Disclaimer: This episode of Chips with Everything covers topics that some listeners might find disturbing. Back in April 2017, The Guardian produced a film called Rise of the Sex Robots, a documentary by journalist Jenny Kleeman. In it, Jenny travelled to California to see a new prototype for an artificially intelligent sex robot. Its name, or her name, if you prefer, is Harmony and it can fulfil each user's particular desires through customisable appearance and personality. Fast forward 18 months, and in September 2018 the company behind this sex robot, Abyss Creations, has finally started shipping Harmony to customers.

Inc. said Thursday it will sell its Echo Show display-speaker hybrid in Japan starting in December, with the aim of further cementing its position in the world of voice-controlled devices. The world's largest online retailer said it will now begin taking preorders for the smart speaker, which has a 10-inch HD display, prior to the start of shipping on Dec. 12. It will carry a price tag of ¥27,980. The Echo Show, an internet-connected device that is compatible with Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant, enables users to play music and stream videos.

In many parts of the world, mosquitoes are more than just a campsite nuisance -- they carry that cause an estimated 725,000 deaths per year. On Singapore, the effect isn't so terrible -- some mosquitoes carry dengue fever, but it affects less than a dozen people per year. But because it's a city and an island, Singapore is the perfect testing ground to see how easy it might be to get rid of the disease-carrying bugs, all sans gene editing. That's what Alphabet-owned healthcare company Verily hopes to do. The company, along with Singapore's environmental agency, plans to release male mosquitoes that carry Wolbachia, a naturally-occurring bacteria that reduces the bugs' ability to transmit disease and prevents their eggs from hatching.

We recently featured the Henna Na hotel in an article about hotels staffed by robots. The hotel boasts over 150 robots and even has dinosaurs checking you in. The hotel chain has recently opened Japan's first all robot café. Named Henna Café (which translates to Strange Café), it's located in downtown Tokyo's Shibuya district. The café's star robot is named Sawyer and he was made in America by Boston based Rethink Robotics.

Self-driving cars must have a temporary number plate before they begin tests on designated roads, Xinhua said, quoting a notice released by Beijing's Municipal Commission of Transport. China's capital city has designated 11 more roads for self-driving vehicle testing, state news agency Xinhua said on Wednesday, to try to speed up the technology's development. The 11 roads are in Beijing's Fangshan District, Xinhua reported. Self-driving cars must have a temporary number plate before they begin tests on designated roads, Xinhua said, quoting a notice released by Beijing's Municipal Commission of Transport. They also have to complete 5,000 kilometers of driving in designated closed test fields and pass certain ability assessments.

In this profile series, we interview AI innovators on the front-lines - those who have dedicated their life's work to improving the human condition through technology advancements. He is also a founding co-director of Sociovestix Labs, a social enterprise in the area of financial data science. Damian's background is in research where he focuses on large- scale multimedia opinion mining applying machine learning and in particular deep learning to mine insights (trends, sentiment) from online media streams. Damian talks about his realization in deep learning and shares why integrating his work with deep learning is an important part to help prevent future natural disasters. What has your journey been like in deep learning?

Mumbai: The US, followed by China, India, Israel, and Germany, rank as the countries with the highest penetration of artificial intelligence (AI) skills among their workforce, according to a new report by professional networking site LinkedIn.com. The findings, released on Monday, further suggest that while changes driven by AI technologies may still be in their infancy, their impact is being felt across the global labour market in all sectors (https://bit.ly/2OroZdA). Moreover, industries with more AI skills present among their workforce are also the fastest-changing industries. Further, even as AI-- broadly defined as the desire to replicate human intelligence in machines -- has no superpower yet, it is undoubtedly becoming smarter with every passing day following advancements in machine learning and deep-learning algorithms, humongous amounts of Big Data on which these algorithms can be trained, and the phenomenal increase in computing power. These developments have, understandably, given rise to the fear that automation and AI will take away our jobs and eventually become smarter than us.

It's been the month of wearable silicon – and off the back of the news of the Amazfit Verge, Huami announced that its developed the "world's first AI-powered wearable chipset" – the Huangshan No. 1. For the uninitiated, Huami is a Chinese hardware company, pretty much backed by Xiaomi. It's been turning out some pretty impressive devices, including the Amazfit Bip and Amazfit Stratos, both of which have mustered decent Wareable reviews. Well, Gizmochina says that the Huangshan No.1 features four core intelligence engines: namely, a cardiac biometric engine, ECG, ECG Pro and Heart Rhythm Abnormality engine. That's clearly a pretty big claim to Apple, aping (in true Huami style) pretty much all the lead features of the Apple Watch Series 4 unveiled last week. It's using the RISC-V open source architecture that's getting ARM pretty worked up at the moment, and claims a boost of 38% in performance over the ARM Cortex-M4.

HANGZHOU, CHINA--Alibaba Group has formally established a semiconductor business to produce its own artificial intelligence (AI) chip as well as unveiled plans to develop quantum processors. Driven by the Chinese vendor's research and development (R&D) arm Damo Academy, these efforts would see the launch of Alibaba's first in-house developed AI chip in the second half of next year. Called AliNPU, the new AI chip had the potential to support technologies used in autonomous driving, smart cities, and smart logistics, said Alibaba at its annual flagship computing conference held here Wednesday. Its machine learning specialist also urges need for governments looking to build smart cities, such as Singapore, to ensure its citizens benefit from such initiatives. It also set up a new semiconductor subsidiary, called Pingtouge, which it said would focus on customised AI chips and embedded processors.

A Hong Kong start-up whose face- and image-recognition technology is being used for smart cities, online entertainment and finance has been hand-picked by Beijing to power China's ambition to be a global tech leader. SenseTime, founded by Chinese University professor Sean Tang Xiaoou and other academics, will join a bevy of technology giants including Baidu and Tencent in spurring the development of next-generation artificial intelligence. On Thursday, China's Minister of Science and Technology Wang Zhigang announced his ministry would entrust SenseTime to establish an "open innovation platform for next-generation AI" on intelligent vision. A spokesman for SenseTime said Beijing's endorsement indicated that the company's research in intelligent vision, or computer vision, was recognised as the best in China. Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor hailed the involvement of SenseTime as a "vote of confidence in Hong Kong's strengths in innovation and technology", as she met Wang Zhigang on Thursday. She and Wang witnessed the signing of an agreement where both sides pledged further cooperation in innovation and technology.