Microsoft announced yesterday that it will be opening its third IoT & AI (Internet of Things and artificial intelligence) Insiders Lab. The new lab, located in Munich, Germany is set to open in April and will provide an EMEA point of presence to round out the existing labs in the Americas (Redmond, Wash.) and Asia (Shenzhen, China). AI has become one of the great, meaningless buzzwords of our time. In this video, the Chief Data Scientist of Dun and Bradstreet explains AI in clear business terms. Mission possible The mission of the labs is to provide facilities and expertise to startups in the IoT and AI arenas. The labs offer facilities that include a laser cutter, a reflow oven and 3D printers, along with staff sporting expertise in IoT hardware, embedded systems software, cloud engineering, and, of course, IoT, machine learning, and AI.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Fintech Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has introduced a plethora of new rules and initiatives designed to boost the state's fintech industry recently, with its latest move aimed at making life easier for firms providing digital investment advice. MAS released a consultation paper this week outlining how it plans to clarify and update regulation for this segment, which included proposals for making it easier for firms to offer digital advice to retail investors, licensing exemptions for firms offering certain digital services related to investment, and reducing the volume of information about clients firms are required to gather before they can offer advice. MAS' aims are likely two-fold.

China is pouring resources into artificial intelligence to nurture world-class companies that can compete with the likes of Google and IBM in building intelligence machines.(AP In China's quest to shed its reputation as a land of copycats, the world's second-biggest economy is pouring resources in to the hottest area in technology innovation: artificial intelligence. With the goal of nurturing world-class companies that can compete with the likes of Google and IBM in building intelligent machines, the Chinese leadership singled out AI as a key area of development in a report released during the National People's Congress in March. Soon after, the country's biggest technology companies -- Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent -- announced plans for AI laboratories and projects worth billions of dollars. Many analysts believe AI is one area China can excel.

Just as we learn from our mistakes, they are--well, learning from our mistakes too. A database of Atari Gameplay was unleashed to show AI what's what with game play. Tech sites are talking about this Atari Grand Challenge dataset--worthy of attention as the dataset, said Dan Robitzski in Inverse, gives AI systems access to new ways of learning and honing skills over time. The researchers stated in their paper that "We collect and describe a large dataset of human Atari 2600 replays – the largest and most diverse such data set publicly released to date." Jordan Pearson, Motherboard: "Computer scientists from RWTH Aachen University in Germany and Microsoft Research have released the largest-ever database of human playthroughs for some of the most popular games for the Atari 2600."

AI-MATHS is trying to get into college. Unbeknownst to students sitting for China's grueling college entrance exams, a robot was vying for a spot in one of the country's most prestigious universities. But it doesn't pose much threat yet. Called AI-MATHS, the robot completed one version of a two-hour Maths paper in 22 minutes and scored 105 points out of the maximum score of 150, reports the state-run Xinhua. AI-MATHS scored 100 points in another version of the paper which it completed in 10 minutes.

I first heard of Spark in late 2013 when I became interested in Scala, the language in which Spark is written. Some time later, I did a fun data science project trying to predict survival on the Titanic. This turned out to be a great way to get further introduced to Spark concepts and programming. I highly recommend it for any aspiring Spark developers looking for a place to get started. Today, Spark is being adopted by major players like Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo!

IncubateIND Techtalks on Artificial Intelligence is the first conference in India dedicated to the footprints of Artificial Intelligence, practical implications for Startups, SME and enterprise organizations, and the actual solutions that are transforming business productivity. By offering a unique experience of unrivaled knowledge, high-level networking and perennial moments, we showcase the ground-breaking solutions that are transforming business productivity and will continue to do so in the future. Supported by businessworld BWdisrupt, the quality of our program is peerless. Be a part of this first and largest event dedicated to AI. Discover the most inspirational case studies and solutions presented exclusively in our agenda from industry experts.

Artificial intelligence (AI)–assisted technologies have been on the rise over the past few years. From virtual personal assistants to video games, smart cars, online customer support, and music or movie recommendations, AI has infiltrated nearly every aspect of consumers' everyday lives. Yes, we can all thank AI for our Netflix addiction. While AI certainly makes consumers' lives easier, it's also working in nearly every industry to help streamline operations. One company that saw significant improvement in its sales thanks to AI was Dole Asia.

Depression is gradually becoming a very common mental illness that can become dangerous, if left untreated. The only challenge in treating cases of depression, which is increasing in each and every country, is that people are still afraid to talk about it openly. In March this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his'Mann Ki Baat' speech advised people to come out and speak about their battle with depression. "I want to tell my countrymen that depression is not incurable. There is a need to create a psychologically conducive environment to begin with. The first mantra is the expression of depression instead of its suppression," he said.

Sitting on a stage in Wuzhen, China, a historic city up the river from Shanghai, Google chairman Eric Schmidt described what he called "the age of intelligence." He trumpeted the rise of deep neural networks and other techniques that allow machines to learn tasks largely on their own, either by finding patterns in vast amounts of data or through their own trial and error. At Google, using a sweeping software tool called TensorFlow, engineers have built deep learning systems that can identify faces and objects in photos, recognize commands spoken into smartphones, and translate one language into another. Schmidt called this the biggest technological change of his lifetime. Then he mentioned China's three largest internet companies: Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba.