Matrix completion is a problem that arises in many data-analysis settings where the input consists of a partially-observed matrix (e.g., recommender systems, traffic matrix analysis etc.). Classical approaches to matrix completion assume that the input partially-observed matrix is low rank. The success of these methods depends on the number of observed entries and the rank of the matrix; the larger the rank, the more entries need to be observed in order to accurately complete the matrix. In this paper, we deal with matrices that are not necessarily low rank themselves, but rather they contain low-rank submatrices. We propose Targeted, which is a general framework for completing such matrices. In this framework, we first extract the low-rank submatrices and then apply a matrix-completion algorithm to these low-rank submatrices as well as the remainder matrix separately. Although for the completion itself we use state-of-the-art completion methods, our results demonstrate that Targeted achieves significantly smaller reconstruction errors than other classical matrix-completion methods. One of the key technical contributions of the paper lies in the identification of the low-rank submatrices from the input partially-observed matrices.

Nutrient-based meal recommendations have the potential to help individuals prevent or manage conditions such as diabetes and obesity. However, learning people's food preferences and making recommendations that simultaneously appeal to their palate and satisfy nutritional expectations are challenging. Existing approaches either only learn high-level preferences or require a prolonged learning period. We propose Yum-me, a personalized nutrient-based meal recommender system designed to meet individuals' nutritional expectations, dietary restrictions, and fine-grained food preferences. Yum-me enables a simple and accurate food preference profiling procedure via a visual quiz-based user interface, and projects the learned profile into the domain of nutritionally appropriate food options to find ones that will appeal to the user. We present the design and implementation of Yum-me, and further describe and evaluate two innovative contributions. The first contriution is an open source state-of-the-art food image analysis model, named FoodDist. We demonstrate FoodDist's superior performance through careful benchmarking and discuss its applicability across a wide array of dietary applications. The second contribution is a novel online learning framework that learns food preference from item-wise and pairwise image comparisons. We evaluate the framework in a field study of 227 anonymous users and demonstrate that it outperforms other baselines by a significant margin. We further conducted an end-to-end validation of the feasibility and effectiveness of Yum-me through a 60-person user study, in which Yum-me improves the recommendation acceptance rate by 42.63%.

Jefferson Graham runs down those 4 wild tech announcements--from the flying boats and cars to drone goggles and Amazon's closet camera, on #TalkingTech LOS ANGELES -- It'll be hard to top this week for wild, crazy technology unveilings. And some may even end up in your hands. How bout: the flying car that looks like a boat, or jet skies maybe, or perhaps a huge drone. The Kitty Hawk Flyer, the personal project from Google co-founder Larry Page, has to top the list of far-out tech product announcements. It's a vehicle that flies -- hot trend this month, by the way -- but stands out for this feature: It only flies over fresh water.

Chat bots, robots, virtual assistants and other devices powered by business algorithms are rapidly joining the ranks of workers in every industry and profession. But instead of fearing artificial intelligence (AI) and resultant job losses, it's up to human resource (HR) professionals to cultivate these innovations for the opportunities they bring to people and the company. I tuned in to a recent episode of Changing the Game with HR entitled, Reimagining HR: Will Machines Replace the Human Side of Business?, to hear a group of smart thinkers share their insights on AI with SAP Radio host and moderator Bonnie D. Graham. How HR can help make sure AI isn't the worst thing to happen to humanity Instead of the usual gloom and doom scenario for unemployed workers, Andi Britt, European Talent and Engagement at IBM, framed AI in a much more positive light. "All of us suffer from information overload so why can't we use technology smartly to do some of the analysis, the filtering of data for us," he said.

Your Tinder selfies may not be as secure as you believe. You might have uploaded your best photos to the dating site, but they could be used for almost any other purpose, without your permission, as highlighted in a TechCrunch report Friday. According to the report, a user of Kaggle, a Google-owned machine-learning platform, recently exploited flaws in Tinder's application programming interface (API) to download 40,000 selfies posted on Tinder – 20,000 of each sex. Stuart Colianni created a dataset called People of Tinder, which consists of six downloadable zip files of people's profile photos from Tinder. The zip files contain multiple photos from single users, which means there might be less than 40,000 Tinder users at stake here.

Online dating and work chat apps have been separate entities for entirely logical, productive and HR-compliant reasons. But a dating app-maker has decided that the line dividing office life and love life should be blurred with the help of a chatbot for the reigning king of productivity services, Slack. If you think company-sanctioned flirting through work messaging is a good idea, you should probably talk to your human resources department. Because this is playing with fire in a way that gets people fired. The slackbot for inter-office dating was built by Feeld, which is mostly known as "the threesome app." (Yup.)

Have you ever asked Siri its opinion on the film Inception? Or whether it knows a good place to hide a dead body? 'Inception is about dreaming about dreaming about dreaming about dreaming about something or other. I fell asleep', is one of your answers. The answers are pre-programmed, rather than genuine reactions capable of passing the Turing test, but hint at one of the ultimate aims of artificial intelligence – creating machines we can chat with and which understand levels of irony.

In the movies, the emergence of Artificial Intelligence usually leads to robotic cyborgs going haywire, machines that threaten humanity, or a choice between a red or blue pill. The plotline almost always assumes the worst will happen. Instead, AI has tremendous potential to help improve performance for nonprofits and social good organizations and drive meaningful change in the world. But first we need to separate the buzz words and bravado from the real transformation that is taking place with AI for nonprofits:. Artificial Intelligence is, at its heart, enabling machines to process information and learn.

Apple is getting closer to unleashing its secret weapon to take on Amazon's Echo. A new leak has revealed that the Cupertino company is'currently finalizing' its own smart speaker, which is said to be marketed as a'Siri/AirPlay device'. The latest news also noted that the Siri-driven device could'carry some form of Beats technology and is expected to run on variant iOS'. Apple is getting closer to unleashing its secret weapon to take on Amazon's Echo. A new leak has revealed that the Cupertino company is'currently finalizing' its own smart speaker, which is said to be marketed as a'Siri/AirPlay device' Sonny Dickson, who is known for sharing inside information in the tech world, revealed that Apple is'currently finalizing' its smart speaker that will be marketed as a'Siri/AirPlay device'.

Amazon's newly-announced Echo Look uses the company's Alexa AI to take photos and videos of you and make judgements on outfits. But experts have expressed concern over the privacy issues surrounding a camera that regularly takes and stores pictures of users and their homes. They say that Amazon must update its privacy policy and better-inform consumers of the technology's risks. Amazon has released the Echo Look, which is an Alexa-powered camera that takes full-length photos and short videos of you and your home. Amazon's Echo Look smart camera is priced at $200.