For the 2017 year-to-date, Israeli AI startups have raised $837 million, which is already larger than the total period for 2016, and represents a fifteen-fold increase in the last five years.

How will robocars fare in a disaster, like Harvey in Houston, Irma, or the tsunamis in Japan or Indonesia, or a big Earthquake, or a fire, or 9/11, or a war? These are very complex questions, and certainly most teams developing cars have not spent a lot of time on solutions to them at present. Indeed, I expect that these will not be solved issues until after the first significant pilot projects are deployed, because as long as robocars are a small fraction of the car population, they will not have that much effect on how things go. Some people who have given up car ownership for robocars -- not that many in the early days -- will possibly find themselves hunting for transportation the way other people who don't own cars do today. It's a different story when, perhaps a decade from now, we get significant numbers of people who don't own cars and rely on robocar transportation. That means people who don't have any cars, not the larger number of people who have dropped from 2 cars to 1 thanks to robocar services.

Do your feet smell bad? If you don't dare to ask a friend, one Japanese startup might have the answer with a new robot dog that will sniff your feet and give you a pitilessly honest verdict -- even fainting if the stink is especially strong. Malodorous feet can be socially awkward in Japan where shoes are removed at the entrance to every home. Hana-chan -- a play on hana (nose) and a common girl's nickname -- is a helpful little robot mutt that will bark if she detects moderately stinky toes, but will keel over if they are particularly pungent. The 15-cm robot, equipped with an odor detection sensor for a nose, also sprays air freshener to resolve the situation if the aroma is unbearable. Manufacturers Next Technology created the robot in response to a request from a man who was desperate to know if he had a problem.

Oil prices have fallen dramatically over last few years, forcing some major oil companies to take drastic actions such as layoffs, cutting investments and budgets, and more. In view of falling oil prices and the resulting squeeze on cash flows, the oil and gas industry has been challenged to adapt and optimize its performance to remain profitable while maintaining a long-term investment and operating outlook. Currently, oil and gas companies find it difficult to maintain the same level of investment in exploration and production as when crude prices were at their peak. Operations in the oil and gas industry today means balancing a dizzying array of trade-offs in the drive for competitive advantage while maximizing return on investment. The result is a dire need to optimize performance and optimize the cost of production per barrel.

We are living in an era where artificial intelligence (A.I.) will play a significant role in our path forward. Entrepreneur Elon Musk warns that A.I. robots should not be turned into war machines. While Russian president Vladimir Putin recently said the nation that leads in A.I. will be "the ruler of the world." So where does that leave us when it comes to working with robots in the business world? As it turns out A.I. and bots and machine learning are the buzz words of the industry and it would be safe to say pretty much every startup going forward will leverage A.I. or machine learning to build their products of the future.

For many Russian students, the academic year started last Friday with tips on planetary domination from President Vladimir Putin. "Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind," he said, via live video beamed to 16,000 selected schools. "Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world." Putin's advice is the latest sign of an intensifying race among Russia, China, and the US to accumulate military power based on artificial intelligence. All three countries have proclaimed intelligent machines as vital to the future of their national security.

SoftBank Group Corp. is getting ready to return to the overseas debt market for the second time in two months, after issuing $4.5 billion in subordinated notes in July. The Tokyo-based company headed by billionaire founder Masayoshi Son is accelerating deal-making around the world, and has been in discussions to combine its U.S. wireless operator Sprint Corp. with a potential partner. The SoftBank Vision Fund has also kicked off investments, with deals ranging from ride-sharing, co-working and robotics to agriculture, cancer detection and autonomous driving. SoftBank will hold investor calls on Sept. 8 for potential U.S. dollar, euro note sales, according to a person familiar with this offering, who is not authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be identified. The Japanese internet giant has mandated Deutsche Bank AG, Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley for the deal.

As we head deeper into the 21st century, the prospect of getting robots to do the dirty business of killing gets closer with each passing day. In Max Tegmark's new book, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, the MIT physicist and founder of the Future of Life Institute contemplates this seemingly scifi possibility, weighing the potential benefits of autonomous machines in warfare with the tremendous risks. The ultimate challenge, he says, will be convincing world powers to pass on this game-changing technology. AI has the potential to transform virtually every aspect of our existence, but it's not immediately clear if we be able to fully control this awesome power. Radical advances in AI could conceivably result in a utopian paradise, or a techno-hell worthy of a James Cameron movie script.

The central Chinese government's efforts to build an " intelligent economy " and "intelligent society" by 2030 in China with an aim to build Rmb10 trillion relevant industries will propel the country's GDP growth over the coming two decades, notes Goldman Sachs. In their Aug. 31 research piece titled "China's Rise in Artificial Intelligence," Piyush Mubayi and colleagues dove deep into China's ambitious plans, the factors that make China unique, and the companies that are aiding faster growth. Get the entire 10-part series on Charlie Munger in PDF. Save it to your desktop, read it on your tablet, or email to your colleagues. Mubayi and team traced China's emergence as a global contender in using AI to propel its economic progress.

With an increase in the number of FinTech startups, banks are now trying to collaborate with them, thereby leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, to serve their customers better. Also, with small finance banks and payments banks coming in, banks want to get the most of the newer technology. Yes Bank has embarked on a journey to setup a world-class SMAC (Social-Mobile-Analytics and Cloud) support system, as it believes that this will play a key role in enhancing the overall customer delivery and service process. Yes Bank Chief Digital Officer Ritesh Pai says, "Over the last two years, our dedicated teams have extensively worked to set up a mobility platform, CRM system and also an analytics platform, which is tightly integrated with various internal and external data sources including unstructured data from various web and social sources which is often referred to as Big Data," he adds. The bank recently launched the Yes Fin-tech accelerator.