The deal, disclosed by the companies Tuesday, highlights a contrast between the two electronics makers, both of which faced multibillion-dollar losses and management turmoil several years ago. Sharp has managed to turn itself around quickly under foreign management while Toshiba, which received more support from the Japanese government during its restructuring, is still trying to streamline its unprofitable portfolio. Toshiba's laptop PCs, sold under the Dynabook name, helped make the conglomerate famous among consumers outside Japan, but the business has lost money for the past five years and was at the center of a profit-padding scandal that the company disclosed in 2015. That scandal and the bankruptcy last year of Toshiba's U.S. nuclear subsidiary, Westinghouse Electric Co., have pushed Toshiba to shed many of its money-losing consumer businesses as well as more profitable units to raise funds. It has sold its television and appliance businesses to Chinese companies and its medical-equipment business to Canon Inc.

The day I'm scheduled to appear on his show, the television physician and Oprah protege has assembled a cast of victims and villains that includes a college communications major who caught chlamydia from a Tinder date; a 24-year-old woman who was stabbed 21 times by the fiance she met online; and Douglas Hines, a cartoonish engineer donning a white lab coat and outsize bowtie, who claims to have created the world's first sex robot. NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts. I'm here, presumably, to act as a voice of reason in a segment called "Rise of the sex robots: Why experts are issuing warnings!" My co-panelists, a sex therapist and a psychologist, are well-trained in the art (or is it science?) of near-scripted debate. While one is slightly more optimistic, their arguments are essentially two sides of the same coin: Sex robots either can or will pose a threat to human relationships, or worse. As TV doctors do, they've both developed firmly planted opinions on the subject without any first-hand experience. It's not lost on me that I'm the only one in the room who's actually seen a sex robot IRL. After the doctors deliver their warnings, Oz turns to me, a look of concern written in deep lines across his forehead. He wants to know if people can have real, intimate relationships with robots.

The U.S. military is increasing spending on a secret research effort to use artificial intelligence to help anticipate the launch of a nuclear-capable missile, as well as track and target mobile launchers in North Korea and elsewhere. The effort has gone largely unreported, and the few publicly available details about it are buried under a layer of near impenetrable jargon in the latest Pentagon budget. But U.S. officials familiar with the research told Reuters there are multiple classified programs now under way to explore how to develop AI-driven systems to better protect the United States against a potential nuclear missile strike. FILE PHOTO: A serviceman walks past anti-aircraft defence mobile missile systems during the Keys to the Sky competition at the International Army Games 2017 at the Ashuluk shooting range outside Astrakhan, Russia August 5, 2017. The computer systems would be able to think for themselves, scouring huge amounts of data, including satellite imagery, with a speed and accuracy beyond the capability of human.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military is increasing spending on a secret research effort to use artificial intelligence to help anticipate the launch of a nuclear-capable missile, as well as track and target mobile launchers in North Korea and elsewhere. The effort has gone largely unreported, and the few publicly available details about it are buried under a layer of near impenetrable jargon in the latest Pentagon budget. But U.S. officials familiar with the research told Reuters there are multiple classified programs now under way to explore how to develop AI-driven systems to better protect the United States against a potential nuclear missile strike. If the research is successful, such computer systems would be able to think for themselves, scouring huge amounts of data, including satellite imagery, with a speed and accuracy beyond the capability of humans, to look for signs of preparations for a missile launch, according to more than half a dozen sources. The sources included U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the research is classified.

Phantom Auto will provide its remote driving system for Einride's cabless, self-driving T-pod electric trucks. Consumer surveys point to lingering public concerns about the safety of self-driving cars even as the technology launches this year with Waymo's robot-taxi service in Phoenix. Silicon Valley startup Phantom Auto thinks it can lessen that anxiety with a backup driver who can take the wheel remotely when a robot chauffeur needs help. "We're not trying to be an AV player. We want to be a safety solution," Shai Magzimof, Phantom's 27-year-old CEO, founder and inventor of its technology, told Forbes.

Global semiconductor revenue is expected to rise by 7% (year over year) in 2018, according to the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (or WSTS). And, while the semiconductor industry has enjoyed consistent growth over the decades, the underlying ICs that power modern technology have evolved. Infiniti Research recently released a blog summarizing the four major contributors to the growth in the semiconductor industry: artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution, Level 3 autonomous vehicles, and high-throughput technologies such as 5G and augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR). These developments are driving increased demand across the semiconductor segments, particularly for processors, sensors and analog ICs. The mass fabrication of AI chips is rising on a global scale, from China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's plan to mass-produce neural-network processing chips by 2020 to IBM Watson Group's $200 million investment for a facility in Munich.

The Singapore government is setting up an advisory council to assess the legal and ethical use of AI (artificial intelligence) and data as well as recommend policies and governance. This would help build "a trusted ecosystem" and ensure consumer confidence, as the country continued to develop its digital economy and new business models emerged, said industry regulator Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). It added that various stakeholders including consumers, ethics boards of private organisations, and academia would be approached for feedback–specifically, on a discussion paper to be released by the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC), detailing the development and adoption of AI, and support the advisory council's efforts.

The 18th-century Irish philosopher Bishop George Berkeley concluded that, since all we know of the universe is what our senses convey to us, things in the world exist only to the extent that we perceive them. They have no material reality, but are phenomena in and of our minds, or the mind of God. Samuel Johnson famously countered this philosophy by kicking a large stone and saying, "I refute it thus!" Two hundred years later, while American campuses roiled with protests against the Vietnam War, the philosopher, historian, and physicist Thomas Kuhn met with a grad student at Princeton's legendary Institute for Advanced Study to discuss the student's paper. The professor and student disagreed on some fundamental ideas, and the conversation grew heated.

Apple's chief executive has denied that the company collected personal data from Facebook users through a data-sharing partnership with the social network. Tim Cook said it did not fit the tech giant's way of operating. Partnerships between Facebook and around 60 device manufacturers over the past 10 years gave Apple and other companies "deep access" to user data The New York Times recently reported. Facebook said the partnerships were "built on a common interest", adding that they were necessary to spread adoption of its social network before app stores were commonplace. Mr Cook insisted his company never requested data from Facebook because it did not fit with Apple's way of operating in an interview with NPR during Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC).

Technology and economics often go hand in hand. The invention of the steam engine in the 1800s and early computer chips in the mid 20th Century generated copious amounts of economic growth. AI has a unique ability to improve both the capital and labour levers in the economy. According to a study done by Accenture, AI will double economic growth by 2035. AI aims to create intelligent behaviour in computers.