Note: This is a short version of "Deep Learning -- The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Randomness". The paper submissions for ICLR 2017 in Toulon France deadline has arrived and instead of a trickle of new knowledge about Deep Learning we get a massive deluge. This is a gold mine of research that's hot off the presses. Many papers are incremental improvements of algorithms of the state of the art. I had hoped to find more fundamental theoretical and experimental results of the nature of Deep Learning, unfortunately there were just a few.

In a speech today at Web Summit, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer laid out a vision for the role artificial intelligence and machine learning will play in the company's ambitions to improve global connectivity, technology accessibility, and human computer interaction. "People want to stay connected and close to other people, so whatever is the best current technology to deploy that is the business we want to be in," said Schroepfer. Large companies like Facebook play an incredibly important role in the artificial intelligence and machine learning ecosystem. Their sheer size and ability to corner the market on talent makes almost every strategic decision they make an industry-wide declaration. Despite setbacks, like the explosion of Facebook's satellite aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 earlier this summer, the company remains steadfast in its goals to better connect the world.

At the same, the team build a new piece of software designed specifically for executing neural networks with the limited resources available on mobile phones. This AI framework is called Caffe2Go, and according to Facebook, it can execute neural nets in less than 1/20th of a second. Naturally, execution times depend on what models are being executing. But the larger point is that Facebook intends to offer the framework on both iOS and Android devices, intent on building all sorts of AI models that can operate without a tether to the data center. "With anything we can build on the server, we now have a vehicle to ship it on mobile devices--and soon," Schroepfer explains.

It is no secret that artificial intelligence (AI) is growing rapidly in sophistication. As evidenced by self-driving automobiles, computers capable of diagnosing certain medical conditions and bots that can make accurate financial trading predictions, society is poised for a major revolution. Naysayers predict there will be massive job loss as machines enter the labor pool, but history has so far proven that the economy has prospered and grown substantially due to automation. Bots are going to enter the workforce and cause displacement, that is certain. The human element will have to evolve and re-think its position to remain viable when systems become autonomous and self-driving.

Human resources departments rarely, if ever, are thought of as cutting edge when it comes to the use of technology. A closer look, however, shows the implementation of new technologies, including solutions powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), in almost every aspect of the talent function. According to a recent Towers Watson HR Service Delivery and Technology Survey, HR professionals are overhauling structure to improve quality and efficiency with 33% of the group spending significantly more on technology in the last year. HR's investment in new technology has also spurred the creation of new data sources. Data around employee productivity, wellness, manager effectiveness, and a host of other activities is quickly dwarfing the traditional data set that HR has traditionally been using.

Samsung is developing a new digital assistant for its upcoming Galaxy S8 smartphone. According to The Wall Street Journal, the South Korean firm's prototypes include a dedicated button to easily summon the AI-based helper. Following last month's acquisition of artificial intelligence company Viv Labs (co-founded by the creators of Apple's Siri), Samsung is expected to integrate its new conversational user interface into future Galaxy smartphones. "Samsung is excited to begin integrating initial AI capabilities into its future products and we look forward to sharing further details at a later date," a Samsung spokeswoman told PCMag. The software maker declined to share any further details about the forthcoming technology.

Hussein Mehana is showing off a new incarnation of the Facebook smartphone app. It can transform a photo of your backyard barbecue into a Picasso. The app includes a particularly extravagant photo filter. You select a work of art--something akin to, say, a 1907 Picasso--and it creates a Cubist incarnation of your backyard barbecue. It's fun, and it works even with live video. Turn the camera on yourself, and you too can be a Picasso.

Sedonah, 5, speaks Chinese fluently but her father doesn't know a lick of it. So when Sedonah saw a video of him singing a Chinese song, she lit up with amazement. Nikhil Jain didn't spend any time practicing to impress his daughter. But he did spend two years training a computer to sing in his likeness. A technologist's daughter isn't the ideal unbiased tester, but Sedonah's response to the singing routine is what's making her father bullish about the software he's developing.

Want to watch this again later? Need to report the video? This feature is not available right now. Machine Learning is at the peak of its popularity and we feel the debate revolves too much about the techniques being used. Most of the real knowledge comes from experience with dirty data.

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