Anthony Ledford and his colleagues at Man AHL spent three painstaking years building a machine-learning model to do something mere mortals often can't: find fresh ideas in an avalanche of data. But even Ledford, chief scientist at the $19 billion Man AHL in London, rolls his eyes when he hears people say that machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence, is going to transform hedge funds tomorrow. To Ledford, a lot of the buzz smacks of hype. The technology is more robust than its predecessors but hardly revolutionary. "There is some real science here, but it's not the way it's been portrayed," said Ledford, who holds a Ph.D. in mathematics.

Deep learning delivers extraordinary cognitive powers in the never-ending battle to distill sense from data at ever larger scales. But high performance doesn't come cheap. Deep learning relies on the application of multilevel neural-network algorithms to high-dimensional data objects. As such, it requires that fast-matrix manipulations in highly parallel architectures in order to identify complex, elusive patterns--such as objects, faces, voices, threats, etc.–amid big data's "3 V" noise. As evidence for the technology's increasingly superhuman cognitive abilities, check out research projects such as this that use it to put the Turing test to shame.

IBM has announced the experimental release of Project Intu, a new, system-agnostic platform designed to enable embodied cognition. The new platform allows developers to embed Watson functions into various end-user device form factors, offering a next generation architecture for building cognitive-enabled experiences. Project Intu, in its experimental form, is now accessible via the Watson Developer Cloud and also available on Intu Gateway and GitHub. Project Intu simplifies the process for developers wanting to create cognitive experiences in various form factors such as spaces, avatars, robots or other IoT devices, and it extends cognitive technology into the physical world. The platform enables devices to interact more naturally with users, triggering different emotions and behaviors and creating more meaningful and immersive experience for users.

Francesco D'Orazio, VP of Product, Pulsar took the stage. Pulsar is a next generation audience insight company. They're looking both at people who are talking – and intrestingly, also those who aren't talking. Pulsar started out working with the familiar favourites Facebook and Twitter. But they now go beyond that and look at Mintel, TGI, clickstream and some of the search and advertising data.

Science fiction has, for many years, looked to a future in which robots are intelligent and cyborgs -- human/machine amalgams -- are commonplace: The Terminator, The Matrix, Blade Runner and I, Robot are all good examples of this. However, until the last decade any consideration of what this might actually mean in the future real world was not necessary because it was all science fiction and not scientific reality. Now, however, science has not only done a catching-up exercise but, in bringing about some of the ideas thrown up by science fiction, it has introduced practicalities that the original story lines did not appear to extend to (and in some cases have still not extended to). What we consider here are several different experiments in linking biology and technology together in a cybernetic fashion, essentially ultimately combining humans and machines in a relatively permanent merger. Key to this is that it is the overall final system that is important. Where a brain is involved, which surely it is, it must not be seen as a stand-alone entity but rather as part of an overall system, adapting to the system's needs: the overall combined cybernetic creature is the system of importance. Each experiment is described in its own section. Whilst there is a distinct overlap between the sections, they each throw up individual considerations.

Yoshua Bengio, one of the leading figures behind the rise of deep learning, is launching a Silicon Valley-style startup incubator dedicated to this enormously influential form of artificial intelligence. The incubator, Element AI, will help build companies from AI research that emerges from the University of Montreal, where Bengio is a professor, and nearby McGill University, and he says this is just part of his efforts to develop an "AI ecosystem" in Montreal. Bengio says the Canadian city offers "the biggest concentration in the world" of academic researchers exploring deep learning, the breed of AI that now plays such an important role inside the likes of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. "Element AI will help entrepreneurs get started in that high-growth area, with a team of experts--and my help--to steer those companies in the right direction," he says. According to Bengio, about 100 researchers are exploring deep learning at the University of Montreal and about 50 others are doing similar work at McGill.

Despite political discord, the American economy is doing well, Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said Thursday. "I think the math is the American economy is doing well, and the unemployment situation is [going] well, and if you're confused on that, visit Europe," Schmidt said. Schmidt spoke from the DealBook Conference in New York City, hosted by CNBC anchor and New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin and the editors of the Times. The conference focuses on "playing for the long term" in a business environment that's shackled to quarterly returns and compressed news cycles. After an election cycle that stoked arguments over the shrinking middle class and widening inequality, Schmidt addressed the role that information played in the political process.

Intu aims to put "embodied cognition" in a range of devices. Developers can use the platform to embed the various machine learning functions offered by IBM's Watson service into shedloads of form factors – from avatars to drones to robots and just about any other kind of'Internet of Things' device. This will allow devices will be able to "interact more naturally" with users via a range of emotions and behaviours, leading to more meaningful and immersive user experiences, IBM said. Project Intu's forte is in conversation, language and visual recognition. Here, developers can integrate Watson's abilities with a device's capabilities to effectively "act out" interactions with users.

LISBON, PORTUGAL: Artificial intelligence (AI) will one day take on decision making and planning, freeing up enterprise employees for more creative roles. Speaking at the Web Summit 2016 technology conference in Lisbon, Portugal on Tuesday, the executive said that the "robotic enterprise" is closer than we think -- with some roles already well on the way to being ran almost exclusively by machine learning (ML), AI and algorithms. One of today's biggest opportunities for IT to make an impact is by automating business processes, manufacturing, repetitive tasks, and more. Volkswagen has a total of three centers and research labs dedicated to researching AI applications and "taking AI into a completely different environment," according to the CIO. Each of these centers is working not only in the creation of connected car solutions, but also in developing AI systems for speeding up corporate processes -- all of which eventually becomes public domain. Hofmann says there are five main "stages" Volkswagen uses to define the application of AI technology in the enterprise market.

Microsoft is betting on artificial intelligence (AI) with the creation at the end of September of a new AI and Research Group. This newly formed group brings together Microsoft's research organization and more than 5,000 computer scientists and engineers focused on AI and is now the fourth major division in the company, on par with the Windows, Office and Cloud divisions. When Microsoft talks of "infusing" every application with AI, it's reminiscent of the famous "Internet Tidal Wave" email Bill Gates sent to all staff in 1995. In it, Gates outlined his desire to focus the company's efforts on the internet with immediate effect and told them to "assign the internet the highest level of importance" in everything that they did henceforth. Is the creation of the AI and research group effectively a "tidal wave" message?