The first summit in London, which is produced in partnership with Google’s Solve For X initiative, will focus on emerging tech such as the internet of things, 3D printing, artificial intelligence and sensors. Read more »
MailChimp wasn’t always a big data company, but 12 years into its existence the company is using its mountains of email data to do everything from modeling spam to connecting subscribers. Read more »
Harvard researchers have created a working prototype of a robotic bee, although the next steps of making it wireless and giving it a powerful brain could prove challenging. Read more »
Artificial intelligence expert and Google Director of Research was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences last week. He’s well known for a 2009 paper titled “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data.” Read more »
The Wikimedia Foundation’s first major new project in 7 years is now feeding the biggest project in that stable, Wikipedia itself. But anyone can take structured data from Wikidata, due to its open license. Read more »
Startup CrowdMed is showing that the collective intelligence of the crowd can be a powerful tool in getting to the bottom of medical mysteries. Read more »
Even though a perception persists that machines can increasingly solve complex problems and process large amounts of data on their own, machine learning experts say humans still play a key role. Read more »
IBM’s Watson made waves in AI when it defeated a pair of champions on Jeopardy! Now, engineering students at RPI, Watson’s new home, hope to use the supercomputer to gain fresh insights into machine learning. Read more »
There has been a lot of data news already this week — some big, some interesting, and some both. Here’s a collection of the stuff you shouldn’t, or don’t want to, miss. Read more »
IBM is giving Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York its own Watson system similar to the one that crushed its human competitors on Jeopardy!. The goal is to give Watson new skills and push it into new industries. Read more »
Twitter’s use of actual human intelligence to make sense of its search results, points to the mundane reality that even with machine learning and lots of data, sometimes humans are the best source for insights — something those trying to create artificial intelligence should remember. Read more »
Everyone’s talking about the greatness of big data, but we’re nowhere near the promised land of what’s possible when we turn data loose on our lives. Here are three things to watch that could affect how companies and everday people consume all that info. Read more »
A group of British researchers recently analyzed 2.5 million newspaper articles in order to prove that new data analysis techniques, such as machine learning and natural-language processing, can accurately classify media content. They hope their approach can save academicians untold hours of manual labor. Read more »
In just a few years, big data has turned from a buzzword and concept best left for large web companies into a force that drives much of our digital lives. Here are five technological trends that will change how data is processed and consumed going forward. Read more »
Building a robotic bee that acts like a real bee is a lot more complicated than programming a robot to fly around from flower to flower. A project called Green Brain aims to build an artificial intelligence system that can actually mimic a bee’s brain. Read more »
The Todai Robot project has received attention because of its goal to build a system capable of passing a college entrance exam — a tough test for a supercomputer that’s all the more difficult when confined to a single laptop computer. Read more »
Shouldn’t computers know what you need without you having to tell them? A new app from Expect Minds and serial entrepreneur Tim Tuttle called Mindmeld hopes to think ahead and help us overwhelmed humans deal with more and more data. Read more »
Everybody who has watched The Terminator knows about Skynet, the computing system that becomes self-aware and decides to destroy humanity. But I look at cloud computing and automated systems and I fear something much more depressing: the total leisure paradise of the movie Wall-E. Read more »
CrowdControl, which launched in November with the goal of improving the accuracy of crowdsourcing projects by analyzing results against a set of artificial intelligence techniques, has raised $2 million from Greycroft Partners and RTP Ventures. Read more »
IBM is showing off how its artificial intelligence system Watson can help retailers get smarter in dealing with consumers. IBM believes that Watson could be positioned as a phone customer service line, in-store kiosk or as a resource available through tablet-wielding store clerks. Read more »
The coming era of the “Internet of Things” has many implications for the tech industry. But the shift toward total connectivity could also have lasting impacts on the broader world, making it harder to commit crimes such as theft, and raising awareness about consumer waste. Read more »
On New Year’s Day, Ginny Rometty took the reins at IBM. Big Blue is on a roll: its stock outperformed Google and Apple this year, and Warren Buffett is a fan. But the IT giant faces perils as well as opportunities going into 2012. Read more »
Are Google, Yelp and Facebook scared of Siri? If they aren’t they should be, as should any mobile website, service or app that depends on advertising. Siri is the first user interface that shifts our attention away from our phones’ screens, but it won’t be the last. Read more »
Mainstream mobile users have been slow to embrace location-based services. But location apps could really see a boost through the smart use of voice activated AI systems like Siri, which can help users more easily unlock the world around them. Read more »
Google announced it has bought Clever Sense, maker of the smart local recommendations app Alfred. The deal arms Google with another tool to attack the local market, as it seeks to scoop up more ad dollars and be the go-to resource for all things local. Read more »
A new startup called CrowdControl is launching today, and it aims to bring order to the world of crowdsourcing by using artificial intelligence to judge workers’ accuracy. Think Amazon Mechanical Turk, only with a quality control mechanism in place to help ensure jobs get done right. Read more »
New hardware helped Apple sell 4 million iPhone 4S handsets over the weekend, but Siri, the personal assistant software, may be the most groundbreaking aspect. Here’s a closer look at the difference in voice command and intelligence between the two largest mobile platforms: iOS and Android. Read more »
Vlingo, a voice recognition start-up, isn’t sweating the introduction of Apple’s Siri voice action and AI system. In fact, the start-up saw its best week last week with five consecutive days of record usage with voice actions up 50 percent daily over the previous high. Read more »
Siri is a big draw for customers interested in the iPhone 4S. Apple’s promo material about Siri make it look absolutely amazing, and by most accounts, it is. But if you’re not in the U.S., you might experience a little disappointment when you fire Siri up. Read more »
Trap.it is a new personalized search app that originally came out of a $200 million DARPA artificial intelligence project called CALO or Cognitive Assistant That Learns and Organizes. The app aims to take personalized search to new heights to become your “Pandora for content.” Read more »
The “uncanny valley”– the quality of an animation or robot looking close to, but not exactly like, real life — may be set to get even smaller. MIT researchers have developed new computing techniques for reproducing the slight natural blur of moving objects in animation. Read more »
Thanks to a slew of recent technology advances, the smartphone is turning into a truly personalized information assistant that can handle everything from your appointments to traffic reports. A new Android app called reQall Rover wants to turn your smartphone into an intelligent information assistant. Read more »
Next week, Jeopardy! champions will square off against IBM’s Watson supercomputer in a contest that could alter way humans view their place in the world. Developing the complex algorithms necessary to carry out such determinations wasn’t easy, and IBM didn’t operate alone. Read more »
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” said Arthur C. Clarke. And that’s what Siri, a new virtual personal assistant that’s going live in the App Store tonight, is going for. At the least it will be an excellent party trick. Read more »
Graphic courtesy of Column Five Media Read more »
