Experts from across the AI world came together in New York for the O'Reilly AI Conference in New York 2016. Below you'll find links to highlights from the event. Building reliable, robust software is hard, says Peter Norvig. It's even harder when we move from deterministic domains, such as balancing a checkbook, to uncertain domains, such as recognizing speech or objects in an image. Tim O'Reilly explains why we can't just use technology to replace people; we must use it to augment them so that they can do things that were previously impossible.

AI is the hottest technology now. You can win KDnuggets free pass to the new AI conference in NYC in from the organizers of Strata Hadoop World Conferences.

For a deep dive into the current state of AI and where we might be headed in coming years, check out our free ebook "What is Artificial Intelligence," by Mike Loukides and Ben Lorica. A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on the ethics of artificial intelligence. Since then, we've been presented with an excellent example to reflect on: the use of face recognition to identify people likely to commit crimes. In my post, I said that we need to discuss what kind of society we want to build. I'm reasonably confident that, even under the worst societal conditions, we don't want a society where you can be imprisoned because your eyes are set too closely together.

Object recognition is one of the most exciting areas in machine learning right now. Computers have been able to recognize objects like faces or cats reliably for quite a while, but recognizing arbitrary objects within a larger image has been the Holy Grail of artificial intelligence. Maybe the real surprise is that human brains recognize objects so well. We effortlessly convert photons bouncing off objects at slightly different frequencies into a spectacularly rich set of information about the world around us. Machine learning still struggles with these simple tasks, but in the past few years, it's gotten much better.

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Bots are a growing segment of software that acts as an agent on a human's behalf. These tasks range from ordering online, to making dinner reservations, to handling customer service requests, to helping employees be more productive in the workplace. Historically, most bots have used simple rules-based approaches to present an output for a given input (such as presenting the weather). But today, with advances in server-side processing power and improvements in implementing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), bots are starting to provide real value to consumers. The tide has finally turned and bots are entering the mainstream consciousness, especially after the recent announcements at Facebook's annual conference F8.

Intel today unveiled new hardware and software targeting the artificial intelligence (AI) market, which has emerged as a focus of investment for the largest data center operators. The chipmaker introduced an FPGA accelerator that offers more horsepower for companies developing new AI-powered services. The Intel Deep Learning Inference Accelerator (DLIA) combines traditional Intel CPUs with field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), semiconductors that can be reprogrammed to perform specialized computing tasks. FPGAs allow users to tailor compute power to specific workloads or applications. The DLIA is the first hardware product emerging from Intel's $16 billion acquisition of Altera last year.

Experts from across the AI world came together in New York for the O'Reilly AI Conference in New York 2016. Below you'll find links to highlights from the event. Building reliable, robust software is hard, says Peter Norvig. It's even harder when we move from deterministic domains, such as balancing a checkbook, to uncertain domains, such as recognizing speech or objects in an image. Watch "Software engineering of systems that learn in uncertain domains."

Pete Skomoroch and Jon Bruner will be hosting O'Reilly Bot Day October 19, 2016, in San Francisco. Subscribe to the O'Reilly Bots Podcast to learn about advances in conversational user interfaces, artificial intelligence, and messaging that are revolutionizing the way we interact with software. Find us on Stitcher, iTunes, SoundCloud and RSS. Something remarkable is happening in the world of artificial intelligence. At the O'Reilly AI Conference in New York, people weren't just talking about AI as a far-off dream; they were talking about AI as something that exists in real products today.

The first O'Reilly AI Conference focuses on applied artificial intelligence. It will address AI's limitations, uncover untapped opportunities and explore how AI will change the business landscape. It is co-located with Strata Hadoop World. Click here to learn more about the program and register for the event.