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Google’s AI Duet lets you make music with a virtual pianist

February 17, 2017 Staff Writer

Google’s latest artificial intelligence experiment is a music-playing piano bot that digests whatever keyboard melodies you give it and tries to respond in kind. The neat tool is called Artificial Intelligence Duet, and it’s part of an ongoing push from Google’s Creative Lab division to help the public familiarize themselves with AI and all the ways it can mimic human behavior — and even create art. According to the Verge, a collection of music-focused Artificial Intelligence tools were first shown off last fall, but now AI Duet in particular has…

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A Startup Has Developed An Artificial Intelligence That Can compete with Google

February 16, 2017March 3, 2017

There is something familiar about fears that new machines will takeover human activities. Today, the machinery question is back with a vengeance. The entire tech industry has fallen hard for a branch of artificial intelligence called deep learning. The AI involves throwing massive amounts of data at a neural network to train the system to understand things like speech and images.The deep learning allows systems to learn and improve by crunching lots of examples rather than being explicitly programmed. Acording to Forbes, a new startup coming out of stealth called Gamalon , claims…

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Yahoo paying small price for big hacks

February 16, 2017March 3, 2017 Staff Writer

Yahoo is on the verge of cutting the price of its core-business sale to Verizon Communications by $250 million to $350 million, less than a 10 percent discount to what was originally agreed, according to media reports. That would be a small price to pay for massive hacks that affected over 1 billion users’ account data reports Reuters. In an effort to add online value to its increasingly commoditized telecommunications business, Verizon acquired onetime internet darling AOL and last July agreed to buy $40 billion internet company‘s advertising and search…

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Chinese tech giant Baidu bets on AI and virtual reality

February 16, 2017 Staff Writer

Several tech giants and visionaries have been rallying around artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented and virtual realities (AR/VR) as the next big developments in technology. The Chinese online search giant Baidu Inc embarked on this strategy as it announced its first venture capital firm focusing next-generation technologies, such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality. According to a recent report by China Daily, the new company Baidu Venture, will mainly focus on early-stage AI, AR and VR projects. In an official statement Baidu says that new venture company will…

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The state of internet connectivity around the world

February 7, 2017 Staff Writer

The internet is becoming more accessible. The price of mobile service is falling, with developing countries seeing costs fall by between 15% and 25% from 2013 to 2014. But service still remains more expensive for developing and least developed countries when looking at the cost as a percentage of their gross national incomes (GNI) per capita, a metric the ITU uses to make a more apples-to-apples comparison across countries with vastly different economies. This week, the International Telecommunication Union, an arm of the United Nations, released a report on global…

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This is how robots will change the future of work

February 3, 2017 Staff Writer

ManpowerGroup, one of the world’s largest jobs companies, released a report “The Skills Revolution,” detailing how the technological revolution is going to change the employment market forever. It surveyed more than 18,000 employers across 43 countries and six industry sectors. We Forum reports that while technological developments will cause greater automation, a decrease in headcount or slow growth in hiring in some areas, it will actually create a lot of jobs too, according to Manpower. “We are seeing the emergence of a Skills Revolution — where helping people upskill and…

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Dropbox boosts collaboration & management for business users with Smart Sync and Paper

February 2, 2017 Staff Writer

Dropbox has announced “significant product updates”, introducing Smart Sync (Dropbox Infinite), and Paper. According to beta news, the company says the introduction of Smart Sync and Paper will boost team productivity and improve collaborative processes, end-to-end. First up is the Smart Sync. Dropbox calls it an “industry first”, cross-platform, on-demand cloud storage solution. It offers intuitive storage, allowing users to sync all the content from their computers to their Dropbox accounts. Paper is a Google Docs competitor that Dropbox originally launched in open beta to give users the ability to collaborate…

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Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

February 2, 2017 Staff Writer

Apple Inc. is designing a new chip for future Mac laptops that would take on more of the functionality currently handled by Intel Corp. processors, according to people familiar with the matter. According to Bloomberg Technology, the chip is similar to one already used in the latest Mac Book Pro to power the keyboard’s Touch Bar feature, the people said Although Apple only accounted for 7.5 percent of worldwide computer shipments in the fourth quarter, according to data from IDC, the Mac line has long set the standard for design…

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Killing the immortal: Why scientists are debating the life span of robots

February 1, 2017March 3, 2017

Artificial intelligence and smart robots are on a course to transform industries and replace human contact. However, what happens when they fail? Smart robots may malfunction, or a self-driving car could lock its passenger inside. Hollywood has already made predictions for robot relationships with Her — but what if we developed an emotional attachment to an AI and then it went rogue? Philosophers, engineers and computer scientists wrestle with similar questions. Since robots can, by design, live forever, what are the ethics involved in designing a kill switch? For this…

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