This article was written by Saurav Kaushik. Saurav is a Data Science enthusiast, currently in the final year of his graduation at MAIT, New Delhi. He loves to use machine learning and analytics to solve complex data problems. Have you come across a situation when a Chief Marketing Officer of a company tells you – "Help me understand our customers better so that we can market our products to them in a better manner!" I did and the analyst in me was completely clueless what to do!

From online services like Netflix and Facebook, to chatbots on our phones and in our homes like Siri and Alexa, we are beginning to interact with artificial intelligence (AI) on a near daily basis. AI is the programming or training of a computer to do tasks typically reserved for human intelligence, whether it is recommending which movie to watch next or answering technical questions. From small cities in the US to countries like Japan, government agencies are looking to AI to improve citizen services. While the potential future use cases of AI in government remain bounded by government resources and the limits of both human creativity and trust in government, the most obvious and immediately beneficial opportunities are those where AI can reduce administrative burdens, help resolve resource allocation problems, and take on significantly complex tasks. For many systemic reasons, government has much room from improvement when it comes to technological advancement, and AI will not solve those problems.

HANOI – A researcher in Vietnam has demonstrated how he apparently fooled Apple Inc.'s face recognition ID software on its new iPhone X using a mask made with a 3D printer, silicone and paper tape. An announcement on Friday by Bkav, a Vietnamese cybersecurity firm, that it had cracked Apple's Face ID, and a subsequent video apparently showing an iPhone being unlocked when pointed at a mask, were greeted with some skepticism. Ngo Tuan Anh, Bkav's vice president, gave Reuters several demonstrations, first unlocking the phone with his face and then by using the mask. It appeared to work each time. However, he declined to register a user ID and the mask on the phone from scratch because, he said, the iPhone and mask need to be placed at very specific angles, and the mask to be refined, a process he said could take up to nine hours.

On the third floor of a shopping mall in the heart of Shanghai last week, Xiaolan He, a woman in her 50s, took an olive-green down jacket to a fitting room. To her surprise, she found a screen about the size of a large poster on the wall. It recognized the item of clothing in her hands through a tiny sensor embedded in the garment, and showed several options for matching items that she could flip through like a photo album. The screen, and the system that powers it, make up FashionAI--which essentially became He's personal stylist. FashionAI received its first big wave of customers on Saturday during Singles' Day, a Chinese shopping festival started by Alibaba in 2009 and held on November 11 each year.

Reports at the time said the move came following a complaint that one of the drones, armed with explosives, landed near a military post in neighboring Armenia during a demonstration. The "suicide" or Kamikaze drones carry explosives and are designed to dive into their targets.

While we prepare for The Engadget Experience today in Los Angeles, you can take a look back Monday's biggest stories, including yet another terrifying robot from the good folks at Boston Dynamics. No PC or base station required.HTC Vive Focus is a standalone VR headset with'world-scale' tracking After a couple of teases earlier this year, HTC has finally unveiled its upcoming standalone VR headset at today's Vive Developer Conference in Beijing. Dubbed the Vive Focus, this all-in-one device features inside-out 6-degree-of-freedom (6DoF) "world-scale" tracking, meaning it doesn't require external base stations nor sensors, so you can get positional tracking anywhere at any time -- even on a train or plane, should you wish to. It's official.Amazon is making a'Lord of the Rings' TV series Here's what we know so far: Amazon's series "will explore new storylines preceding J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring," and there's a possibility of a spinoff in the future. Now that Boston Dynamics has moved from Google/Alphabet ownership to Softbank, it apparently plans to keep the funky robot concepts coming.

JERUSALEM – Israeli police have opened an investigation into an Israeli drone company regarding its dealings with a "significant client." Police did not elaborate in their statement about Yavne-based Aeronautics Ltd on Tuesday and said a gag order had been imposed on the case. Earlier this year, the Defense Ministry suspended some of Aeronautics Ltd's export licenses to one of its clients abroad. Israeli media identified the client as Azerbaijan. Reports at the time said the move came following a complaint that one of the drones, armed with explosives, landed near a military post in neighboring Armenia during a demonstration.

It seems businesses these days are pinning their hopes on artificial intelligence to finally make bank from big data -- and this hasn't escaped the notice of software vendors. They're stamping AI on new products with such repetitive thuds, one can easily guess the puff inside the packaging. Knowing what AI can and can't do could help companies shop wisely for technology that delivers on its promise. "Cognitive organizations are not going to happen tomorrow morning," said Tripp Braden (pictured, third from left), executive coach and growth strategist at Strategic Performance Partners. A cognitive business would be fully data and AI-driven across all departments; even companies on the cutting edge are several years out from becoming one, he added.

AI (artificial intelligence) will not confront human beings but serve as tools at their disopal, as human brain will remain the most powerful, although some say AI machines may be able to talk with people and judge their emotions in 2045 at the earliest, according to Aja Huang, one of the key developers behind AlphaGo, an AI program developed by Google's DeepMind unit. Huang made the comments when delivering a speech at the 2017 Taiwan AI Conference hosted recently by the Institute of Information Science under Academia Sinica and Taiwan Data Science Foundation. Huang recalled that he was invited to join London-based Deep Mind Technologies in late 2012, two years after he won the gold medal at the 15th Computer Olympiad in Kanazawa in 2010. In February 2014, DeepMind was acquired by Google, allowing the AI team to enjoy sufficient advanced hardware resources such as power TPU (tensor processing unit) and enabling them to work out the world's most powerful AI program AlphaGo, which has stunned the world by beating global top Go players. In March, 2016, AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol, a South Korean professional Go player in a five-game match, marking the first time a computer Go program has beaten a 9-dan professional without handicaps.

A short film made by campaigners and scientists shows tiny drones hunting and killing with ruthless precision and without human guidance. The movie, released by the campaign group Stop Autonomous Weapons, highlights the perils of autonomous weapons falling into the wrong hands. It shows students in a school classroom being attacked by drones, armed with explosives. The drones identified and neutralized targets and did not need any instructions during the mission. This gruesome reminder of the destructive potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-integrated weapons displays autonomous drones that can find, follow and fire at targets independently.