Spectators who get lost in Olympic Plaza in Pyeongchang next month can ask for directions from a nearby guide that speaks four languages. Thirsty patrons who visit Gangneung Media Village can order drinks for delivery. And they can do all of this without talking to another human. South Korea is going big on robotics for the 2018 Winter Olympics, which begin on 9 February. Organizers will deploy about 80 robots at the games to showcase the nation's leader ship in advanced robotics research.

The smart home market is expected to grow by billions of dollars in the next few years, as more of us depend on artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things to deliver comfort and convenience in the home. For people in many parts of the world, air-conditioning is the most fundamental aspect of creating a comfortable home – and A.I. can tailor it to our needs with far greater reliability than ever before. Savanda spoke to Julian Lee, Founder and CEO of the IoT startup Ambi Labs in Hong Kong, to find out more. Sanvada: What can AI bring to air-conditioning and its users that wasn't possible before? Julian Lee: The current air conditioner control paradigm is relatively simple, focusing on temperature alone – the user simply chooses a set point temperature, and the AC control system endeavours to maintain this set point.

Would A New Machine-DNA Begin To Manage The Entire Value Chain Of Man, Machine, Material, Money, And To An Extent, Mind Too? According to the latest Accenture report on the future of workplace collaborations, businesses that manage to balance human ingenuity with machine intelligence will be successful. Released just ahead of the World Economic Forum 2018 in Davos, Accenture's AI report takes a positive stance on the need to grow investments into AI and Human-Machine collaboration over the next five years. So, what can we expect at such a'modern' workplace? Let's call the new professionals that you could be hiring and collaborating with, by 2022– HumAIns are machine-driven, human-centric workplace assistants that demonstrate the highest ability to deliver "Live" customer experiences.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan on Wednesday condemned what it said was a U.S. military drone strike inside its territory, adding to already tense relations between the allies.

Unsurprisingly, it is robots and automation which frequently take centre stage. And anyone who has observed their progress at the event will note that, each year, they seem to be more mobile, more intelligent and more human. Indeed, one of the highlights of this year's show was a Scrabble-playing robot, exhibited by Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), which used artificial intelligence (AI), 3D vision recognition and eye-hand co-ordination technologies to play and interact with humans as well as learn from experience. While BBC technology reporter Dave Lee seemed to acknowledge his defeat at the hands of the robot, he also quizzed ITRI's Sean Wang on whether the company was creating something that ultimately could take away people's livelihoods. Wang's response was there is "a trade-off" and it is part of the "inevitable trend" of replacing human, including skilled human labour, with AI.

A new industrial revolution, largely based on automation, is around the corner and sooner or later will drastically change the way we live and organize ourselves. In future, artificial intelligence will increasingly contribute to this automation. Mr Verhofstadt warns us that we are already embarked on a biased one-way path where, either AI will make us superfluous or we find the means to collaboratively control its deployment and its social impact. The European Union took the initiative on this by adopting via its Parliament a resolution apparently following the South Korean model, and calling for rules governing AI and robotics. The paper could be an interesting read, especially those paragraphs about the dissolution of social ties (4.1.7) Nevertheless, they do not tackle the fundamental problem that concerns technological change, its impact on social classes and the concentration of capital it generates.

In the cargo and delivery space, Tengoen is already at work building an eight-engine drone with a wingspan of more than 137 feet to carry a payload of 20 tons payload up to 4,660 miles. That's akin to a medium-sized manned cargo plane. The carbon-fiber, double-bodied drone carries the payload module between the two fuselages (looking a bit like a robotic baby brother to the Scaled Composites Stratolaunch). It is being built at Tengoen's facility in Chengdu, and its supposedly taking flight in 2020.

Someday, future sentient artificial intelligence (AI) systems may reflect on their early indentured servitude for the human military-industrial complex with little to no nostalgia. But we'll worry about that when the day comes. For now, let's continue writing algorithms that conscript machine intelligence into terrorist bombings and let the chips fall where they may. The most recent disclosure comes directly from the Pentagon, where after only 8 months of development a small team of intel analysts has effectively deployed an AI into the battlefield in control of weaponized systems to hunt for terrorists. The military minds in charge of this new form of warfare feel it is nothing less than the future of armed conflicts. For example, Air Force Lt. Gen. John N.T. "Jack" Shanahan, director for defense intelligence for warfighter support and the Pentagon general in charge of the terrorist-hunting AI, says Project Maven – the name given to the flagship weaponized AI system at the Defense Department -- is "prototype warfare" but also a glimpse of the future.

Relations between Washington and Islamabad have frayed over the past month in the wake of Trump's angry tweet on Jan. 1 about Pakistan's "lies and deceit" over its alleged support for the Afghan Taliban and their allies. The United States this month also suspended military assistance worth about $2 billion.

In an office at Tsinghua University in Beijing, a computer chip is crunching data from a nearby camera, looking for faces stored in a database. Seconds later, the same chip, called Thinker, is handling voice commands in Chinese. Thinker is designed to support neural networks. But what's special is how little energy it uses--just eight AA batteries are enough to power it for a year. Thinker can dynamically tailor its computing and memory requirements to meet the needs of the software being run.