This week’s top Machine Learning stories, including identifying astroturfing, imaging black holes, predicting the Olympics, 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!

Social

A team of researchers at the University of Southern California train an agent to detect when corporate money is pushing seemingly organic memes and trending topics.

Science

Computer scientists and astrophysicists at MIT and Harvard develop a new algorithm, “CHIRP”, to combine six locations’ observations to create the first image of a black hole.

Commerce

Google extends its TensorFlow 0.9 release candidate to support Apple’s iOS, allowing developers to leverage the technology in apps for the Apple family of devices.

Politics

The White House issues a call to technologists to leverage big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to resolve the United States’ incarceration crisis.

Industry

Former NASA chief Daniel Goldin unveils KnuEdge, a secretive start-up developing new chips to resolve the von Neumann bottleneck and support new learning algorithms.

Sports

Researchers at RWI Essen and the University of East Anglia predict the 2016 Summer Olympics will see Japan and Brazil improve notably, while the USA and China remain on top.