Hi Richard,
I do have cuda 8 installed, but when I used the instruction you provided. A lot of packages got downgraded and further  the pytorch version is now downgraded to 0.1.12 as I previously said. Do you have an idea why this is the case?
user_data$ conda install pytorch -c pytorch
Fetching package metadata .............
Solving package specifications: .

The following NEW packages will be INSTALLED:

    libtorch:     0.1.12-0                        
    mkl-rt:       11.1-p0                         

The following packages will be UPDATED:

    conda:        4.3.30-py27h6ae6dc7_0            --> 4.4.4-py27_0        
    mkl:          11.3.3-0                         --> 2017.0.4-h4c4d0af_0 
    pycosat:      0.6.2-py27h1cf261c_1             --> 0.6.3-py27ha4109ae_0

The following packages will be SUPERSEDED by a higher-priority channel:

    pytorch:      0.2.0-py27hc03bea1_4cu80 soumith [cuda80] --> 0.1.12-py27_0       
    torchvision:  0.1.9-py27hdb88a65_1     soumith --> 0.1.8-py27_0        

The following packages will be DOWNGRADED:

    accelerate:   2.3.1-np111py27_0                --> 2.0.1-np110py27_p0  
    cudatoolkit:  8.0-3                            --> 7.0-1               
    llvmlite:     0.15.0-py27_0                    --> 0.8.0-py27_0        
    mkl-service:  1.1.2-py27_3                     --> 1.1.0-py27_p0       
    numba:        0.30.1-np111py27_0               --> 0.22.1-np110py27_0  
    numexpr:      2.6.1-np111py27_1                --> 2.4.4-np110py27_p0   [mkl]
    numpy:        1.11.2-py27_0                    --> 1.10.2-py27_p0       [mkl]
    scikit-image: 0.13.0-py27h06cb35d_1            --> 0.12.3-np110py27_1  
    scikit-learn: 0.18.1-np111py27_0               --> 0.17-np110py27_p1    [mkl]
    scipy:        0.18.1-np111py27_0               --> 0.16.1-np110py27_p0  [mkl]

Proceed ([y]/n)? y

Thanks!