Artificial Intelligence (AI) has flown beneath the radar for the first six decades of its development, and just recently it's exploded into public consciousness, according to Neil Jacobstein. The AI & Robotics co-chair at Singularity University and former CEO of Teknowledge Corporation believes the combination of humans, AI, and good business processes is disrupting the very ground we stand on in financial technology (Fintech) and beyond as we already use machine learning tools to augment the power of the human brain. At Singularity University's Exponential Finance conference today, Jacobstein pointed to examples like Google's AlphaGo wiping the floor with world champion Lee Sedol, and how quickly the world shifted from a state of shock to seizing the scientific opportunity. Soon after seeing its human champion so thoroughly beaten by a machine, South Korea announced a plan to spend $840 million by 2020 to boost AI research and development (R&D), and to create a research institute where six of the country's highest profile tech companies--Samsung, LG, SK Telecom SKT, KT, Naver, and Hyundai--will each invest up to $3 billion in AI R&D. He also mentioned Facebook's DeepText AI language comprehension and categorization, as well as Viv, saying that calling it another personal assistant misses the point.

Artificial intelligence will change our world for the better, and this is something most countries have come to realize. However, China seems to be taking it much seriously as the country wants to implement AI in up to half of all new cars by the year 2020. Now, we've long heard of tech companies wanting self-driving cars to talk to each other over the Internet, and that's something the Chinese are aiming to accomplish as well. The idea is to have up to 90 percent of all highways and big cities be covered by wireless internet coverage because it's important for cars to discuss our demise. The goal is set by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), and the entire thing is part of a draft for China's national smart car strategy. Overall, this is part of the country's desire to become the next powerhouse in science and technology, and AI is key to achieving success in this area.

Microsoft researchers have created a technology that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to read a document and answer questions about it about as well as a human. "It's a major milestone in the push to have search engines such as Bing and intelligent assistants such as Cortana interact with people and provide information in more natural ways, much like people communicate with each other," Allison Linn, senior writer at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. The team at Microsoft Research Asia reached the human parity milestone using the "Stanford Question Answering Dataset", known among researchers as "SQuAD". It's a machine reading comprehension dataset that is made up of questions about a set of Wikipedia articles. According to the SQuAD leaderboard, Microsoft submitted a model that reached the score of 82.650 on the exact match portion.

A lot of modern-day technology and applications rely on artificial intelligence and even then, it is probably just the beginning. A survey conducted by Deloitte in 16 developed markets (not including India), reveals that 65 percent of smartphone users have used an application featuring machine learning in the past. Most of them are personalised features assisting us in day to day life like predictive texts, route suggestions, voice to text, etc. Unsurprisingly, the most common AI tool that smartphone owners have experienced is predictive texts. At least half the respondents included in the survey affirmed their awareness of the tool and more than one-third of them claimed to have used it despite its notoriety for botching up messages. Route suggestions while using online maps such as Here maps or Google Maps is the second-most familiar AI tool that people have experienced.

Bike sharing has a lot going for it. It's mass transit that's ultra-cheap, burns body fat instead of fossil fuels and is adored by venture capitalists. But the business model has hit a major snag: parking. Stringent laws against sidewalk clutter -- and cultural sensibilities that are easily offended -- make the problem more acute in Japanese cities than in places like Munich or Melbourne, where bicycles are piling up outside subway stations or turning up under bridges, sometimes to the dismay of neighbors and city officials. Bike sharing took China by storm in 2016, quickly becoming a novel tech export, and is now facing a backlash even in environmentally friendly places where you'd expect it to be embraced.

When computer models designed by tech giants Alibaba and Microsoft this month surpassed humans for the first time in a reading-comprehension test, both companies celebrated the success as a historic milestone. Luo Si, the chief scientist for natural-language processing at Alibaba's AI research unit, struck a poetic note, saying, "Objective questions such as'what causes rain' can now be answered with high accuracy by machines." Teaching a computer to read has for decades been one of artificial intelligence's holiest grails, and the feat seemed to signal a coming future in which AI could understand words and process meaning with the same fluidity humans take for granted every day. But computers aren't there yet -- and aren't even really that close, said AI experts who reviewed the test results. Instead, the accomplishment highlights not just how far the technology has progressed, but also how far it still has to go. "It's a large step" for the companies' marketing "but a small step for humankind," said Oren Etzioni, chief executive of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, an AI research group funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

Brace yourself, Artificial Intelligence is becoming more powerful by the minute. According to a study by researchers from Japan, Artificial Intelligence is one step closer to mind reading machines illustrated in popular science fiction films. Scientists have recently created a set of'deep learning' algorithm, modeled on the human brain which can, eventually, be used to decipher the human brain. Japanese scientists have developed an algorithm that can read human thoughts with a disturbing accuracy, according to details from a recently published study available on bioRxiv. Other than the fact that we'll soon have AI running around reading your mind (joking), is that it isn't the first time its been done.

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As if 2017 wasn't the year that confirmed anything could be hooked up to the net, CES – traditionally the season opener for the year in tech – went into IoT overload with a bunch of gadgets that pushed the connected envelope. The show, which drew 3,900 exhibitors across 2.75 million square feet (that's a record by the way), could barely have been packed with more exciting consumer products that showed how much smaller our world is getting. Among them Lenovo wowed with a new Smart Display device, Sony's new Aibo robotic dog revisited its breakneck nineties heyday, and Israeli firm Lishtot burst into the public eye with its plectrum-shaped water tester. As expected transport garnered a significant number of headlines. Just about every major automaker signaled its intention to get driverless cars onto the streets as soon as possible (but not yet), while tech companies like Aurora and Voyage impressed with high-tech bells and whistles that will speed up the process.

The world's top 32 drone pilots will compete Saturday in Las Vegas for the world champion title in the International Drone Racing Assn.'s top challenge. Semi-professionals wearing virtual reality headgear compete for a $50,000 cash prize in the Challengers Cup Final on Friday and Saturday at the South Point hotel-casino at 9777 S. Las Vegas Blvd. Competitors qualified during 2017 races that began in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and concluded in Manila, the Philippines. Visitors can buy tickets to watch for $20. You'll be admitted to Friday's practice runs and the competition on Saturday afternoon. The elimination round will get underway at 12:30 p.m. with the finals set for 3:20 p.m. Saturday.