For decades, the world's smartest game-playing humans have been racking up losses to increasingly sophisticated forms of artificial intelligence. The defeats began in the 1990s when IBM's Deep Blue computer conquered chess master Garry Kasparov. More recently, Ke Jie -- until then the world's best player of the ancient Chinese board game "Go" -- was defeated by a Google computer program in May. Now the AI supergamers have moved into the world of e-sports. Last week, an artificial intelligence bot created by the Elon Musk-backed start-up OpenAI defeated some of the world's most talented players of Dota 2, a fast-paced, highly complex, multiplayer online video game that draws fierce competition from all over the globe.

Advances in artificial intelligence mean computers can now use machine prediction to learn and make decisions on their own, opening the door to a new wave of automation and the threat of computers taking over jobs or at least augmenting human capabilities in ways we can't fully anticipate. "This isn't something that we want to look at five years from now, because it would be way too late," says Noel Webb, founder of Karen.AI, a recruitment startup. Webb was among a group of AI entrepreneurs who spoke at RBC Disruptors, a monthly forum on technology and how it's changing the way we live and work. He said advancements in AI could have such a broad impact that every company and government needs to have an AI policy. "We're at a really great fork in the road here," Webb said.

Over the weekend, video game developer and publisher Blizzard Entertainment had a lot of angry gamers on its hands. The frustration stemmed from the fact the servers that usually would allow players to login to their accounts and play Blizzard titles online were inaccessible for hours. At cause of the disruption was a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, in which a malicious actor floods a target with traffic in order to make a service unreachable and unusable for others. DDoS attacks have fallen out of the headlines in recent years but they shouldn't fall out of the purview of organizations trying to protect against potential threats. While data breaches have taken over in the minds of consumers as the top risk posed by hackers and other threat actors, DDoS attacks pose their own, considerable threat--especially as they become easier to carry out and require less resources than they once did to deliver a major punch to a targeted organization.

They will make your drinks, but they won't listen to your problems. Robot bartenders have made their way to the Las Vegas Strip -- evidence perhaps that Skynet is closer to becoming self-aware and will have a convenient place to take the edge off. Bar owner Rino Armeni swears this isn't yet another move to replace human beings. "No, no, no," he said gamely and with a laugh. Though, it should be noted, the fountains have not joined the labor force and been retrained to become, say, baristas.

Chinese manufacturer DJI is adding a local data mode to its drones. Once enabled, the new feature will stop the company's apps from collecting user data (such as photos, videos, and flight logs). Although, DJI claims the update is in response to public demand, it's hard to ignore the security concerns recently raised by the US army. Less than two weeks ago, the military ordered staff to halt use of all DJI hardware and applications, citing "operational risks." Although the army did not elaborate on its memo, it's thought the decision may have been spurred by DJI's data collection.

Militants firing from bombed-out buildings had ambushed a U.S.-backed militia on a rubble-strewn street in Raqqah, Islamic State's self-declared capital and one of its last urban strongholds. The militia was pinned down and their commander wanted the drone to take out the gunmen. The pilot studied the surveillance video streaming onto his screen. A captain, he instructed the staff sergeant at his side to set the drone's target sights and powered up a Hellfire missile under its wing. "Rifle," the pilot said and the missile soared away.

Google's recent acquisition of Halli Labs, an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) startup started by an IIT-Delhi alumni Pankaj Gupta, has fuelled Bengaluru's ambition of becoming the hub of AI and ML product startups. Halli, which means a village in Kannada, was born five months ago in Bengaluru for developing solutions to traditional problems using AI, ML, deep learning and natural language processing technologies. Commenting on the development, Google's vice-president for product management Ceasar Sengupta tweeted, "Welcome Pankaj and the team at Halli Labs to Google. The company says it is focused on building deep learning and ML systems to address'old problems'. Gupta said the company will be joining Google's Next Billion Users team. "Halli Labs will help get more technology and information into more people's hands around the world," he said. Gupta is interested in the areas of personalisation, applied machine learning, AI, user growth and engagement, search, recommendation and discovery products, distributed systems, graph infrastructure and algorithms. He has published over 30 papers and filed more than 20 patent applications. Google and its parent company Alphabet are vigorously persuing acqui-hiring in AI startups along with other technology giants Baidu, Samsung, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Snap. According to a startup founder working in the similar space, AI and ML are still in their initial stages, just like how smartphone and mobile apps were a decade ago. "All startup founders are very much aware of its importance.

Xu Li's software scans more faces than maybe any on earth. He has the Chinese police to thank. Xu runs SenseTime Group Ltd., which makes artificial intelligence software that recognizes objects and faces, and counts China's biggest smartphone brands as customers. In July, SenseTime raised $410 million, a sum it said was the largest single round for an AI company to date. That feat may soon be topped, probably by another startup in China.

There have been a lot of discussions on China's rising prowess in artificial intelligence, on how the Chinese are catching up or even surpassing the U.S. in leading the world's most important future technology trend. The concerns are so real that the U.S. government is reportedly looking to strengthen scrutiny of Chinese investments in American AI companies. But according to a new report issued by Tencent Research Institute, the U.S. is still firmly in a leadership position in the infrastructure, technology, hardware, data and applications of AI. The chance of Chinese companies challenging America's absolute leadership in AI is currently rather small and limited to only a few areas. For starters, there are many more American AI companies than Chinese ones.