The record-setting winning streak of a 14-year-old shogi sensation has turned the spotlight on another new phenomenon shaking up the centuries-old Japanese board game -- the use of artificial intelligence to improve players' skills. Sota Fujii, a junior high school student from Seto, Aichi Prefecture, set the all-time record for 29 consecutive victories on Monday, beating Yasuhiro Masuda, a 19-year-old pro. Fujii's victory "symbolizes the beginning of a new era," said Yoshiharu Habu, a shogi legend and ninth dan who became the first player to sweep all seven major titles of the game in 1996, describing it as "a historic feat." And similar to the games chess and go, advanced shogi players, including Fujii, have turned to high-tech machines and computers, utilizing software to brush up their skills. The Japan Shogi Association began organizing matches between top pros and AI-equipped robots in 2012.

For some it was the greatest video game console of all time, a 1990s treasure trove of legendary titles like Super Mario Kart, Super Metroid and Yoshi's Island – and now, not altogether unpredictably, it's back. Nintendo has announced that it will launch the Mini Super Nintendo Entertainment System (or Mini SNES), a petit version of its 1990 machine, on 29 September. Priced at £79 ($79), the device comes pre-installed with 21 classic titles. Alongside predictable entries such Super Mario World, Super Punch Out and the genre-defining role-playing games Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Secret of Mana, there is one surprise inclusion: the never before released Star Fox 2, sequel to the famed flight combat adventure, which was intended for launch in 1995 but abandoned when Nintendo switched focus to the impending N64 console. Like the Mini NES, launched last year to considerable enthusiasm, the Mini SNES comes with an HDMI cable so that games can be played on a modern flatscreen display – but there is no online functionality so it won't be possible to add to the games collection on offer. This time, the console comes with two controllers, rather than just one, so that nostalgic Mario Kart, Punch-Out and Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting tournaments can begin immediately.

Nintendo's bright, brisk take on the fighting game has a range of outlandish characters engaging in lighthearted fisticuffs with customisable robotic arms. The Switch motion controllers make it a ridiculous physical workout. What we said: Arms is unique, colourful, and accessible, with enough complexity to tempt a competitive scene but not so much to make anyone feel alienated. Game designer David OReilly produced one of the most unusual video game releases of the decade with this exploration of time, space and being, all set to a soundtrack of quotes from philosopher Alan Watts. What we said: Everything takes the strange comfort of the procedurally generated personal to a universal scale, and it is good.

New Delhi: Tech giant IBM is looking at engaging with developers in India in areas like artificial intelligence, machine learning and Internet of Things (IoT) to help them hone their skills for new technology trends. As part of its efforts, IBM is conducting roadshows in three cities of Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad from 28 June to 1July. "We are working with developers all over the world. From India's perspective, we think it is the right time for developers to work on technology areas like AI, ML, data science and we want to help them in their journey," IBM India/SA country leader developer ecosystem and start-ups Seema Kumar told PTI. She added that apart from relevant tools, developers are also provided with mentorship and guidance for their projects. "Through the roadshow, we hope to reach out to hundreds of developers in these cities," she said.

The lab will not exist in a physical structure, but via a virtual, digital network of researchers working on problems from their respective locations. China also benefits from having a fast- growing domestic platform economy which provides a foundation from which its AI startups can succeed abroad.

D. Fox Harrell (fox@csail.mit.edu) is Professor of Digital Media in both the Comparative Media Studies Program and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA, and the founder and director of the Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory. Chong-U Lim (culim@csail.mit.edu) recently completed his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA, where he was a member of the Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory.

Digital supercomputing can be expensive and energy-hungry, yet still it struggles with problems that the human brain tackles easily, such as understanding speech or viewing a photograph and recognizing what it shows. Even though artificial neural networks that apply deep learning have made much headway over the last few years, some computer scientists think they can do better with systems that even more closely resemble a living brain. Such neuromorphic computing, as this brain emulation is known, might not only accomplish tasks that current computers cannot, it could also lead to a clearer understanding of how human memory and cognition work. Also, if researchers can figure out how to build the machines out of analog circuits, they could run them with a fraction of the energy needed by modern computers. "The real driver for neuromorphic computing is energy efficiency, and the current design space on CMOS isn't particularly energy efficient," says Mark Stiles, a physicist who is a project leader in the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology at the U.S. National Institutes for Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, MD.

There are a few moments in the history of artificial intelligence (AI) that are considered major breakthroughs – events that showed the power of machine intelligence in matching or surpassing human performance. Two examples are Deep Blue versus Kasparov in 1997 and Watson versus Jennings in 2008. Most recently, AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol became another major victory, this time driven by a fast developing field known as "deep learning." Deep learning–a machine learning technique based on artificial neural networks–is growing in popularity due to a series of developments in the science and business of data mining. Prior to AlphaGo's victory over the currently best Go player Lee Sedol, computer programs that played Go had only been able to beat average players.

In this interview, Hone Capital managing partner Veronica Wu describes how her team uses a data-analytics model to make better investment decisions in early-stage start-ups. Veronica Wu has been in on the ground floor for many of the dramatic technology shifts that have defined the past 20 years. Beijing-born and US-educated, Wu has worked in top strategy roles at a string of major US tech companies--Apple, Motorola, and Tesla--in their Chinese operations. In 2015, she was brought on as a managing partner to lead Hone Capital (formerly CSC Venture Capital), the Silicon Valley–based arm of one of the largest venture-capital and private-equity firms in China, CSC Group. She has quickly established Hone Capital as an active player in the Valley, most notably with a $400 million commitment to invest in start-ups that raise funding on AngelList, a technology platform for seed-stage investing.

Since it was announced earlier this month, iOS 11 has attracted a lot of attention. As usual, it was released to developers straight away and reaches the rest of us in the autumn. But if you just can't wait, the iOS 11 public beta program has just gone live. So, should you upgrade, how do you do it and what are the downsides? 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.