Apple just launched a blog focused on machine learning research papers and sharing the company’s findings. The Apple Machine Learning Journal is a bit empty right now as the company only shared one post about turning synthetic images into realistic ones in order to train neural networks.This move is interesting as Apple doesn’t usually talk about their research projects. The company has contributed and launched some important open source projects, such as WebKit, the browser engine behind Safari, and Swift, Apple’s latest programming language for iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS. But a blog with research papers on artificial intelligence project is something new for Apple.https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/19/apple-launches-machine-learning-research-site/

Interesting article. Incidently very much relevant in the space of Machine Learning (ML). I had learnt from one of my contacts in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur working on Geo Images and doing similar work of improving images by ML Technology.It would interesting how it develops into more useful outcome.

Strategic research agreement with Drayson Technologies provides for commercialisation of products – with promise of profits to support future researchThe University of Oxford and Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have signed a five-year strategic research agreement (SRA) with Drayson Technologies, a specialist in internet of things (IoT) healthcare tech, to commercialise their digital healthcare products.http://www.ukauthority.com/health-care/entry/7315/oxford-uni-and-nhs-trust-sign-deal-for-digital-health-tech

In today’s social media driven society an internet meme or online trend can explode in popularity overnight. Remember the Ice Bucket challenge?But why do some online trends take the world by storm before disappearing just as quickly as they arrive?Researchers at The University of Manchester’s School of Mathematics and data analysis company Spectra Analytics, are investigating internet trends and memes from the recent past to find out.From ‘planking’ and ‘cat beards’ to ‘hadokening’ and ‘the lying down game’, the team have been looking at 26 different internet memes and trends dating back to 2011, measuring their impact and longevity then collating the data for analysis.All the numbers have now been crunched and the team have identified and tested a mathematical model that accurately demonstrates why some fads will take off and even predicts how long it will last.‘Complex contagion’ is the model that best describes the spread of behaviours driven by online sharing according to Dr Thomas House, the study’s senior author. Complex contagion isn’t a new concept but here, and for the first time ever, Dr House and the study’s first author Dr Dan Sprague have used mathematics and data analysis to describe the complex contagion theory and provide empirical evidence for its action across society.Dr House explains: ‘Social influence can lead to behavioural “fads” that are briefly popular but then quickly die out. Various theories and models have been proposed to explain such behaviours, but empirical evidence of their accuracy as real-world predictive tools has been absent so far.’http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/the-maths-behind-memes-why-numbers-could-help-us-predict-an-internet-sensation/

“Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” said an exasperated James Comey in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8. Comey’s desire reflects a familiar one for individuals accused of lying when the stakes are high. The former FBI director wished for tapes because, in our society, audio and video recordings serve as a final arbiter of truth. He said, she said always loses to what the tape shows.Today, when people see a video of a politician taking a bribe, a soldier perpetrating a war crime, or a celebrity starring in a sex tape, viewers can safely assume that the depicted events have actually occurred, provided, of course, that the video is of a certain quality and not obviously edited.But that world of truth—where seeing is believing—is about to be upended by artificial intelligence technologies.https://www.wired.com/story/ai-will-make-forging-anything-entirely-too-easy/