His father used to tell him that sitting in front of the computer, playing video games for hour after hour, was a waste of time. So Cody Altman didn't quite know what to think when a college from halfway across the country called to offer him a scholarship -- for playing video games. "Honestly," he said, "I was skeptical." The young man from Anaheim changed his mind when he learned that Maryville University in St. Louis had an e-sports team with a coach, daily practices and league matches against other schools. Two years later, Altman -- who goes by "Walrus" in competition -- found himself back in Southern California, seated with his teammates at a row of monitors on a high-tech stage, ready to do battle in the "League of Legends" college championship.

When I tell my daughters, ages 6 and 9, that I have a new robot to show them, they perk up. I then take Professor Einstein out of the box. My wife walks into the room: "Ahhh!" This very expressive, very wacky robotic character is a creation of Hanson Robotics, which calls it "your personal genius." Professor Einstein can chat about science, tell jokes, check on the weather, and, naturally, quote Einstein himself.

Tokyo Electric said Friday that a remotely controlled robot investigating the interior of reactor 3 at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant has finally spotted objects that could potentially be fuel debris. The objects look like icicles hanging around a control rod drive attached to the bottom of the pressure vessel, which holds the core, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. said at an evening news conference. Enclosed by the huge primary containment vessel, the pressure vessel originally contained the fuel rod assemblies. But the rods melted into a puddle and pierced the bottom of the pressure vessel once the plant lost power after being swamped by the monstrous tsunami of March 11, 2011. The robot also captured images of lumps of material that appears to have melted and resolidified near the wall of the pedestal, a concrete structure that supports the pressure vessel.

When bigwigs like Google and Amazon begin to use the services of a seemingly inconspicuous Indian startup, it may be time to sit up and take notice. Launched around eight years ago, it offers cloud-based communications solutions to businesses in emerging markets. "Our platform uses AI to provide advanced telephony services to businesses," says CEO and founder of Knowlarity, Ambarish Gupta. "It enables them to deliver highly personalised messages to their customers while cutting down overall costs," he added. Headquartered in Singapore, Knowlarity claims that over 15,000 businesses across India, South-east Asia and the Middle East are currently using its services.

China unveiled a national artificial intelligence (AI) development plan on Thursday, and said it expects the value of its core AI industries to exceed 150 billion yuan by 2020 and 400 billion yuan ($59.07 billion) by 2025.

Game of Thrones pirates are being targeted by HBO. The TV network and IP Echelon, its anti-piracy partner, are monitoring popular torrents and trying to get them taken down. They're also keeping tabs on people who are downloading and sharing episodes. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

Just a year ago, proposing a concept like universal basic income could practically get me laughed off the stage at a tech industry conference. The idea that everyone should be guaranteed a minimum subsidy from the government seemed to go against every fundamental tenet of creative destruction: Don't reward the obsolete! If workers lose their jobs to automation, retrain them for new ones! From the perspective of Silicon Valley's executives, only a hippie or communist would suggest that people be given a livable wage simply for being alive. But to me, having just published a book about the lopsided returns of the digital economy, universal basic income seemed an obvious solution to a problem first posed in the 1950s by the inventor of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener: What would happen when robots could till the fields, rendering human labor obsolete?

Chennai-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup Freshworks has acquired Joe Hukum, a platform that helps businesses build their own chatbots, the company announced on Thursday, according to a VCCircle report. This is the eight acquisition done by Freshworks, earlier called Freshdesk. While the deal size has not been disclosed, founders of Joe Hukum, Arihant Jain, Ajeet Kushwaha, and Rahul Agarwal will be joining Freshworks. Post the acquisition, the team of Joe Hukum team will build bots on top of Freshworks' existing products, enabling workflow automations for demand generation, knowledge management, and dynamic in-app self-service. As per the report, Joe Hukum's technology automates sales, service and support workflows across various channels and user interfaces.

"If you say things that are particularly assholeish to Cortana, she will get mad," Deborah Harrison says. As a writer for Windows' female-voiced virtual assistant, she should know. At a 2015 tech conference, Harrison told delegates that "a good chunk" of user inquiries were about Cortana's sex life, something Microsoft was working to curb. Siri, Alexa, x.ai's meeting-schedule bot "Amy" and even traffic update assistant Robin have all been subjected to the sexual advances of their male users. That there's a market for virtual sex is unsurprising.

Buyers Meeting Point's Kelly Barner interviews riskmethods' Director of Risk Intelligence Kasia Katrycz on how her team combines artificial intelligence and machine learning with human verification to provide actionable intelligence on potential supply chain disruptions. Below is a condensed version of their interview. Kelly: Tell us how you work with, and alongside, the technology available to help companies stay on top of constantly shifting risk conditions. Kasia: We live in the era of information with more content being created every day. Our task is to find the right information at the right time.