Small drones are already effective weapons for urban warfare--when armed with miniature warheads, these stealthy spies can turn into lethal assassins. So far their biggest limitation is battery life, but Boeing's patent for a drone battle station sets out to overcome that. The aerospace giant's'Vehicle Base Station' resembles Amazon's proposed recharging stations on street lights, but with a different mission. John Vian, a research fellow at Boeing, says the station's main applications are likely to be civil and commercial--used for firefighting and search-and-rescue, for example--but the patent has a decidedly military slant. "The unmanned aerial vehicles may monitor for undesired activity… [which] may be the placement of an improvised explosive device in roadway."

The Lovie Awards were privileged to honour Yann LeCun with the 2016 Lovie Lifetime Achievement Award for his work as a pioneer in the creation of neural networks. LeCun's contributions to the science of machine learning, mobile robotics and computational neuroscience among other learned fields, is legendary. As a founder of Neural Nets, LeCun applied biological methods of perception to computer processors. Currently continuing his forward-thinking work as the Head of Artificial Intelligence at Facebook, LeCun is poised to see his genius bear inventive innovations to the social media platform that will affect a global user base. As he continues to inform and experiment with the future of mediums such as the incredibly fast-growing arena of machine learning, LeCun's work will only improve upon the already impressive technologies he has brought to fruition.

The latest Google drones have just started taking flight in the real world. But the team behind the technology is slowing down, trimming headcount and shelving initiatives as the experimental unit becomes the latest target of tightening budgets across parent company Alphabet Inc. Project Wing, a unit of Alphabet's X research lab, nixed a partnership with coffee giant Starbucks Corp., according to people familiar with the decision. Following the departure of project leader Dave Vos in October, the unit also froze hiring and began asking some staff to seek jobs elsewhere in the company, according to some of those people. They asked not to be identified speaking about private company moves. The decisions are part of a broader Alphabet effort to rein in spending and try to turn more experimental projects from loss-making risky bets into real businesses.

And in the next few years, it will transform every industry. Soon, self-driving cars will reduce congestion and improve road safety. AI travel agents will know your preferences and arrange every detail of your family vacation. And medical instruments will read and understand patient DNA to detect and treat early signs of cancer. Where engines made us stronger and powered the first industrial revolution, AI will make us smarter and power the next. What will make this intelligent industrial revolution possible? A new computing model -- GPU deep learning -- that enables computers to learn from data and write software that is too complex for people to code. 3. NVIDIA -- INVENTOR OF THE GPU The GPU has proven to be unbelievably effective at solving some of the most complex problems in computer science.

Science fiction has, for many years, looked to a future in which robots are intelligent and cyborgs are commonplace. The Terminator, The Matrix, Blade Runner and I, Robot are all good examples of this vision. But until the last decade, consideration of what this might actually mean in the future was unnecessary because it was all science fiction, not scientific reality. Now, however, science has not only done some catching up; it's also introduced practicalities that the original story lines didn't appear to include (and, in some cases, still don't include). What we consider here are several different experiments linking biology and technology together in a cybernetic way--essentially ultimately combining humans and machines in a relatively permanent merger.

Google Home is a Wi-Fi-connected speaker that's powered by Google Assistant, the same almost-all-knowing digital assistant that runs the show on Google's Pixel phones. With a user interface driven entirely by voice prompts, Google Home ($129 on the Google Store) can tell you about traffic and weather conditions, the latest news headlines and sports scores, and thousands of other informational tidbits. Basically, if a factoid is available via Google Search, there's a good chance Google Home can find it, and read it back to you. Google Home also lets you control other gadgets with voice commands. The list of supported devices is currently short, but includes the Nest Thermostat, Philips Hue smart bulbs and Google Chromecast.

Application uses artificial intelligence to learn human grammar, respond to spoken questions. Transport and logistics giant UPS Inc. is turning to artificial intelligence to better communicate with its customers, beginning with a "chatbot"--or chat robot--platform it launched on Monday. Customers who have package-tracking questions or want to find a nearby UPS Store can send a text message to the chatbot, and its computer algorithms will recognize keywords and generate an appropriate response, UPS said. Users can access the tool through the Facebook Messenger, Skype, or Amazon platforms, which means that fans of Amazon's voice-operated "Alexa" application can hold spoken conversations with the UPS chatbot instead of typing. Atlanta-based UPS currently fields questions from customers through its mobile app, website, toll free phone number, email, and "LiveChat," options, all of which rely on human operators to field questions.

Deep learning is a machine learning technique used to solve complex problems related to image recognition, natural language processing, and more. It requires both massive amounts of data and computational power. The compute problem has been solved largely by GPUs, which have become essential for making deep learning performant. GPUs have reduced the time required to train models from weeks to days. Most training tasks can be accomplished by building your own box.

Sebastian and Stefano from 5Analytics will give a talk about "Building production ready recommender systems in R". The 5Analytics platform is the motor for artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time-analytics. We help companies integrate ai into their business processes. With our software platform, artificial intelligence and real-time-analytics projects no longer take months to implement, but days. Our platform allows hundreds and thousands of machines to simultaneously and in real-time access artificial intelligence and advanced analytics procedures.

In his latest book, The Brain, renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman unlocks the mysteries of the most complex creation on earth and how it makes sense of the world, while examining the effect of modern technology and how our brain might develop in the future. "As far as we can tell, we're the only species that has grown so sophisticated that we've thrown ourselves into this problem of trying to figure out what our own programming language is. So it would be as though your computer started controlling its own peripheral devices, pulled its cover off and pointed its webcam at its own circuitry and tried to figure out what it's made out of. What we have found is the most complicated device that we've ever found in the universe. This weighs about three pounds and it contains 100 billion neurons, and every single neuron is about as complicated as the City of London. Every single neuron has the entire human genome in it and it's trafficking millions of proteins around very complicated ...