New Delhi: In an ambitious defence project, the government has started work on incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the operational preparedness of the armed forces in a significant way that would include equipping them with unmanned tanks, vessels, aerial vehicles and robotic weaponry. The move is part of a broader policy initiative to prepare the Army, Navy and the Air Force for next generation warfare and comes amid rising Chinese investments in developing critical applications of AI for its military. Secretary-defence production Ajay Kumar said the government had decided to introduce AI in all the three forces as it would be a "big area" considering the requirements of future warfare. He said a high-powered task force headed by Tata Sons chairman N. Chandrasekaran was finalising the specifics and framework of the project, which would be implemented in a "partnership model" between the armed forces and the private sector. "It is India's preparation for next generation warfare. This (AI) is where the future is going to be. We need to prepare ourselves for the next generation warfare which will be more and more technology driven, more and more automated and robotised," he told PTI.

Another fast-growing Chinese startup, Beijing Bytedance Technology Co., in recent weeks issued about $300 million in convertible bonds to private-equity firm KKR KKR 1.12% & Co., according to other people familiar with the matter. The company, which owns a popular Chinese news-aggregation app called Jinri Toutiao, was valued at $22 billion in an equity fundraising round in late 2017, according to an individual familiar with that transaction. Spokespeople for Didi, Bytedance and KKR declined to comment. The emerging trend is a result of technology companies' increasing need for cash to fund their expansion at home and abroad, which has involved heavy spending on marketing and other costs to acquire customers and fend off rivals. Selling convertible securities allows companies to raise capital with less dilution to existing shareholders, while giving buyers of the instruments an opportunity to reap additional gains if and when the debt converts into stock down the road.

Police on Tuesday launched an expert panel tasked with discussing driving rules for autonomous vehicles, including a potential revision to road traffic laws. Experts in law, social infrastructure and other areas will discuss specific issues to be resolved as firms move closer to commercializing self-driving cars for public roads. The government has recently compiled a policy outline for introducing mostly autonomous cars by 2025. The panel is set to propose detailed rules such as how penalties will apply for accidents and traffic law violations involving level 3 and 4 autonomous vehicles. Level 3 autonomy allows drivers to move their attention from driving in specific situations while requiring them to take back control when the vehicle requests it.

Sometimes the future shows up so fast it hits us in the face, like a brick wall in a VR headset. Other times the miraculous promises of technology--the rearrange ment of our very DNA, the blockchain- enabled toppling of Facebook--are frustratingly slow to arrive. But either way, the future is coming, and we should be ready. In the following pages we lay out a series of predictions, starting with some changes that are immediately upon us. Then, looking down the road, we get ever-bolder in our prognostications, year by not-so-far-off year. Hackers who disable power grids and detonate gas pipelines have been the villains of popular cyberparanoia for decades.

I spent 12 years in the microchip business, specifically from 2000 to 2012. My friends and I built our own chip startup in 2004 and sold the company in 2008, before the Lehman shock. By the time of the exit of my startup, semiconductor startups were disappearing, due to the departure of VC investments. I remember the last massive wave of VC semiconductor investments, into a now largely forgotten standard called UWB (Ultra-wideband). That means all founders got burnt too.

With the creation of a 17-member task force, India's goals range from "establishing tactical deterrence in the region and visualizing potential transformative weaponry" to "developing intelligent, autonomous robotic systems and bolstering cyber defence," the Times of India reported. According to the report, the task force is expected to make recommendations on how best to "make India a significant power in AI, in terms of both offensive and defensive needs, especially in aviation, naval, land systems, cyber, nuclear and biological warfare arenas." "The world is moving towards AI-driven warfare," Ajay Kumar, the secretary of India's Defense Ministry, told the publication. "India is also taking necessary steps to prepare our armed forces because AI has the potential to have a transformative impact on national security. The government has set up the AI taskforce to prepare the roadmap for it."

Artificial intelligence (AI) has fuelled science fiction for decades. Yet now, with technology having caught up with and overtaken human imagination, its capabilities are becoming science fact and too powerful for business leaders to ignore. AI, even in its relative infancy, is enabling C-suiters to redraw all aspects of their organisations. Those who embrace AI and related nascent digital technologies – automation, robotics, machine-learning, big data – are already gaining a significant advantage over laggards. "Everything invented in the past 150 years will be reinvented using AI within the next 15 years," predicts Randy Dean, San Francisco-based chief business officer at Launchpad.AI.

Bengaluru-based healthcare startup Mfine which uses artificial intelligence has bagged $4.2 Mn in a Series A funding. Prime Venture Partners, a seed-stage venture fund led the funding round. The funding round saw participation from the existing investors Mayur Abhaya, an entrepreneur who is in the healthcare industry for some time and Stellaris Venture Partners. The startup says that it will use the latest raised money in building their hospital network across cities while they continue to build their tech team stronger. The app-based company which connects the users for consultations with the doctors also targets to reach over 1 lakh consultations by the end of 2018 with the help of their connections in 50 hospitals across the country which they target to touch by the end of 2018.

A health check of the world today may seem gloomy – antibiotics are failing, people are dying of easily treatable diseases because they're poor, and conditions such as dementia are on the rise. The scientists, researchers, investors and startups at the Francis Crick Institute in London were only too aware of the challenges – here's what we learned. Women account for almost 50 per cent of the world's population, but women's health technology hasn't updated for years – however, Tania Boler, CEO of London- and Berlin-based start-up Elvie, argued that's about to change. "We are witnessing three big trends," she told the room. "The big feminist surge, the tech revolution in connected devices and the paradigm shift towards individuals taking charge of their own health."

The evolution of artificial intelligence has sparked debate on every aspect of humanity's future. Today, for instance, the Prime Minister is arguing in a speech that we should use genetic information to create programmes that can diagnose illnesses early on. But so far there are very few practical solutions on how to prepare our children for life in an era of advanced robotics. So will the classroom of the future have a machine teaching children their times tables, instructing them in foreign languages? I was recently a consultant on a new Automation Readiness Index with the Economist Intelligence Unit, which found that there is much still to do in the UK -- and globally, too.