Uber is coming closer to its self-driving cars goal. The ride-sharing company announced Monday it launched Uber AI Labs, a new department based in San Francisco which will focus on research in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Uber also revealed it has acquired the AI research startup Geometric Intelligence. The 15 members of the startup will form the primary core of the AI Labs team. With the company's new moves, Uber is betting that artificial intelligence could improve its services.

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Most of today's commercially available drones have four rotors and more or less look the same (other than that one that's foldable). So if you wanted to own a drone that had, say, five copters or a completely different design altogether, you'd probably have to make your own, which can be a really tedious process. If you don't know where to start customizing your flying masterpiece, MIT's new system could be your first stop. The institute's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)'s latest project is what it says is the first platform that lets you design, simulate and build your own drone. Through the project interface, you can pick your own propellers, rotors and rods from MIT's database, as well as determine the size, shape and structure of your device.

Some say over 60-70% time is spent in data cleaning, munging and bringing data to a suitable format such that machine learning models can be applied on that data. This post focuses on the second part, i.e., applying machine learning models, including the preprocessing steps. The pipelines discussed in this post come as a result of over a hundred machine learning competitions that I've taken part in. It must be noted that the discussion here is very general but very useful and there can also be very complicated methods which exist and are practised by professionals. Before applying the machine learning models, the data must be converted to a tabular form.

Investors poured a record high $1.05B into artificial intelligence startups in Q2'16, and AI is already affecting more areas of our lives than many people realize. Even retail and e-commerce companies are increasingly integrating the technology. Recently there's been a rush of AI announcements and acquisitions by major retailers: Just this week, Etsy acquired Blackbird to enhance its search functionality through AI, followed the very next day by Amazon acquiring Angel.ai And earlier this month, e-commerce unicorn Houzz (see our full unicorn tracker here) announced a deep learning initiative to help users find and buy products by clicking on images. Using CB Insights data, we dove into the wide array of AI startups focused on retailers and e-commerce businesses, including AI-powered personal shopping apps, natural language processing and image recognition tools for shopping websites, predictive inventory allocation tools, and more.

When a company doesn't pay a supplier when it's supposed to, it can be next to impossible to collect that money. Accounts receivable processes were designed to keep the bill collecting organized, but today, with B2B payment terms expanding longer and longer, AR has risen, out of necessity, into a more strategic part of the enterprise. For companies large and small today, the first step in strategizing the AR department was to digitize and automate: offer electronic invoices, support electronic payments and enable automated process management. But Anthony Venus and Eugene Vyborov, CEO and CTO, respectively, of AR solutions provider YayPay, say that accounts receivable is ready to take the next step in technological advancement. "Tons of companies are heading over 10 days sales outstanding, which is a huge number, to be honest," Vyborov said.

Amazon.com is still figuring out how to use robots to fill store shelves, but it's about done with clerks. Next year, the company will open a convenience store in Seattle where shoppers can walk in, take what they want -- and leave. The Amazon Go store is on the corner of 7th Avenue and Blanchard Street in Seattle, in the heart of Amazon's new campus development and a few blocks from the company's headquarters. Amazon wants people to walk in to the store and then just walk out with what they want. To figure out who to charge, and how much, Amazon will identify shoppers by scanning QR codes on their phones as they walk in, and use sensors and computer vision technology to determine which items they take.

Consumers'Couch Shopped' On Black Friday: Here Are The Likely Retail Winners And Losers Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos walks onstage for the launch of the new Amazon Fire Phone, in Seattle. Amazon.com has been tiptoeing into the world of brick-and-mortar retailing for some time now. There have been small outposts at colleges and a few beautifully designed bookstores have been popping up in cities with rumors for several hundred more. As I have said before regarding these efforts, they appear to be sleight of hand experiments designed to distract the retail world from the game changing concepts that are to come. Amazon Go is one such idea, one that could drastically change not just food retailing, but every segment of retail. The premise is simple and the video introduction that Amazon released Monday will surely be among the most watched futuristic retail videos around.

Amazon's YouTube video introducing its Amazon Go convenience store shows that the company has broken conventional supermarket wisdom and that its foray into food is one traditional retailers should fear -- for three reasons. The first reason is that Amazon knows how to communicate. "Just walk out" says it all! It's simple, straightforward and easy to understand for shoppers, and clearly underscores the benefits: no lines; no crabby cashiers; no swiping your credit card; no bagging. The grocery industry has a tendency to name and describe complex technologies in a way that confuses – Amazon's language breaks through all that.

Amazon has unveiled a convince store in downtown Seattle that replaces cashiers and lines with technology found in self-driving cars. The app uses a range of sensors that detect what shoppers take off shelves and bills it to their Amazon account if they don't put it back Malaria caused'widespread death' in ancient Rome: DNA... Area 51 revealed: Aerial timelapse of America's mysterious... Watch out, Uber! BMW seeks to be'coolest' ride-hailing firm... Malaria caused'widespread death' in ancient Rome: DNA... Area 51 revealed: Aerial timelapse of America's mysterious... Watch out, Uber! BMW seeks to be'coolest' ride-hailing firm... The store, called Amazon Go', lets customers enter using an accompanied app, grab the items they need and are able to walk out without stopping at a register To enter the store, customers simply open the Amazon Go app and place it to a sensor located on what appears to be a turnstyle in the entrance way. This futuristic store uses the same types of technologies found in self-driving cars – computer vision, sensor fusion and deep learning. When you decide not to purchase and item you've grabbed, just put it back and the technology will automatically remove it from your virtual cart The 1,800-square-foot Amazon Go store is located at 2131 7th Ave, Seattle, WA, on the corner of 7th Avenue and Blanchard Street.