Artificial Intelligence (AI) could add $957 billion to the Indian economy by changing the nature of work to create better outcomes for businesses and society, a new Accenture report said on Thursday. AI has the potential to increase India's annual growth rate of gross value added (GVA) by 1.3 percentage points, lifting the country's income by 15 percent in 2035, said the report titled "'Rewire for Growth". "The time to act is now. With the right investments, AI can create a flywheel effect'liberating' people to create long term economic and societal value," said Rekha M Menon, Senior Managing Director and Chairman, Accenture India. For AI to realise its full potential, India needs to develop a long-term vision and action plan that unites the ecosystem, and addresses technical and ethical questions as they arise.

NEW DELHI: This morning, the news was about Flipkart focussing on artificial intelligence (AI) to grow business - a trend being observed across trade and commerce. On Thursday, IT company Accenture released a report, titled'Rewire for Growth', which said AI has the potential to add $957 billion (Rs 62,29,113 crore) to India's GDP by changing the nature of work to create better outcomes for businesses and society. AI has the potential to increase India's annual growth rate of gross value added (GVA) by 1.3 percentage points, lifting the country's income by 15 per cent in 2035, said the report. Either for its awe-inspiring technical undertone or simply novelty, the concept of artificial intelligence had not gained much acceptance. Also, it is widely being viewed as a major threat to jobs, especially those of first and mid-level techies.

It's better late than never for Facebook, who is now in the process of developing its own smart speaker. Mark Zuckerberg's social networking company is believed to be taking cues from Amazon's Echo Show for its upcoming hardware. On Thursday, industry sources disclosed to DigiTimes that Facebook's new hardware team, called Building 8, is the one in charge of the development of the company's smart speaker. The device that is currently in the works reportedly features a touchscreen. While the inclusion of a display fuels speculations that it could be an Amazon Echo Show copy, fans can rest assured that Facebook's hardware would be very different.

There was more discussion than ever in 2017 about robots entering the workforce. Next year will see even more dialogue around this topic, as robotics and AI become more commonplace and at accelerated rates due to machine learning advancements. They are already a part of everyday life in countries like Japan, where humanoid robots are in homes, aiding in healthcare facilities and taking orders at sushi restaurants. But it will take more than just a cute robot to create acceptance. Culturally, robotics adoption has a long way to go in the U.S. to become part of our daily routines, but we're getting closer each day.

Apple's first batch of iMac Pro shipments won't make it on Christmas day, but the devices will surely arrive to customers days before New Year's Day. There's now information on the estimated arrival date of the new macOS computers, and it looks like the devices will reach their destinations late next week. On Thursday, Apple Insider reported that it's now only a matter of days until consumers get their hands on their preordered iMac Pro devices. For the U.S., the first shipments are expected to arrive on Dec. 27, Wednesday. On the other hand, the estimated date of arrival of the shipments in China is on Dec. 28, Thursday.

Ever since Google pulled some of its core businesses out of the Chinese soil, the internet ecosystem in China has expanded. Having produced some of the biggest tech companies including Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba, China has consolidated its position as one of the leading technology centers in the world with a strong R&D community and vibrant talent pool. China has been a front-runner in AI technologies, largely due to the lavish support from the government. Couple with a growing AI talent pool makes it an irresistible prospect to some of the biggest names in the tech industry including Microsoft, IBM and other Western giants who are busy hiring Chinese staff members in a field with a wide variety of potential applications. Quite understandably, Google wants a part of it too.

As described in our recent announcement about AI pioneer Randy Goebel joining the ROSS team as an advisor, Goebel is a professor in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta, a founder and researcher with the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (AMII) and is involved with the development of the University of Alberta Google DeepMind relationship, the group behind AlphaGo. Goebel's theoretical work on abduction, hypothetical reasoning and belief revision is internationally acclaimed and his recent application of practical belief revision and constraint programming to scheduling, layout, and web mining has had widespread impact across multiple industry verticals. More recently, Goebel has been working on the application of machine learning to visual explanation and natural language processing, with focus on legal reasoning. He has previously held faculty appointments at the University of Waterloo and the University of Tokyo, and is actively involved in academic and industrial collaborative research projects in Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Europe and Japan. Goebel is on the advisory boards of the German Research Centre for AI, the Japan Science and Technology Organization and the Japanese National Institute for Informatics.

Engineers in Japan have turned to human body for inspiration for a pair of robots capable of performing a range of incredibly life-like movements. Instead of seeking perfection, experts recreated the intricacies of the skeleton and its surrounding tissue, with all the imperfections that entails. The result is machines that sweats while doing push ups, playing badminton and other complicated motions in a less mechanical manner than most automatons. Engineers in Japan have turned to human body for inspiration for a new robot capable of performing a range of lifelike movements. This is not the first time that the University of Tokyo lab's work has hit the headlines, with Kengoro making the news last year for its ability to sweat.

Apple has been accused of being'racist' after a Chinese boy realised he could unlock his mum's iPhone X using the facial recognition software. A husband bought his wife the new smartphone, but she was then shocked to discover it could be unlocked by the couple's son. It seems the family, who live in the city of Shanghai are not the only Chinese users who have been able to open each other's phones. Increasingly iPhone users in China - a country of more than a billion people - are concerned about their iPhone X's security and privacy features. Apple has been accused of being'racist' after a Chinese boy (right) realised he could unlock his mum's iPhone X using the facial recognition software Face ID uses a TrueDepth front-facing camera on the iPhone X, which has multiple components.

For all the hype about killer robots, 2017 saw some notable strides in artificial intelligence. A bot called Libratus out-bluffed poker kingpins, for example. Out in the real world, machine learning is being put to use improving farming and widening access to healthcare. But have you talked to Siri or Alexa recently? Then you'll know that despite the hype, and worried billionaires, there are many things that artificial intelligence still can't do or understand.