Dragon Quest XI is a beautifully presented and well-told epic story that takes everything fans love about old-school Japanese role playing games like Final Fantasy and translates the traditional formula masterfully into a modern game. In many ways, the game isn't so modern at all: the story-driven single player RPG format may seem like a step back. But it's that change that makes the game so pure and enjoyable. This isn't a simple game and that is made abundantly clear after spending just minutes in the game's massive and complex world. The battle system proves turn-based combat can still be extremely nerve-wracking and exciting.

Takashi Inoue wants to transform his company, Lifull Co., into a one-stop shop for important lifestyle goods and services, where customers don't just make purchases but are able to get information about what they are buying as well. Adding to Lifull's varied product offerings -- which already extend from the company's flagship real estate information services to insurance, nursing care, and flower delivery -- Inoue's vision is creating what he ambitiously calls a "life database." "By combing the latest technologies we are aiming to provide the most optimal matching services (for people) to find everything from real estate or jobs to health care," Inoue, the company's president, said in a recent interview with The Japan Times. Without taking a breath, Inoue can fire off the technologies he believes will be integral to his company's goal of creating more convenient services for users. This includes using blockchain technology to allow users to invest in real estate, using augmented reality for potential buyers to remotely tour real estate listings, and harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to find a better match for services.

In April, the Ministry of Education issued an action plan to promote AI education in universities. According to the plan, universities in China will improve the strength of their AI disciplines and make breakthroughs in basic theory and key technology research by 2020.

The third edition of Drivers for Deploying Speech Analytics 2018, an annual survey commissioned by Uniphore Software Systems, was released today. The survey revealed that 60% of Indian companies deploy speech analytics for marketing initiative support and quick identification of customer intent, equally. This is in line with the finding of the previous year's survey underlining the growing relevance of speech analytics in increasing sales and delivering superior customer experience. Root cause remediation of customer experience failures came a close second with 58%. In North America and South East Asia, the top driver for deploying speech analytics was quick identification of customer intent.

Tech Mahindra announced its partnership with the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) to launch AI4Action, the first global Artificial Intelligence (AI) challenge aimed at delivering solutions for climate change. The competition will challenge students from schools and colleges, universities and corporates in four major cities – San Francisco, New York, London and New Delhi – to come up with creative, AI-powered applications over the next year that will help to tackle climate issues impacting the environment. Tech Mahindra and GCAS will select ten finalists that can demonstrate tangible solutions for climate action. The overall winner must present an actionable idea that can be transformed into a real-world solution in time for the United Nations Climate Summit in 2019. "This challenge mobilizes some of the brightest minds, utilizing the most advanced technology, to imagine – and pursue – solutions to the climate crisis that do not even exist today," said Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra Group, said, "The world has a historic opportunity to reboot future development with de-carbonised, climate compliant technologies. AI will be a powerful new tool in the fight against climate change and the more businesses that get behind this technology, the faster we can all transition to a cleaner, more energy efficient economy. Tech Mahindra's AI4Action initiative along with the global partners is a step in the right direction."

Machine learning is about to become a common part of enterprise software; and for it to be effective, real data is needed. "Data is the fuel for machine learning, as you need data to train algorithms," said Markus Noga, SAP SVP of Machine Learning, in an interview with Networks Asia. "Depending on the quality of the underlying data, ML can even outperform human performance (e.g. in image recognition). Hence, enterprises need to capture, prepare, and clean data in order to build intelligent models. Moreover, ML requires real data and cannot be effectively trained with generated (or fake) data."

AI has long been used to optimize large-scale system. On the other hand, intelligent optimization algorithms are also the basic tools for analysing microeconomic environment. Essentially, blockchain and microeconomics are both large-scale distributed systems, and there are inherent connections found between them. In principle, a blockchain system (including various nodes such as full node, mining node, and lightweight node) and a micro economic system (including a social system, which consists of producers, consumers, and markets) have many similarities: different interconnected subsystems, decentralized computations, and so on. The broad concern of microeconomics is to allocate scarce resources among various uses with the goal of maximizing users' utility and producers' profit.

The power of technology upon education has been immense over the past few decades. There was a time when education was allied with currency, but the things have been changed now. Great education for students is no more a dream. There are millions of applications available at the play store, choosing the right one can revolutionize the way a student looks at the process of learning. Educational Apps by fusion Informatics are making things stress free for students to understand.

In mid-September the European Union threatened to fine the Big Tech companies if they did not remove terrorist content within one hour of appearing online. The change came because rising tensions are now developing and being played out on social media platforms. Social conflicts that once built up in backroom meetings and came to a head on city streets, are now building momentum on social media platforms before spilling over into real life. In the past, governments tended to control traditional media, with little to no possibility for individuals to broadcast hate. The digital revolution has altered everything.

World Artifical Intelligence Conference is going to kick off in Shanghai with some of the leaders in China's tech space sharing their insights on the industry. TechNode is going to be live blogging from the event to bring the latest trends. Check back for regular updates!