REVENUE FORECAST: Baidu's quarterly revenue is likely to have reached $3.9 billion, up from $3.1 billion a year ago, the survey showed. AD GROWTH: Baidu has seen its search-related advertising bounce back, boosting both its revenue and profit in recent quarters. Baidu should continue to benefit as companies--especially in areas such as health and online education--allocate more of their ad budgets to search advertising, which has a higher conversion rate than newsfeeds, Shawn Yang, executive director at Blue Lotus Capital Advisors, wrote in a research report. "We see an increasing demand of search ads from both users and advertisers," he wrote. "Chinese internet users become more mature in gaining information and tend to use search engines more frequently."

Nasa has begun a major search for alien worlds. The agency's Tess spacecraft has started its science missions, exploring the universe as it looks for new planets. It engineers hope that it will eventually find thousands of alien worlds, some of which could be habitable. The craft – whose name stands for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite – will look deep in the universe for signs of planets. Any that are found will be explored from afar, as scientists try to work out what it might be like on those planets, and whether life could survive there.

As a Japanese, I grew up watching anime like "Neon Genesis Evangelion," which depicts a future in which machines and humans merge into cyborg ecstasy. Such programs caused many of us kids to become giddy with dreams of becoming bionic superheroes. Robots have always been part of the Japanese psyche--our hero, Astro Boy, was officially entered into the legal registry as a resident of the city of Niiza, just north of Tokyo, which, as any non-Japanese can tell you, is no easy feat. Not only do we Japanese have no fear of our new robot overlords, we're kind of looking forward to them. It's not that Westerners haven't had their fair share of friendly robots like R2-D2 and Rosie, the Jetsons' robot maid.

Last year, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which funds a range of blue-sky research efforts relevant to the US military, launched a $1.5 billion, five-year program known as the Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) to support work on advances in chip technology. The agency has just unveiled the first set of research teams selected to explore unproven but potentially powerful approaches that could revolutionize US chip development and manufacturing. Hardware innovation has taken something of a back seat to software advances in recent years, and that bothers the US military for several reasons. At the top of the list is that Moore's Law, which holds that the number of transistors fitted on a chip doubles roughly every two years, is reaching its limits (see "Moore's Law is dead. That could stymie future advances in electronics that the military relies on, unless new architectures and designs can allow progress in chip performance to continue.

The UAE and India have signed a bilateral Artificial Intelligence Bridge agreement that seeks to create economic benefits worth $20 billion during the next decade. Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, and Deepak Bagla, managing director and CEO of Invest India, the country's investment promotion agency, on Saturday signed a memorandum of understanding. According to state news agency WAM, the agreement aims to spur discussion and explore options for the UAE and India to grow their artificial intelligence (AI) economies. The UAE Minister said: "How a country chooses to embrace artificial intelligence will have a tremendous impact on its ability to innovate and prosper. Data and processing will be a catalyst for innovation and business growth and serve as the backbone of more effective and efficient service delivery system."

A huge confidence gap exists between the number of companies that try digital manufacturing strategies and those that successfully apply them, a new McKinsey & Co. survey found. In the 2018 Manufacturing Global Expert Survey, 92 percent of respondents think they lead or are on par with competitors in Industry 4.0 manufacturing strategies. The survey consisted of 700 companies in seven nations. Each had at least 50 employees and $10 million in annual revenue. It found that two-thirds rank digitizing the production value chain as a top priority.

Project Maven, the Pentagon-backed AI imaging initiative that seeks to "result in improved safety for citizens and nations through faster identification of evils such as violent extremist activities and human right [sic] abuses," marks just the first steps along very long road for the American defense and intelligence industries. Maven uses drone footage to build its machine learning models, and drew media attention earlier this year when Google backed out of the project over the concerns of dissident employees. The employees, some 3,000 of whom signed a petition against any involvement with the US military, demanded the company not contribute to any research that would be used for wartime applications. General James Holmes of the US Air Force told reporters last month, however, that the US would need to vigorously pursue such research if it wanted to seriously deter war. A stance the Pentagon has thrown its weight behind, releasing a memo earlier this week announcing the establishment of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center.

The construction companies are utilizing the capabilities of the AI for designing, estimation, safety, management, and quality measurement. The design applications create complex designs efficiently and feed various design goals & criteria. The design applications employ machine learning algorithms to provide designers with anticipatory design models based on customers preferences and the past user history. The estimation applications are used for developing projections associated with cost, labor, and raw materials. The AI applications combine generative design models with costs associated with similar projects to provide preliminary schedule and cost estimates. The Middle-Eastern AI-based construction industry will exhibit an increased growth due to the increased government spending on infrastructure, commercial, residential, and energy projects.

This article was originally posted on LinkedIn. During my regular travel across the Asia region, a hotly-debated topic among business leaders, government policymakers, academics and industry experts is the potential impact that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will have on society. Understandably, some commentators take a cautious view when it comes to AI development, sometimes painting a grim, dystopian future where large swathes of the population are rendered jobless, access to AI is not evenly distributed among citizens and privacy and civil liberties are increasingly under threat from AI's insatiable need for data. There is no denying that AI will present a new set of societal challenges that will need to be navigated thoughtfully and carefully and, in particular, it will be critical for all organizations to build trust in AI among their customers and stakeholders. However, these concerns should not overshadow the enormous potential that AI offers society.

Since 2000, he has been leading the revolution to make customer service easy and enjoyable for consumers. In 1995, PV's first company, Business Evolution Inc., developed the first generation of email and chat solutions. The company was acquired by Kana in 1999 and PV became part of the management team. PV was a pioneer in integrating customer service technology with business process operations to improve all aspects of the customer experience. PV has been at the forefront of customer experience from creating contact center agent services, developing a big data predictive analytics platform, creating omnichannel solutions for the web, mobile, chat, social, and speech IVR, to innovating mobile-centric applications.