Artificial intelligence has become something of a dull buzzword: like the internet of things, 5G, and foldable phones, it's a label that supposedly means so much for the world that it has ended up meaning very little. AI is everywhere, its proponents claim – if it's not somewhere already, then it's about to be. And the latest place it has arrived is perhaps the most personal yet: in your mouth. Oral B's latest toothbrush hopes to bring the power of AI and machine learning to your teeth, using artificial intelligence to coach you into brushing your teeth better. It's not the first toothbrush to use technology usually preserved for mobile phones and other gadgets to make sure your brushing is as effective as possible.

A team of researchers at JD AI Research and Beijing University have recently developed a progressive vehicle search system for video surveillance networks, called PVSS. Their system, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, can effectively search for a specific vehicle that appeared in surveillance footage. Vehicle search systems could have many useful applications, including enabling smarter transportation and automated surveillance. Such systems could, for instance, allow users to input a query vehicle, search area and time interval to find out where the vehicle was located at different times during the day. Existing vehicle search methods typically assume that all vehicle images are cropped well from surveillance videos, using visual attributes or license plate numbers to identify the target vehicle within these images.

Los Angeles medical center Cedars-Sinai is currently piloting a program that places Amazon Echos in more than 100 patient rooms. The smart speakers use Aiva, a voice assistant platform for healthcare, and is intended to help patients communicate with their caregivers. Letting patients use Alexa to perform basic tasks like changing TV channels also frees up nurses to perform medical care. Backed by Amazon's Alexa Fund and the Google Assistant Investment Program, Aiva also participated in the Cedars-Sina accelerator program for healthcare startups. The platform also works with Google Home.

Seven Israeli and Israeli-founded companies were among over 400 firms featured by US business magazine Fast Company on its annual "World's Most Innovative Companies" for 2019. The monthly publication's editors and writers said they sought out groundbreaking businesses across 35 industries in every world region, listing the top 10 in 41 categories such as AI, Biotech, Branding, Health, Robotics, Food, Security, and Middle East, for a total of 410 organizations. Fast Company also released its annual "50 Most Innovative Companies" but no Israeli firms made that list. In 2018, Israeli-founded navigational app Waze was featured in the top 50 alongside giants such as Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify, and Israel had its own category with 10 top startups. An additional 5 Israeli companies and startups were featured in other categories.

We spoke to Ericsson IoT Head Jeff Travers during MWC 2019 about where the industry is heading and how emerging technologies are opening new possibilities. A running theme of this year's event was how technologies such as the IoT, 5G, AI, and blockchain are converging in powerful ways. Last year was a lot of talk about their potential, this year we're seeing more actual deployments. Transportation is one area where the IoT is having a major impact. The morning of our interview, Ericsson announced it's helped to build a '5G smart harbour' at the Port of Qingdao in partnership with China Unicom.

Evolving needs and investors behaviors, combined with the advancement of technology, have created opportunities for traditional players and new disruptors to reshaping the wealth management industry. In recent years, companies have arrived on the scene offering wealth management solutions leveraging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data and cloud computing. This breed of fintech companies, referred to as wealthtechs, is on the rise around the world. Switzerland's Sentifi was founded in 2012 with the goal of improving the information people all over the world use to make investment decisions. Sentifi uses AI and machine learning to analyze alternative data, classify it, rank the sources and link the results to over 50,000 global companies, commodities and currencies.

Machine learning is something new under the sun: a technology that builds itself. Right now we have limited algorithms with limited potential, but, if it exists, the Master Algorithm could derive all knowledge in the world from data. Inventing it would be one of the greatest advances in the history of science, speeding up the progress of knowledge across the board and changing the world in ways we can barely even begin to imagine. So says Pedro Domingos, professor of computer science at the University of Washington and author of the book "The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World." He joined the podcast to discuss his book and the possible utopian and dystopian futures of AI. Below is a lightly-edited transcript of our conversation. You can also subscribe to my podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or download the podcast here. JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: In the book you write, "Machine learning is something new under the sun, a technology that builds itself. And at its core, machine learning is about prediction: predicting what we want, the results of our actions, how to achieve our goals, how the world will change." Now, your book came out in 2015, and while it made the bookshelf of China's president in his New Year's address, I missed the book when it came out. The reason we are chatting today and I found out about the book was because Amazon recommended it to me. I had bought a previous book, called "Why Information Grows" by Cesar Hidalgo, who will also be a guest on an upcoming podcast, and when I bought that book it recommended your book as something I would also like. So, I bought it, and indeed I liked it very much. Now, for that recommendation I can thank machine learning, right? So machine learning tries to figure out what your tastes in books are, and clearly in this case it was a good call. So, for example, "Why Information Grows" -- by the way, I know Cesar well; he is a great guy -- is related to machine learning, so if you read that book you might like "The Master Algorithm" as well, and it seems that was a good call. Now, I suppose as a way of kind of explaining what machine learning is: How did that algorithm, Amazon, how did it do that?

Researchers, companies and countries around the world are racing to explore -- and exploit -- the possibilities of artificial intelligence technology. China is working on an extremely aggressive multi-billion-dollar plan for government investment into AI research and applications. The U.S. government has been slower to act. The Obama administration issued a report on AI near the end of its term. Since then, little has happened -- until a Feb. 11 executive order from President Donald Trump encouraging the country to do more with AI.

Parents are still being sent concerning warnings about the "Momo challenge", even as it becomes more and more clear their children are not in any obvious danger. In recent days, concern has spread across the UK and elsewhere that children are being targeted by "Momo" – a character associated with a horrifying image that is said to contact children and encourage them to take part in dangerous challenges. There have been no confirmed reports of any actual connection between the character and any of the behaviour it is said to encourage, such as self-harm. Though the image is now becoming widespread and people may be taking part in copycat campaigns, charities have warned that the concern over the image is probably doing more damage than the meme itself. Now the concern has spread so widely that an MP has asked the government what it intends to do about the image.

Branding for the AI field doesn't need to use the same old science - learn how top studios have bucked the trend in marketing machine learning to the masses. "We didn't want the brand to feel cold or technocratic, and didn't want to rehash common visual tropes, like amorphous networks of dots and lines or weird Jude Law-ian robots." Ritik Dholakia is talking to Digital Arts about the common visuals associated with the branding of companies in the artificial intelligence and machine learning field. Managing partner and founder of New York's Studio Rodrigo, Ritik had a chance to buck the trend with a recent branding project for Spell, a cloud-based platform offering individuals and organisations access to the AI and deep learning capabilities usually reserved for big corporations. Working with Spell CEO Serkan Piantino, Ritik and team wanted to create a visual system that balanced technical and trustworthy qualities with approachability, all the while communicating the potential of machine learning to the uninitiated.