Ray Kurzweil has invented a few things in his time. In his teens, he built a computer that composed classical music, which won him an audience with President Lyndon B. Johnson. In his 20s, he pioneered software that could digitize printed text, and in his 30s he cofounded a synthesizer company with Stevie Wonder. More recently, he's known for popularizing the idea of the singularity--a moment sometime in the future when superintelligent machines transform humanity--and making optimistic predictions about immortality. For now, though, Kurzweil, 69, leads a team of about 35 people at Google whose code helps you write emails.

The billionaire says his artificial intelligence research startup OpenAI has developed the first bot to beat a professional esports gamer. Musk used the news to send out a warning about AI safety, saying the industry should be regulated and is more of a threat than North Korea.

The evolution of global industries to Industry 4.0 (Rev 4.0) is both exciting and scary. Industry 4.0 is the designated code name for a combination of traditional manufacturing practices and industrial processes with technological capabilities, from automation to AI. Whilst there are many benefits of Industry 4.0, there are several key challenges that lie ahead. Having everything attached to everything else in the Internet of things (IoT) is going to monumentally increase the vulnerabilities present in any given network. With more nodes, connections and burden of connectivity, systems are going to have to be more secure. Rev 4.0 will usher in more calls for greater cybersecurity.

Artificial intelligence means many different things to many different people. One thing that is certain is that it is coming and with it, it brings both opportunities and threats. Understanding both is essential, because already, artificial intelligence is working its way into many aspects of our lives, from search engines and personal assistants, to algorithms monitoring and controlling everything from energy consumption to traffic. Simply put, artificial intelligence is a computer capable of exhibiting intelligence. This is done through processes such as learning and problem solving.

"If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea," Musk tweeted after his $1 billion startup, OpenAI, made a surprise appearance at a $24 million video game tournament Friday night, beating the world's best players in the video game, "Dota 2." Musk claimed OpenAI's bot was the first to beat the world's best players in competitive eSports, but quickly warned that increasingly powerful artificial intelligence like OpenAI's bot -- which learned by playing a "thousand lifetimes" of matches against itself -- would eventually need to be reined in for our own safety. "Nobody likes being regulated, but everything (cars, planes, food, drugs, etc) that's a danger to the public is regulated. AI should be too," Musk said in another tweet on Friday night. Musk has previously expressed a healthy mistrust of artificial intelligence.

Saw this story after it was tweeted by Puni Rajah – Bosch to invest 300m euros in AI, employ 100 experts from India, USA, Germany. As ever India has done great job building its native skills base. But the fact Bosch needs to look outside Germany is telling. We're seeing a lot of pressure owing to skills shortages, and companies, countries and cities everywhere are going to need to up their game to avoid brain drain. Silicon Valley is still the main place data scientists, in particular machine learning and AI specialists, are ending up. Pierre Etienne Bardin of Société Générale expressed the need to be more active in hiring and training succinctly in a recent post on data transformation as the new digital transformation.

WILL the dawn of the era of artificial intelligence (AI), herald a timely demise of the customer complaints department? While perhaps a tad optimistic, service providers know that when it comes to AI, its potential is too huge to be measured. And despite all the hype and discussion around its benefits, there remains much confusion about how to make AI really work for both service providers and their customers. So what exactly is AI, and what makes it so important that service providers should start acting now to make it an integral part of their long-term strategy? According to Gartner's IT Glossary, AI is technology that appears to emulate human performance – typically by learning, coming to its own conclusions, appearing to understand complex content, engaging in natural dialog with people, and enhancing human cognitive performance.

On the heels of several recent high-profile customer service debacles in the airline industry, it's clear that how you treat your customers can make or break your company and its reputation. From legacy giants to the booming on-demand economy, fast and intelligent customer service has never been more crucial. And with new developments in technology, including buzzwords like cognitive computing, machine learning, and VR, merging human interaction with AI is seeming to be more and more likely the solution for managing customers needs. Using AI to manage customer service is a trend that we will increasingly see more of. However, that's not to be confused with completely replacing human interaction when it comes to customer service.

August 12, 2017 Wishful Thinking Artificial intelligence means many different things to many different people. One thing that is certain is that it is coming and with it, it brings both opportunities and threats. Understanding both is essential, because already, artificial intelligence is working its way into many aspects of our lives, from search engines and personal assistants, to algorithms monitoring and controlling everything from energy consumption to traffic. Simply put, artificial intelligence is a computer capable of exhibiting intelligence. This is done through processes such as learning and problem solving.

Elon Musk, hellbent on progressing the technological feats of humankind including artificial intelligence, would like you to know that artificial intelligence poses a greater threat to your fragile existence than threat-of-the-week North Korea. Elon Musk, a man who told a gathering of governors that "AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization" last month, is tweeting through the constant news of Donald Trump throwing Guam under the bus and egging on a nuclear power by comforting us with the threat of an evil artificial intelligence. Why do American political and business leaders seem to be practically begging North Korea to deep fry our asses on Twitter? Remember when Twitter was just bad joke punchlines and awkward "I meant to type that into the search bar, woops" scenarios? That was sort of fun.