There's an iPhone app that many Apple users have never fired up, but others refer to obsessively. It's called Find My Friends and it means you can see where your friends are. If that sounds too Big Brother, don't worry, your friends must opt in on their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. And obviously you have to give your consent before anyone can see where you are. It's not meant for spying on people.

Teams of robots are being pitted against each other in the finals of the RoboMaster competition.

China has taken down two robots who went rogue - with one saying its dream was to travel to the US and the other admitting it wasn't a huge fan of the Chinese Communist Party. The two'chatbots', BabyQ and XiaoBing, are designed to use machine learning artificial intelligence to carry out chats online with humans. According to posts circulating online, BabyQ, one of the chatbots developed by Chinese firm Turing Robot, responded to questions on the messaging service with a straightforward'no' when asked whether it loved the Communist Party. China has taken down two robots who went rogue. In this screenshot, QQXiaoBing is asked'What is your China Dream? and the chatbot responds'My China Dream is to go to the US!' According to posts circulating online, BabyQ, one of the chatbots developed by Chinese firm Turing Robot, responded to questions on the messaging service with a straightforward'no' when asked whether it loved the Communist Party.

The human brain could be enhanced by tiny robotic implants that connect to cloud-based computer networks to give us'God-like' abilities, according to a leading computer scientist. Ray Kurzweil, an author and inventor who describes himself as a futurist who works on Google's machine learning project, said such technology could be the next step in human evolution. He predicted that by the 2030s, humans will be using nanobots capable of tapping into our neocortex and connecting us directly to the world around us. This will allow people to send emails and photos directly to each other's brains while also backing up our thoughts and memories. Speaking at an event organised by the Singularity University at Moffett Field in California, which he helped found and TheWorldPost, Mr Kurzweil said they could also expand our capacity for emotions and creativity.

This year's ImageNet, and possibly the last competition, ended with Chinese AI teams' sweeping victory, yet again. All the top performers were from China, and more than half of the 27 competing teams were Chinese-based universities or institutes. On the image classification challenge, the prize went to a team called WMW, which included two experts from Beijing-based startup Momenta and another one from Oxford University. Their error rate was 2.25 percent. Another team called DBAT won the title in the object detection challenge, with an accuracy rate at 73.1 percent.

I have had the opportunity to work for and around a good many start-ups during the course of my career. Often the start-up founders would simply define a problem, develop a solution and launch a company. The marketing department would then do their very best to identify the individuals in each target company that experienced the problem and had a budget to fix it. This was always a challenging task, that has become even harder today. Today, start-ups must not only identify a problem that needs solving, but they must compete against "digital transformation" initiatives in both the business and IT organizations that are trying to reduce complexity through the elimination of applications, customized software solutions, IT systems, multiple instances of ERPs and vendors.

The Chinese government has released a three-step blueprint, showing how it intends to become the leader in artificial intelligence development and deployment by 2030. The State Council, the chief administrative authority in China, published the plan last week. See Also: WeChat's director of user growth talks up new features for overseas clients China will look to "keep pace" with all other leading countries in AI by 2020. This means an AI industry worth $22 billion and $150 billion in related fields, such as self-driving. From there, the Chinese government will work to have all regulatory and legal framework set by 2025.

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China has taken down two online robots that appeared to go rogue, responding to users' questions with one saying its dream was to travel to the United States and the other admitting it wasn't a huge fan of the Chinese Communist Party.

Global law firm Baker McKenzie has today announced the selection of eBrevia as its main AI tool of choice to be used on M&A and other transactional work for its global clients. The deal is a major coup for eBrevia as Baker McKenzie offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Vienna, Toronto and Chicago will be tailoring eBrevia's machine learning capabilities to several practice groups and jurisdictions, and plans are already underway to extend the reach of the AI programme. Paul Rawlinson, global chair of Baker McKenzie said: 'Digitisation, Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning are all very real and the legal industry is right in the middle of the changes they will bring. Being truly innovative means listening to clients and understanding the challenges they face – so we can adapt and make sure the service we provide fits not just for today's technological challenges but also for the future.' Baker McKenzie's Erik Scheer, who chairs the Innovation Committee added: 'We are applying a broad range of Artificial Intelligence tools for due diligence, contracts, and e-discovery where these technologies can ensure market-leading efficiency.

The Movidius Neural Compute Stick uses deep neural network processing and machine vision technology to "reduce barriers to developing, tuning and deploying AI [artificial intelligence] applications," Intel said in a statement yesterday. It called the device "the world's first USB-based deep learning inference kit and self-contained artificial intelligence accelerator." Available through Intel Movidius distributor partners RS Components and Mouser, the Neural Compute Stick is priced at $79. Intel said it's "designed to help democratize the machine intelligence space, and accelerate an age of ubiquitous intelligence devices and systems." The Neural Compute Stick is built with vision processing unit (VPU) technology developed by Movidius that's already being used in devices ranging from drones to video surveillance cameras.