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15 VC-backed bot startups have raised their first VC rounds so far this year. 
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With new neural network architectures popping up every now and then, it’s hard to keep track of them all. Knowing all the abbreviations being thrown around (DCIGN, BiLSTM, DCGAN, anyone?) can be a bit overwhelming at first. So I decided to compose a cheat sheet containing many of those architectures. Most of these are neural networks, some are completely different beasts. Though all of these architectures are presented as novel and unique, when I drew the node structures… their underlying relations started to make more sense.
Farid Mheir's insight:
A reference chart of neural network architecture, with detailed explanation of each one. Very useful reference.
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At TechCrunch Disrupt SF this year, famed iPhone and PlayStation hacker George Hotz unveiled the first official product of his automotive AI startup, Comma.ai. The Comma One is a $999 add-on shipping before the end of the year, with a $24 monthly subscription for its software, which Hotz says will be able to drive your car from Mountain View to San Francisco without requiring a driver to touch the wheel, the brake or the gas.
Farid Mheir's insight:
Read the article but you can skip the 7min video. For a better - and more relaxed - discussion, consider watching this 1hr interview full of descriptions of self-driving car insights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zy_07g2IrM
For a more technical speech, view the Berkley presentation, even though there are elements that are redundant it provides additional insights into the technology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxoke1lDJ9w
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT His approach is radically different than others and more "purist" from an artificial intelligence and crowd sourcing and I believe that makes his approach something to consider in other areas.
For more reading on the subject, this bloomberg paper also brings good insights: http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-george-hotz-self-driving-car/
Moreover it appears that Google lead is slowly shrinking: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-12/google-car-project-loses-leaders-and-advantage-as-rivals-gain
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Farid Mheir's insight:
Jeff Hawkins is most well known for creating the palm pilot handheld device in the 1990s. He also is a very intelligent man and neuroscientist. He penned the Book On Intelligence (http://amzn.to/2c1GBdZ) which provides an explanation fo the architecture of the neurocortex and founded a company, numenta (www.numenta.com), to implement this architecture in software.
Jeff recently re-published a 1986 paper he wrote which attending Berkley University where he presents his theory. This blog post provides context and a link to the paper which should be read as it presents his theories very well.
I wrote about other ideas and solutions from Jeff Hawkins before:
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Since the start of 2016, automakers, tech companies, and ride-hailing services have been racing to create a driverless taxi service. This service would mirror how an Uber works today, but there wouldn’t be a driver. So far, the race has been brutal, as companies jockey for position by spending billions to acquire/invest in companies that will help make a driverless taxi service a reality. Uber recently took the pole position by announcing it would begin piloting its self-driving taxi service (with a driver still behind the wheel) in Pittsburgh later this month. But other companies, including almost every automaker, are quickly catching up as we reach the mid-way point in the driverless taxi race.
Farid Mheir's insight:
Promotion for a BI report on the subject of self-driving taxis
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT I find the diagram useful as it categorizes component suppliers, mobility services and automakers, showing where apple, uber, google cross the lines. It gives a simple representation of where to look for innovation in this space. And I assume the report is also good ;-)
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I've been reading Ramez Naam's fantastic book "Nexus," which is set in a near-future where a powerful nano-drug allows human minds to connect together. In... read more
Farid Mheir's insight:
5 must read papers to understand where we stand in the area of direct brain communication with machines. In a nutshell; still very early.
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HTM for Stocks monitors financial and social data (specifically stock price, stock volume and Twitter volume) for a couple hundred stocks and alerts you in real-time when a significant anomaly is occurring.
Farid Mheir's insight:
Describes an artificial intelligence solution that monitors stock market and raises notifications when things are different than the predicted behaviour of the stock.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT Our brain is a massive prediction engine, based on the work that Jeff Hawkins has presented in his book On Intelligence http://amzn.to/2caWZuk
Applications from this brain architecture theory have started to emerge with this stock market prediction being one of them.
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Artificial intelligence prophets including Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Raymond Kurzweil predict that by the year 2030 machines will develop consciousnes
Farid Mheir's insight:
The author argues that intelligence goes beyond mere processing power and that it will not be sufficient for computers to reach the singularity to have intelligence.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT I disagree with the author but the article is well written and well researched. However I do believe that once sufficient power is available, the machine will start to "think", be intelligent, be creative, be self-conscious, etc. After all, any sufficiently evolved technology is impossible to differentiate from magic, as the saying goes...
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Humanity must “Achieve symbiosis with machines,” Musk says. So what is Musk saying when he talks about a neural lace? In the most basic sense, it’s a mesh of electronic fibers that you would place on your head to improve human performance. Think of it like a kitchen cap for your brain, but instead of protecting food from stray hairs, it improves your cognitive abilities.
Farid Mheir's insight:
Describes Elon Musk vision for a way to enhance human brain with artificial intelligence in order to ensure our race continues to evolves and not be replaced by machines (a-la Matrix or Terminator).
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT This idea runs along the same lines as those expressed by Ray Kurweil in his must-read book the Singularity is Near. Technological enhancements will allow our bodies to be augmented with technology, soon making us part human, part robots. Interesting....
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Thanks to a sleek new computer chip developed by IBM, we are one step closer to making computers work like the brain. The neuromorphic chip is made from a phase-change material commonly found in rewritable optical discs (confused? more on this later). Because of this secret sauce, the chip’s components behave strikingly similar to biological neurons: they can scale down to nanometer size and perform complicated computations rapidly with little energy.
Farid Mheir's insight:
A detailed description of the new computer chip by IBM that mimics more closely than ever the workings of our brain neurons.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT When Intel created the integrated semiconductor in 1971, it marked a revolution because it allowed electronics to be mass produced and operate at higher speed. Today, neurons are built using digital technologies and often are coded in software. With this chip, we have the opportunity to integrate many neurons into a single computer chip, and possibly achieve improvements in artificial intelligence.
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The autonomous cars, launching this summer, are custom Volvo XC90s, supervised by humans in the driver’s seat.
Farid Mheir's insight:
Detailed description of UBER self driving car project. Includes a great "maturity level" chart from the US NHTSA.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT We are entering Level 3 of 4 is the self driving car innovation.
More news on this topic here:
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Two new Google machine learning APIs can be used by mere mortals in businesses to build better software, the company said.
Farid Mheir's insight:
A review of recent frameworks and APIs that Google has made public to help in the creation of artificial intelligence solutions.
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If Uber can master Pittsburgh's terrain, infrastructure, and erratic drivers, its self-driving cars can handle anything.
Farid Mheir's insight:
Uber is rolling out self driving car development programme in Pittsburgh because that city presents a number of key challenges: bridges, snow, etc.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT Self driving cars represent the biggest opportunity for businesses to reduce their costs and improve their logistics in the coming years. Uber, Google and others are at the forefront of this innovation and it is essential to track how good or bad the technology is so you can add it to your roadmap at the appropriate time.
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From
zapier
Bots are handy little assistants that hang out in your app, wait for commands, and then find or create the thing you need. They're another way to use your favorite apps without needing to open those apps, running automated tasks for you. They're the big new thing—a core part of Slack, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram's newest features—and yet they seem too complicated to build and use. Turns out, bots are simple enough for anyone to make. Here's how you can make a bot to do anything you want in a few minutes without any coding—along with a dozen examples of bots that real teams are using today, and a Slack bot cheat sheet for a handy reference to help build your own bots.
Farid Mheir's insight:
A detailed how-to article on how to build a chat bot using Zapier, a popular online programming automation tool.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT Robots or "bots" will become more and more common in the near future as they integrate seamlessly into our most common chat programs such as Facebook messenger. They will become popular because they allow any company to have a presence inside popular mobile apps and do not require any installation from users: they just type in requests and get responses in return. Directions, orders, and information will be streamed by those autonomous programs to help you fulfill daily tasks. This article highlights an important aspect of bot programming: they will become easier and easier to create, especially for common and recurring problems.
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Stay up-to-date with the latest product announcements and new advancements from Automated Insights.
Farid Mheir's insight:
The company automated insights uses its AI tools to automatically write summary of baseball games (http://bit.ly/2a9g7qR), financial portfolio (http://bit.ly/2a9gG3T), and many other. This blog describes many of these applications.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT I wrote about automated insights in the past (http://sco.lt/7FRff7) as it was starting and have been watching ever since. It is important to take notice that AI has been hired by the Associated Press to write summary texts that go straight to the wire without human intervention (http://sco.lt/7FRff7).
This is a trend worth watching as it means AI is slowing replacing human workers with machine intelligence in fields that were previously though impossible - here the redaction of human readable texts and stories. I wrote about data on why no job is safe from automatization and robotization (http://sco.lt/64xeyX).
Anyone putting together a digital strategy must absolutely consider the use of such AI tools in the coming years, and thus have a roadmap with trials starting as soon as NOW.
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To address this problem, we began applying machine learning two years ago to operate our data centres more efficiently. And over the past few months, DeepMind researchers began working with Google’s data centre team to significantly improve the system’s utility. Using a system of neural networks trained on different operating scenarios and parameters within our data centres, we created a more efficient and adaptive framework to understand data centre dynamics and optimize efficiency.
Farid Mheir's insight:
Google uses artificial intelligence to analyze energy consumption in its data center to improve cooling and reduce energy consumption by 40%.
The paper also links to other most interesting links on data center operations including:
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT Energy is the main cost of data center operations so this is great news. Companies should thus use this news to further move their computing to the cloud as large data centers - Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others - are way more efficient than anything even large corporations can do.
This is true for energy consumption, and I contend it is also true for many other areas including security and speed of implementation. It is essential that any digital transformation make cloud computing the primary de facto standard over any on-premise operation.
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With users concentrating more of their time in fewer apps, companies are looking for new ways to connect with customers on mobile. Messaging platforms an
Farid Mheir's insight:
Mobile is the future for most interactions with your customers. However it is more and more difficult to get your apps downloaded and used on a daily basis when you have to compete with Facebook, Google, Snapchat and the myriad of other high performance social tools out there.
The solution may lie in the use of "chatbots", automated software that can respond to user inquiries via sms or messaging apps. This means you could have a customer service or ecommerce "bot" that responds automatically to customers inquiries they make using apps they have already on their phones and that they are using on a daily basis.
The video is quite short and provides examples of working products and solutions. I encourage you to listen and take note, then ask yourself how you can put this new technology to use in your digital strategy for the next few years.
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From
gizmodo
It was hailed as the most significant test of machine intelligence since Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in chess nearly 20 years ago. Google’s AlphaGo has won two of the first three games against grandmaster Lee Sedol in a Go tournament, showing the dramatic extent to which AI has improved over the years. That fateful day when machines finally become smarter than humans has never appeared closer—yet we seem no closer in grasping the implications of this epochal event.
Farid Mheir's insight:
Hearing so much about deep learning, Big data, and artificial intelligence these days it is useful to review some of the myths and set the story straight.
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George Hotz, the first person to hack the iPhone, says he built a self-driving car in a month. How did he do it? Bloomberg's Ashlee Vance went to Hotz'
Farid Mheir's insight:
Companion post to my previous one here: http://sco.lt/7c2fS5
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A few days before Thanksgiving, George Hotz, a 26-year-old hacker, invites me to his house in San Francisco to check out a project he’s been working on. He says it’s a self-driving car that he had built in about a month. The claim seems absurd. But when I turn up that morning, in his garage there’s a white 2016 Acura ILX outfitted with a laser-based radar (lidar) system on the roof and a camera mounted near the rearview mirror. A tangle of electronics is attached to a wooden board where the glove compartment used to be, a joystick protrudes where you’d usually find a gearshift, and a 21.5-inch screen is attached to the center of the dash. “Tesla only has a 17-inch screen,” Hotz says.
Farid Mheir's insight:
The story of a very bright kid that unleashes the power of deep learning and machine intelligence to tech his car how to drive. And it seems to be working. Someone to look at very carefully.
But also a story about the power that these new tools have on our world and should be leveraged more aggressively by corporations.
Look at the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTrgRYa2wbI
Numalis's curator insight,
March 15, 2016 3:32 AM
Technology is really accelerating. What an expert can do in one month could take years before. This is as exciting as it is uncontrollable. The only remaining question is to know if simple and fast prototyping could be a good canvas to build upon for safe and efficient designs.
Emeric Bailleul's curator insight,
March 15, 2016 5:05 AM
The story of a very bright kid that unleashes the power of deep learning and machine intelligence to tech his car how to drive. And it seems to be working. Someone to look at very carefully.
But also a story about the power that these new tools have on our world and should be leveraged more aggressively by corporations.
Look at the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTrgRYa2wbI 
Murphy Ben International 's curator insight,
March 16, 2016 4:20 PM
The story of a very bright kid that unleashes the power of deep learning and machine intelligence to tech his car how to drive. And it seems to be working. Someone to look at very carefully.
But also a story about the power that these new tools have on our world and should be leveraged more aggressively by corporations.
Look at the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTrgRYa2wbI
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Farid Mheir's insight:
World Economic Forum survey of executives has compiled a list of jobs that are most at risk of being replaced by computers before 2025. The infographic shows a summary of the data which is available in detail here: http://reports.weforum.org/future-of-jobs-2016/
Jean-Simon Venne's curator insight,
February 2, 2016 9:39 PM
Thanks Farid for this interesting analysis, to be followed. 
Grant Tucker's curator insight,
February 14, 2016 11:10 AM
This is why we all should be innovating within our chosen professions
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Farid Mheir's insight:
Few jobs are safe from automation.
Jean-Simon Venne's curator insight,
February 2, 2016 9:39 PM
Thanks Farid for this interesting analysis, to be followed.
Grant Tucker's curator insight,
February 14, 2016 11:10 AM
This is why we all should be innovating within our chosen professions 
Farid Mheir's curator insight,
July 20, 2016 2:09 PM
World Economic Forum survey of executives has compiled a list of jobs that are most at risk of being replaced by computers before 2025. The infographic shows a summary of the data which is available in detail here: http://reports.weforum.org/future-of-jobs-2016/
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(credit: KurzweilAI) By Bob Gourley Courtesy of CTOvision.com Practical artificial intelligence has made its way out of the labs and into our daily
Farid Mheir's insight:
A reference list of tools that use deep learning and AI we use today.
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The Associated Press announced in an advisory to customers today that the majority of U.S. corporate earnings stories for our business news report will eventually be produced using automation techn...
Farid Mheir's insight:
I learned today in LaPresse+ that Associated Press now relies on software from Automated Insight to write its financial stories on corporate earnings. Stories are, for now, human verified before release but this soon will disappear. Also of interest is that AI provides solutions to automate redaction of texts in multiple domains, from sports to website analytics (my picture above). I initially assumed this is along the same lines as the automated writing that the weather service has been using for years. But in fact it is not, as it appears to spit out text that appears to be written by a human, not by a machine. It draws from Big Data analysis to extract meaningful information that it then writes about. The AI website provides few examples that appear very "professional". AI now advertises a "marketing" tool that specializes in the creation of marketing material. I assume this will mean more personalized "emails" in my inbox that will go beyond greeting me by name and also merge data that is global (the lettuce is on special this week) to the very personal (you should consider buying more fruits and vegetables and to encourage you we extend a 25% discount for the next 30 days on all our fresh produce section). Whether this is good news or bad, I'll let you decide...
oneworldmobile's curator insight,
July 24, 2014 4:12 PM
Operational efficiencies are eliminating human jobs. Where does that leave the employed of us?
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Capgemini Consulting's digital transformation business journal looks at the digitization of operations, taking in robotics, 3D printing, and the second machine
Farid Mheir's insight:
Always must read from Capgemini.
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Curated by Farid Mheir
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A review of recent investments in startups that build intelligent bots for messaging apps and other tools we interact with.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
With 50% of mobile users that have not downloaded an app in the previous month (http://fortune.com/2016/09/16/smartphone-users-apps/), the future of our interactions with our mobile devices will be concentrated - limited? - to a small number of high profile apps from the big names - Facebook, Google, Apple. How can companies compete? They will embed intelligent bots to listen and converse with their customers, employees and partners using intelligent bots. Soon you'll be ordering pizza by chatting with a dominos pizza bot or getting stock tips for an automated financial expert. Believe it.
http://mashable.com/2016/09/15/dominos-pizza-facebook-bot/#mouHyNNwIOq3
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-find-a-financial-adviser-1420516873