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Nice job Harley-Davidson when can I have my discount for my new wheels?


Harley-Davidson Says Artificial Intelligence Drives 40% of New York Sales Lookalike modeling is a key component of lead generation, and for motorcycle brand Harley-Davidson, the tactic now goes hand in hand with artificial intelligence (AI). In March 2016, the company began working with machine learning technology provider Adgorithms to grow its ecommerce reach and hasn’t looked back since. Asaf Jacobi, president of Harley-Davidson’s New York City division, spoke with eMarketer’s Maria Minsker about the brand’s experience with AI and discussed the results he has seen so far.

EMarketer: What are some of the business challenges that drove you to try artificial intelligence?

Asaf Jacobi: One of the biggest challenges of having a business in New York City is that it’s a very competitive environment. To get the response rate brands want, they have to reach as many people as possible. That’s where artificial intelligence comes in. I started reading about how artificial intelligence boosts online marketing reach, and contacted Adgorithms. We started using their platform, Albert, for our ecommerce ads in March.

Fortifying cybersecurity is on everyone’s mind after the massive DDoS attack from last week. However, it’s not an easy task as the number of hackers evolves the same as security. What if your machine can learn how to protect itself from prying eyes? Researchers from Google Brain, Google’s deep Learning project, has shown that neural networks can learn to create their own form of encryption.

According to a research paper, Martín Abadi and David Andersen assigned Google’s AI to work out how to use a simple encryption technique. Using machine learning, those machines could easily create their own form of encrypted message, though they didn’t learn specific cryptographic algorithms. Albeit, compared to the current human-designed system, that was pretty basic, but an interesting step for neural networks.

To find out whether artificial intelligence could learn to encrypt on its own or not, the Google Brain team built an encryption game with its three different entities: Alice, Bob and Eve, powered by deep learning neural networks. Alice’s task was to send an encrypted message to Bob, Bob’s task was to decode that message, and Eve’s job was to figure out how to eavesdrop and decode the message Alice sent herself.

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In Brief:

  • Researchers have demonstrated how electrons travel on different elliptical paths by using a quantum crystal kept at low temperatures.
  • The discovery could lead to a new class of microchips far beyond the capabilities of today’s silicon chips.

New developments from Princeton University and the University of Texas-Austin have revealed odd behavior in electrons that could lay the foundation for a new generation of faster microchips, according to a study published in Science.

I remember working on data transfer and experimental apps on the NET in 1990 to 1995. And, did it ever change during just those 5 years. I cannot even imagine 1969.


On October 29th, 1969, the internet got its start when the first host-to-host connection was made between UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute. See how much you know about the invention that would change the world with some trivia questions…

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Get Ready Folks! Imagine a QC DarkNet as it will too come.


Quantum teleportation brings to mind Star Trek’s transporter, where crew members are disassembled in one location to be reassembled in another. Real quantum teleportation is a much more subtle effect where information is transferred between entangled quantum states. It’s a quantum trick that could give us the ultimate in secure communication. While quantum teleportation experiments have been performed countless times in the lab, doing it in the real world has proved a bit more challenging. But a recent experiment using a dark fibre portion of the internet has brought quantum teleportation one step closer to real world applications.

The backbone of the internet is a network of optical fibre. Everything from your bank transactions to pictures of your cat travel as beams of light through this fibre network. However there is much more fibre that has been laid than is currently used. This unused portion of the network is known as dark fibre. Other than not being currently used, the dark fiber network has the same properties as the web we currently use. This new experiment used a bit of this dark web in Calgary to teleport a photon state under real world conditions.

The basic process of quantum teleportation begins with two objects (in this case photons) that are quantumly entangled. This basically means the state of these two objects are connected in such a way that a measurement of one object affects the state of the other. For quantum teleportation, one of these entangled objects is measured in combination with the object to be “teleported” (another photon). The result of this measurement is then sent to the other location, where a similar combined measurement is made. Since the entangled objects are part of both measurements, quantum information can be “teleported.” This might seem like an awkward way to send information, but it makes for a great way to keep your messages secret. Using this method, Alice can basically encrypt a message using the entangled objects, send the encrypted message to Bob, who can then make his own measurement of the entangled state to decode the message.

As shown in this in vivo two-photon image, neuronal transplants (blue) connect with host neurons (yellow) in the adult mouse brain in a highly specific manner, rebuilding neural networks lost upon injury. (credit: Sofia Grade/LMU/Helmholtz Zentrum München)

Embryonic neural stem cells transplanted into damaged areas of the visual cortex of adult mice were able to differentiate into pyramidal cells — forming normal synaptic connections, responding to visual stimuli, and integrating into neural networks — researchers at LMU Munich, the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in Martinsried and the Helmholtz Zentrum München have demonstrated.

The adult human brain has very little ability to compensate for nerve-cell loss, so biomedical researchers and clinicians are exploring the possibility of using transplanted nerve cells to replace neurons that have been irreparably damaged as a result of trauma or disease, leading to a lifelong neurological deficit.

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