A photo recognition app designed to help foragers identify wild mushrooms has been condemned by scientists as "potentially deadly". Mushroom – the new mobile app – uses photographic and artificial intelligence in an attempt to distinguish between different mushroom varieties in the wild, but some scientists are concerned over the app's accuracy. According to mycologists (those who study fungi) and seasoned foragers, it isn't always easy to tell poisonous and edible varieties apart without close inspection. "I can photograph and Agaicus campestris" said expert forager, Cab Davidson via Twitter, "they're indistinguishable. Environmental scientist, Grant Williamson added to the Twitter debate by calling Mushroom, "the most potentially deadly app I've ever seen."

Improved sales and cost cuts helped automaker Honda Motor Co. shrug off lingering troubles from the Takata air bag recalls to log a nearly 19 percent improvement in its fiscal first-quarter profit. Tokyo-based Honda, which makes the Fit subcompact, Accord sedan and Asimo robot, on Tuesday reported a ¥207.3 billion profit for the April-June period, up from ¥174.6 billion the same period last year. Quarterly sales rose 7 percent to just over ¥3.7 trillion. Honda expects to sell 5.08 million vehicles for the fiscal year through March 2018, up from the nearly 5.03 million vehicles it sold during the last fiscal year. Honda raised its annual profit forecast to ¥545 billion from April's forecast of ¥530 billion. Its made a profit of ¥616.5 billion in the previous year.

You have been working on autonomous cars for 15 years now. What progress has been made over this period? Arnaud de La Fortelle -- Fifteen years before I started, there were already prototypes of smart cars: the first units dated back from the late 1980s. I am talking of autonomous vehicles driving at 130 km/h on French highways. Thirty years later, we are still at the same point! The greatest advances relate to computational power and sensors.

In terms of the future of smart machines, the Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI), it more or less comes down to "Like It or Not, This Is Happening." The quoted statement is a section in the first chapter of the book What to Do When Machines Do Everything from Cognizant Technology Solutions. "What to Do When Machines Do Everything" offers deep insight on how emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things will change our labor force and production industries. The authors do not sugar-coat the inevitable future. In chapter one, they state how this next stage of technology and business is the same as what we have experienced in the past.

The latest to succumb is Go's top-ranked player, Ke Jie, who lost 3-0 in a series hosted in China this week. The AI, developed by London-based DeepMind, which was acquired by Google for around $500 million in 2014, also overcome a team of five top players during a week of matches. AlphaGo first drew headlines last year when it beat former Go world champion Lee Sedol, and the China event took things to the next level with matches against 19-year-old Jie, and doubles with and against other top Go pros. Challengers defeated, AlphaGo has cast its last competitive stone, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis explained. This week's series of thrilling games with the world's best players, in the country where Go originated, has been the highest possible pinnacle for AlphaGo as a competitive program.

If IoT Is the Meteor, Is OT the Dinosaur? In his session at @ThingsExpo, Sudarshan Krishnamurthi, a Senior Manager, Business Strategy, at Cisco Systems,discussed how IT and operational technology (OT) work together, as opposed to being in separate siloes as once was traditional. Attendees learned how to fully leverage the power of IoT in their organization by bringing the two sides together and bridging the communication gap. He also looked at what good leadership must entail in order to accomplish this, and how IT managers can be the drivers of change within their organizations. He also discussed the skill sets needed to ensure that the full power of the IoT can be harnessed.

Tokyo-based Honda, which makes the Fit subcompact, Accord sedan and Asimo robot, reported Tuesday a 207.3 billion yen ($1.9 billion) profit for April-June, up from 174.6 billion yen the same period last year.

While our exposure to technology is often more novel than anything -- like a program that recognizes your friends and tags them in a picture -- small tweaks may turn the mundane into something life-changing. Intel is partnering with Israeli startup MobileODT, a company that created a smartphone app to diagnose cervical cancer. Together, both businesses are searching for (and challenging) developers to arrive at an algorithm that, based on images, accurately identifies women's cervix types. If successful, the effort could save the lives of millions of women around the world who don't have access to adequate medical care. Saul Singer's book Start-up Nation inspired the view of Israel as an enigma in innovation, and around the world, people are looking to learn from Israel in its attempts to construct better tech ecosystems.

The keynote moved to a packed Mandalay Bay Arena with some noteworthy production values. On the content side, the conference featured again various Machine Learning (ML) themed talks. Most noteworthy, the Revoke-Obfuscation talk discussed utilizing ML as tool to detect Powershell obfuscations without buzzword abuse (read the abstract). My sponsored workshop on ML suffered from two power outages -- no slides, no mic/speakers. A huge thank you to the amazing audience who stuck around and instead engaged in my improvised ML Q&A while we were waiting for power to be restored.

Care bots are part of a big bet China's making on robots. The country is already the world's largest producer of industrial robots and the largest buyer of robots in the world. China's factories spent more than $3 billion on industrial robots in 2015, according to the International Federation of Robotics and Bernstein Research. The government is also focused on developing service robots, and has laid out a plan to turn it into a 30-billion-yuan industry (about $4.35 billion USD) by 2020. A big part of that will be caregiving and companion robots for the elderly.