A little over a week after the fervor surrounding Google's involvement in the Department of Defense's Project Maven, an autonomous drone program, showed signs of abating, another machine learning controversy returned to the headlines: local law enforcement deploying Amazon's Rekognition, a computer vision service with facial recognition capabilities. In a letter addressed to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, 19 groups of shareholders expressed concerns that Rekognition's facial recognition capabilities will be misused in ways that "violate [the] civil and human rights" of "people of color, immigrants, and civil society organizations." And they said that it set the stage for sales of the software to foreign governments and authoritarian regimes. Amazon, for its part, said in a statement that it will "suspend … customer's right to use … services [like Rekognition]" if it determines those services are being "abused." It has so far declined, however, to define the bright-line rules that would trigger a suspension.

With the advent of new technologies, experts now say the definition of intelligence is changing. Smart people are not just individuals capable of solving complicated problems on their own, but also those who understand the way artificial intelligence, or AI, can best serve them. Simply put, understanding technology is essential. Yet technology and artificial intelligence often scare people who get tangled in complicated explanations of what AI is and how it works. Two professors, Nick Polson from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and James Scott from the University of Texas at Austin, tried to put a face on the technology by writing a book that illustrates the beginning of AI through several examples of historical figures and other individuals who developed algorithms for humanity's different problems.

Now, if a clerk asks to help you, it probably means you've been acting shady. Artificial intelligence continues to seep into our daily lives, touching up photos, developing snacks, and imitating school girls online. Now, AI has been tasked with tackling a crime as old as retail itself: shoplifting. A recent study by telecom giant NTT found that Japanese businesses lose around 400 billion yen (US$3.7B) annually through five-fingered discounts. No store is immune to this larceny, except perhaps anvil shops, and technology has yet to come up with a strong enough solution to effectively combat it, until now.

As part of its market-leading global series, the AI Summit returns for the second year to Hong Kong, to showcase how APAC continues to be the global powerhouse for AI innovation. The conference will bring together CxOs from across the region to discuss and debate the positive potential of the 4th Industrial Revolution. Beyond the hype, AI is already delivering real value in business. It's being implemented across all industries and business functions creating unprecedented efficiencies in human productivity. There will be high level as well as more technical case studies from APACs leading enterprises, as well as multinationals from around the globe.

E-commerce companies are focusing on artificial intelligence and virtual reality with a view to cut logistics costs and identify fraudulent orders, said a report by global auditing and consulting firm PwC. With an emerging middle-class population of more than 500 million and approximately 65 per cent of the population aged 35 or below, India represents a highly aspirational consumer market for retailers across the globe, said the PwC TechWorld report. "E-commerce players are revamping their technology strategies to maintain their competitive edge. Most e-commerce platforms are upping their investments in areas such as conversational commerce, artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR)/augmented reality (AR) and analytics technologies," it said. It observed that to identify fraudulent orders, reduce return rate and also cut down on logistics cost, e-commerce companies are investing in robotics and AI heavily.

The government and the police are discussing the idea of developing a computer system that can predict street crime by utilizing big data and artificial intelligence. They hope such a system will be able to show them where and how to take greater measures to prevent crime. Street crime prediction "has already achieved results in Europe and the United States," said Mami Kajita, who established the data-analysis company Singular Perturbations Inc. last year in hopes of developing a Japanese version of the methods used in the United States. In some parts of America, the police have ramped up patrols in areas where AI-based systems predicted crime was more likely to happen, achieving a reduction of 20 percent on average, Kajita said. A more cautionary tale comes from China, where the government is racing ahead to use big data and facial recognition technology to surveil the population.

The greatest contribution that artificial intelligence could make to humanity might be in health care. According to the consultancy firm Frost & Sullivan, AI has the potential to improve medical treatment outcomes by 30-40 per cent and reduce costs by as much as 50 per cent. This is particularly important for China, with its population of 1.4 billion people. Medical services can be scarce in China's rural areas while, in urban areas, services are highly strained due to the sheer volume of patients. According to the latest data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, China has 1.8 practising doctors per 1,000 people, compared with 2.56 for the United States and 5.1 for Australia.

By redirecting focus, wealth managers can successfully respond to challenges brought on by digital disruption, demographic shifts, and tighter regulation. Wealth managers have seen their fair share of ups and downs in recent years, and while challenges remain, advisers can drive business and growth by paying attention to demographic segmentation, how investors are using technology, and changes in regulation. In this episode of the McKinsey Podcast, Simon London first speaks with PriceMetrix chief customer officer Patrick Kennedy and McKinsey partner Jill Zucker about the North American wealth-management industry; he follows that with a discussion with senior partner Joe Ngai, on the industry in China. Simon London: Welcome to the McKinsey Podcast with me, Simon London. Today, we're going to be talking about financial advice and the people who provide it: financial advisers, or as they're sometimes known, wealth managers. Wealth management is a very big business--and also a business facing a number of challenges, such as new technology, changing demographics, and tighter regulation in a lot of countries. A little later, we're going to be getting a perspective on China. But we're going to start here in North America. For the first part of the conversation, I'm joined on the line by Jill Zucker, a McKinsey partner based in New York, and Patrick Kennedy, who's based in Toronto. Pat is chief customer officer for PriceMetrix, which provides data and analytics to the wealth-management industry.

If you've ever commanded a plastic tower the size of a Pringles tube to play Ed Sheeran, tweaked your home central heating from the office or bought a product that Amazon recommended, then you've had a close encounter with artificial intelligence (AI). OK, the smarts on display here make your average toddler look like Einstein. But the machines are catching up fast – with the help of some super-bright humans. Tokyo's Henn-na, the world's first hotel staffed by robots. By'everything else' he means stuff like cancer, climate change and time travel, rather than today's cryptic crossword.

Cambricon Technologies has raised hundreds of millions of US dollars in a Series B round of financing, valuing the Chinese smart chipmaker at USD2.5 billion. Cambricon did not reveal the exact amount raised, state-backed The Paper reported. The Beijing-based company secured USD100 million in its A-round last August. The latest round was led by SDIC Venture Capital, a unit of state-owned investment holding group China Reform Holdings, state-owned Capital Venture Investment Fund and its sub-fund Guoxin Qidi Fund. Founded in 2016, Cambricon has said it will make up 30 percent of China's smart chip market in the next three years and supply more than one billion smart chips globally.