In the fall of 2016, a pop song was released in Japan. "Daddy's Car," derivative of a Beatles tune, had a soothing beat and vaguely uplifting lyrics: "Good day sunshine in the backseat car / I wish that road could never stop." The ditty was distinctive for its authorship. Sony's Computer Science Laboratories in Paris produced the song, which was written by an artificial intelligence (AI) system called Flow Machines. The melody and harmony were composed by AI, and a human musician mixed the sound and wrote lyrics for the track. AI -- the new set of technologies that perform tasks that require human intelligence, such as speech recognition, decision making, and learning -- is rapidly working its way into business operations within many global industries. Some members of the entertainment and media (E&M) industry have downplayed its potential. After all, these are creative industries in which both the germ of the business and the value added to it stem from the contribution of human ingenuity and people exchanging ideas. The most successful E&M products and services rely on connecting creative content, brands, and experiences with audiences.

Chintu, the robot, slowly sat down on the floor, with both hands resting on its knees. Then, on command, it stood up, using one hand for support. The 58-centimetre-tall robot, manufactured by Softbank Robotics of France and owned by Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT), Pune, was one of the attractions of IBM Cloud Forum, a jamboree of companies using IBM's cloud and machine learning (ML) solutions in the last week of May in Mumbai. Alongside Chintu were its guardians -- Astitva Shah and Krishnamohan M, final-year engineering students from MIT, Pune. The duo have been working on a project to develop Chintu as an assistant for elderly people who are living alone.

It's just over a year since Google's DeepMind unit stunned the world when its AlphaGo AI beat Go legend Lee Se-dol 4-1 in a five-game match; the result demonstrated mastery of a feat that had eluded computer scientists for decades and sparked a flood of new interest in the field of artificial intelligence. But there was one possible "gotcha" that Go devotees could hold onto: Lee Se-dol was once, but is no longer, quite considered the greatest player on the planet. That distinction is now considered to belong to Ke Jie, a 19-year-old Chinese player ranked number 1 worldwide. A professional since the age of 10, Ke has beaten Lee several times in high-profile matches in recent years, including three finals victories in the three months leading up to Lee's AlphaGo match. And next month, Ke will get his own showdown with DeepMind's AI.

Chatbots have caught on with businesses and brands. These programs allow companies to quickly share information with visitors, answer general questions and direct users to specific spots online. They can also increase engagement, keeping visitors on the site longer as they gather information and have their questions answered through AI. All of this can help sales: An active customer is more likely to stay and purchase, especially if they feel confident about what is being sold. There are a lot of specific details to weigh when adding a chatbot to your site, especially when seeking to improve sales.

If Robert Cardillo has his way, robots will perform 75 percent of the tasks currently done by American intelligence analysts who collect, analyze, and interpret images beamed from drones, satellites, and other feeds around the globe. Cardillo, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, known by the acronym NGA, announced his push toward "automation" and artificial intelligence at a conference this week in San Antonio. The annual conference, hosted by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, brings together technologists, soldiers, and intelligence professionals to discuss national security threats, changes in technology, and data collection and processing. Artificial intelligence is on the rise; former President Barack Obama's White House released a white paper on its potential future impacts in the final months of the administration. Police officers are using preliminary programs to predict the likelihood someone will commit a crime in a specific neighborhood based on crime statistics data.

The theatrical release of James Cameron's sci-fi film Terminator 2, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cyborg with a computer brain, had a crucial scene deleted. The scene, part of the extended release of the movie, shows young John Connor and his mother opening up the head of the cyborg to switch its computer brain from "read only to "learning" mode. The cyborg (Schwarzenegger) then picks up human values and mannerisms as the movie progresses. For movie buffs, the deleted scene is worth seeing for special effects and also to catch a glimpse of Linda Hamilton (playing John's mother Sarah Connor) with her twin sister Leslie playing her image in a mirror. In the theatrical release, where the scene is omitted, the cyborg just tells John that its brain is a "neural-net processor, a learning computer", without mentioning any on/off options. That was back in 1991. Today, in 2017, a learning computer is much more of a reality. While artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) concepts have been around since the 1940s and 1950s (See ABC of AI, ML and Deep Learning), the availability of huge amounts of data is making the difference now. A "learning computer" does not need to travel back in time -- like in the movie -- and many are solving real problems in India. For example, in healthcare, ML is helping oncologists sift through huge amounts of cancer cases and suggesting preferred treatment; in education it is predicting who might drop out of school; and in fashion it is forecasting colours that can dominate the next season. Retail, transportation and financial services have adopted ML in different forms. The "learning switch" is turned on in India. "Every large organisation was sitting on data.

As climate change makes it more difficult to grow crops in outdoor farms because of heat waves, more frequent storms, and more pests and disease, the researchers envision that climate-controlled, tech-filled greenhouses (which they call "food computers") could be an increasingly useful place to grow food. The technology could also eliminate food miles: Instead of shipping avocados from Mexico to China, a Chinese greenhouse could precisely recreate a Mexican climate in Beijing–or tweak it to create a climate even better for an avocado tree. "It definitely speeds up the timescale by which we can get interesting results," says Arielle Johnson, one of the researchers at MIT Media Lab Open Agriculture Initiative, or OpenAg. "When you talk to [Caleb Harper, the director of OpenAg], he's like, 'Yeah, basil is a fast-growing plant,' but in his terminology, fast-growing is six to eight weeks," says Babak Hodjat, CEO of Sentient, a company that also designs AI to help stock traders find patterns in the market and hospitals predict infections. "That's a long time to wait just to get a data point. So we tried out this methodology where the AI itself decides what are the next set of data points to try out."

Yes, artificial intelligence can be used to, say, garner award show accolades for Alicia Vikander in "Ex Machina" or hash out daddy issues with Tony Stark (a.k.a. But the hi-tech and seemingly futuristic system can also be used to enhance your online shopping experience, which is what luxury e-marketplace Orchard Mile is doing with My Mile, an e-boutique that's constantly being updated and personalized for each individual shopper. Behind the scenes, predictive and intuitive algorithms -- not scary robots -- use your shopping habits and preferences to essentially make your browsing and buying experience more focused (and less overwhelming), easier and hopefully, more fun. Orchard Mile -- named after two international luxury retail destinations Orchard Road in Singapore and the Magnificent Mile in Chicago -- was founded in late 2015 by Jennie Baik, former Head of Strategy for Burberry Americas and Julia LeClair, founder of personal shopper start-up MyDROBE. Orchard Mile either works directly with the brand or, in the case of designers who don't have full e-commerce build out, partners with Saks Fifth Avenue to drop ship the items.

Japanese shipping companies are working with shipbuilders to develop self-piloting cargo ships. The "smart ships" will use artificial intelligence to plot the safest, shortest, most fuel-efficient routes, and could be in service by 2025. The AI will also be used to predict malfunctions and other problems, which could help reduce the number of maritime incidents. The companies plan to build about 250 self-navigating ships. Developing the technology is expected to cost tens of billions of yen (hundreds of millions of dollars).

USA Today reporter Rachel Sandler asked people in San Francisco if apps are as popular as Apple says. Do people even care about apps anymore? Let's step back in time for a moment and imagine going back to using foldable maps or Web printouts for directions, hailing cabs (or even taking a bus!), and no social tools to share those daily self-portraits. Shazam is the most recent. Apple kicked off its big Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose this week with a humorous video showing what that app-less world might be like.