?

Creating a new mobile app used to begin with a simple question: iOS or Android? And if you believe the hype about chatbots (intelligent helpers that users can summon via instant message), the decision is about to get much more complicated. Tech companies like Facebook, Microsoft, and Slack are all opening up bot platforms within their messaging services, letting users read the news, shop online, hail an Uber, and get customer service within a messaging window. The idea is to allow for quick interactions that don't require installing a full-blown app. But even as these companies build up their chatbot armies, we're probably not headed for another bitter ecosystem war, like the one that led to the dominance of iOS and Android.

Thanks to the wonders of AI, it's possible to ask a robot to help you figure out the best way to deal with a difficult situation. One of the greatest hits as far as Christmas gift-giving was a gizmo called an Echo Dot I gave my nephew, Nathan. It was a hit despite the obligatory annoying learning curve that comes when any Southerner tries to talk to an artificial intelligence device ("Alexer, G-darnit, stop giving me the temperature in Celsius, I want it in American!") I had arrived in Chapel Hill weary from a verbal battle with Siri who, based on the convoluted traffic pattern she recommended, is a huge Duke fan. Artificial intelligence is a big buzzword for 2017.

This demo trains a Convolutional Neural Network on the CIFAR-10 dataset in your browser, with nothing but Javascript. The state of the art on this dataset is about 90% accuracy and human performance is at about 94% (not perfect as the dataset can be a bit ambiguous). I used this python script to parse the original files (python version) into batches of images that can be easily loaded into page DOM with img tags. This dataset is more difficult and it takes longer to train a network. Data augmentation includes random flipping and random image shifts by up to 2px horizontally and verically.

The next BriefingsDirect technology innovation thought leadership discussion explores how rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are poised to reshape procurement -- like a fast-forwarding to a once-fanciful vision of the future. Whereas George Jetson of the 1960s cartoon portrayed a world of household robots, flying cars, and push-button corporate jobs -- the 2017 procurement landscape has its own impressive retinue of decision bots, automated processes, and data-driven insights. We won't need to wait long for this vision of futuristic business to arrive. As we enter 2017, applied intelligence derived from entirely new data analysis benefits has redefined productivity and provided business leaders with unprecedented tools for managing procurement, supply chains, and continuity risks. To learn more about the future of predictive -- and even proactive -- procurement technologies, please welcome Chris Haydon, Chief Strategy Officer at SAP Ariba. The discussion is moderated by BriefingsDirect's Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Gardner: It seems like only yesterday that we were content to gain a common view of the customer or develop an end-to-end bead on a single business process.

It is unclear what key symptoms differentiate Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) and Chronic Fatigue syndrome (CFS) from Multiple Sclerosis (MS). The current study compared self-report symptom data of patients with ME or CFS with those with MS. The self-report data is from the DePaul Symptom Questionnaire, and participants were recruited to take the questionnaire online. Data were analyzed using a machine learning technique called decision trees. The best discriminating symptoms were from the immune domain (i.e., flu-like symptoms and tender lymph nodes), and the trees correctly categorized MS from ME or CFS 81.2% of the time, with those with ME or CFS having more severe symptoms.

Machine learning is a subfield of computer science. In 1959, Arthur Samuel defined machine learning as a "Field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed".[2] Machine learning explores the study and construction of algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data. Such algorithms operate by building a model from example inputs in order to make data-driven predictions or decisions, rather than following strictly static program instructions. Machine learning is closely related to (and often overlaps with) computational statistics; a discipline which also focuses in prediction-making through the use of computers. It has strong ties to mathematical optimization, which delivers methods, theory and application domains to the field.

My speech will be about the most important about the grand theme of the 1st century which is the rise of artificial intelligence which is going o transform every aspect of our civilization and before we will look at the content rillettes have a brief look at the previous century what was the most important thing in the previous century the journal nature in 1999 made a list of the most influential inventions after twenty century and number one of class once the invention from 1908 which made the 20th century stand out among our centuries ever in the history of mankind because it was the one that drove the population explosion from 1.6 billion people in the year nineteen hundred too soon 10 billion it's a chemical thing and a high pressure and high temperature nitrogen is extracted from thin air to make still 500 million tons of artificial fertilizer for a year now without that stuff half of humankind would not even exist this planet could sustain at most four billion people without that one invention billions and billions and billions would never have lived without it and soon two out of three people on this planet will depend on this one single mention nothing else was remotely as influential as an however the way I explosion of the present century is going to be much more impactful and grander than that because that we are not talking about smaller numbers such as for or 10 but we are talking about trillions of trillions and this has a lot to do with the fact that computers are getting faster by a factor of 10 per euro per five years and this trend has held at least since nineteen forty one man cannot souza built the first working program controlled computer and nineteen forty one seventy five years gone every five years since then computers became roughly 10 times cheaper which means that now we have a factor of a million billions and this trend has been running for a long time but only recently we have approached the computational power of a small animal brain and in the near future for the first time for a thousand euros.

Agriculture is the industry that accompanied the evolution of humanity from pre-historic times to modern days and fulfilled faithfully one of its most basic needs: food supply. Today this still remains its core mission, but it's integrated in a more complex than ever mechanism driven by multiple sociological, economic and environmental forces. This $5 trillion industry representing 10 percent of global consumer spending, 40 percent of employment and 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions continues to keep pace with world's evolution, changing tremendously over the past years. Digital and technological advancements are taking over the industry, enhancing food production while adding value to the entire farm-to-fork supply chain and helping it make use of natural resources more efficiently. Data generated by sensors or agricultural drones collected at farms, on the field or during transportation offer a wealth of information about soil, seeds, livestock, crops, costs, farm equipment or the use of water and fertilizer.

If you prefer reading, here's the quick recap on what changes AI will bring to marketers according to these four industry influencers, plus some of my personal suggestions of what you should do in face of these changes: According to Sam Mallikarjunan, Head of Growth of HubSpot Labs, visual content will have an increasing influence on SEO, as he says, "search engines are getting good at knowing what a video, audio clip, or image is actually about." Not only does Google favor YouTube videos in search results, they're also getting better at analyzing what visual content is about. Just like how content writers had to learn to optimize headings and keywords, visual artists will have to start thinking about SEO when creating visual content like images and videos. SEO for videos, for example, means optimizing keyword targeting, descriptions, tags, video length, and more. Here's a great guide on optimizing videos for SEO from Brian Dean, if you want to learn more.