This Week in Machine Learning, 24 March 2017

This week’s top Machine Learning stories, including the search for aliens, hedge funds, and more!

Machine Learning is one of the most exciting fields in the world. Every week we discover something new, something amazing, something revolutionary. It’s incredible, but it can also be overwhelming. That’s why we created This Week in Machine Learning! Each week we publish a curated list of Machine Learning stories as a resource to help you keep pace with all these exciting developments. New posts will be published here first, and previous posts are archived on the Udacity blog.

Whether you’re currently enrolled in our Machine Learning Nanodegree program, already working in the field, or just pursuing a burgeoning interest in the subject, there will always be something here to inspire you!

Science

Researchers from the University of Texas use machine learning to reverse engineer and investigate the cellular control network that governs the development of tadpoles.

Agriculture

Beck’s Hybrids, an agricultural startup, develops solutions to investigating and predicting the yields of different corn breeds and other crop trends using artificial intelligence.

Industry

Boston startup DataRobot raises $54 million in Series C funding to support its mission of creating solutions for automated machine learning and data science.

Finance

By leveraging machine learning, Pit.ai creates a hedge fund that defeats both traditional and new hedge funds alike in automated investing.

Theory

Andrew Ng, one of the most prominent names in artificial intelligence and machine learning, announces he is leaving Baidu in search of a new challenge in AI.

Astronomy

The SETI Institute announces a hackathon to bring machine learning to the institute’s long search for intelligent extraterrestrial life.