More overlooked machine learning and/or machine learning-related projects? OpenAI Gym is a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement learning algorithms. From Intel comes a(nother) deep learning framework, optimized for distribution over Apache Spark. BigDL is a distributed deep learning library for Apache Spark; with BigDL, users can write their deep learning applications as standard Spark programs, which can directly run on top of existing Spark or Hadoop clusters.

In 2013 a British artificial-intelligence startup called DeepMind surprised computer scientists by showing off software that could learn to play classic Atari games better than an expert human player. DeepMind was soon acquired by Google, and the technique that beat the Atari games, reinforcement learning, has become a hot topic in the field of AI and robotics. Google used reinforcement learning to create software that beat a champion Go player last year. Now OpenAI, a nonprofit research institute cofounded and funded by Elon Musk, says it has discovered that an easier-to-use alternative to reinforcement learning can get rival results when it plays games and performs other tasks. At MIT Technology Review's EmTech Digital conference in San Francisco on Monday, OpenAI's research director, Ilya Sutskever, said that could allow researchers to make progress in machine learning faster.

After decades of dystopian science fiction novels and movies where sentient machines end up turning on humanity, we can't help but worry as real world AI continues to improve at such a rapid rate. That's why Amazon, Facebook, Google's DeepMind division, IBM, and Microsoft have founded a new organization called the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society. Williams is encouraged that tech giants like Facebook and Google are even asking questions about ethics and bias in AI. Ideally, the group will help establish new standards for thinking about artificial intelligence, big data, and algorithms that can weed out harmful assumptions and biases.

Stellaris 1.2.5 hotfix patch released, with AI fixes Calling all coders: is AI coming for your job?

The new machine, called a DGX-1, is optimized for the form of machine learning known as deep learning, which involves feeding data to a large network of crudely simulated neurons and has resulted in great strides in artificial intelligence in recent years. Language remains a very tricky problem for artificial intelligence, but in recent years researchers have made progress in applying deep learning to the problem (see "AI's Language Problem"). "This will allow us to train models on larger data sets, which we have found leads to progress in AI." OpenAI hopes to use reinforcement learning to build robots capable of performing useful chores around the home, although this may prove a time-consuming challenge (see "This Is the Robot Maid Elon Musk Is Funding" and "The Robot You Want Most Is Far from Reality").