There's more AI news out there than anyone can possibly keep up with. But you can stay tolerably up to date on the most interesting developments with this column, which collects AI and machine learning advancements from around the world and explains why they might be important to tech, startups or civilization. To begin on a lighthearted note: The ways researchers find to apply machine learning to the arts are always interesting -- though not always practical. A team from the University of Washington wanted to see if a computer vision system could learn to tell what is being played on a piano just from an overhead view of the keys and the player's hands. Audeo, the system trained by Eli Shlizerman, Kun Su and Xiulong Liu, watches video of piano playing and first extracts a piano-roll-like simple sequence of key presses. Then it adds expression in the form of length and strength of the presses, and lastly polishes it up for input into a MIDI synthesizer for output.

In this episode of Cloud AI Adventures, Yufeng Guo explains machine learning from the ground up, using concrete examples. Associated article "What is Machine Learning?" Don't forget to subscribe to the channel!

How can we tell if a drink is beer or wine? In this episode of Cloud AI Adventures, Yufeng walks through the 7 steps involved in applied machine learning.

Movie buffs have been hearing about artificial intelligence for years – from Steven Spielberg's 2001 science fiction drama AI to the 2015 robotic police force in Chappie and beyond. AI is no longer the stuff of science fiction. This essential part of the technology sector aims to create intelligent machines of all kinds that think, work and react like humans. Just as electricity transformed the way industries functioned in the past century, artificial intelligence -- the science of programming cognitive abilities into machines -- has the power to substantially change society in the next 100 years. AI is being harnessed to enable such things as home robots, robo-taxis and mental health chatbots to make you feel better.