There have been significant limitations, however, beginning with a necessity to extensively catalog each subject's unique brain patterns, which are then matched with a small number of pre-programmed images. These procedures require that subjects undergo lengthy and expensive fMRI testing. Now a team of researchers in Kyoto has used neural network-based artificial intelligence to decode and predict what a person is seeing or imagining, referring to a significantly larger catalog of images. Their results are reported in Nature Communications. "When we gaze at an object, our brains process these patterns hierarchically, starting with the simplest and progressing to more complex features," explains team leader Yukiyasu Kamitani of Kyoto University.

The next big thing in the technology world is artificial intelligence (AI). Big tech organisations like Apple and Google are aggressively investing in AI. Google has been partnering Oxford University to expand Artificial Intelligence. Some examples of everyday AI include iPhone Siri and Microsoft Windows 10 Cortana. Before going further, it will not be out of place to define AI.

We're only a few months into 2017 and cyber attacks seem to be hitting the headlines even more regularly than last year. In the same week, it was announced that cyber breaches have cost UK companies £42m since 2013. The week before that, it was revealed that Chinese hackers had been carrying out sustained cyber attacks for three years across the globe. As a result of this boom in cyber crime, startups and companies across the world are harnessing new ways to handle the sophisticated attacks and spending is thought to be around $106.1bn in 2017, according to research by IDC. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are just two types of technology that are fighting cyber breaches on the front line.

Medical imaging based screening techniques have long been used for the early detection of cancer and the scientific community considers that they play a major role in the reduction in mortality for certain cancer types. Advantages of medical imaging include minimal or no invasiveness, access to internal body organs without tissue destruction and functionality over wide ranges of time and size scales of biological and pathological processes. Medical imaging actually plays an important role in many other cancer management phases, such as biopsy guidance, staging, prognosis and therapy planning. Some of the widely used techniques are: ultrasound, projection radiography (X-ray), fluoroscopy, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), nuclear medicine functional imaging techniques (positron emission tomography, single-photon emission computed tomography, scintigraphy), X-ray computed tomography (CT). Emerging imaging techniques, still to be validated for use in clinical practice, try to differentiate between healthy and unhealthy organ tissue by examining properties such as elasticity (elastography), pressure (tactile imaging) or optical absorption (photoacoustic imaging).

Futurists see a world, where one-day robots will be used for chores, from house cleaning, factory assembling, solving diagnostic tangles and conducting repairs, and personalized sex objects with startling artificial intelligence…. Yes, a near human being made out of essential rubber, who will satisfy you physically and mentally, unconditionally. And yes, you can love her, and she will love you back in return, with all the lust programmed into her silicone soul. And how do you ascertain, that she truly feels for you, cares about you, worries about you? Well, she will tell you.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) believes in incorporating artificial intelligence (A.I.) in its decision-making process, a senior official told CNBC. The 68-year-old military alliance must be prepared for the prospect of A.I. delivering strategic verdicts on key NATO issues, said General Denis Mercier, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation of NATO. "The key issue is the distribution of data -- how we can, through that, empower subordinate levels of command, when it's necessary, to take action," he said on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. Such a vision is "the next step," Mercier continued. "That's not what we do today but this is really what we need to be available to do in the future."

Recent weeks have brought controversy over electronic billboards in restaurants and shopping precincts that utilize advanced facial recognition techniques to not only provide personalized advertisements but also measure and record the consumer and their response, ostensibly to enable retailers to provide more targeted marketing and services. In Oslo, the restaurant Peppe's Pizza had its usage of such billboards exposed due to a crashed digital advertisement that revealed the coding behind its facial recognition system. The billboard includes a camera and facial recognition software that can register gender, whether the watcher is young or an adult, facial expression, whether they wear glasses. In response, Dublin-based designer Youssef Sarhan did a little digging in his home time of Dublin and also discovered similar billboards in operation. "Your attention (and the meta-data associated with it) is being relayed to advertisers without your permission or awareness, and there is no way to opt–out. This is the crux of the problem. There's no transparency, there is no obvious notice, and there's no way to opt–out. This is an erosion of our privacy. I feel this is unacceptable."

In Wired for War, P. W. Singer explores the great est revolution in military affairs since the atom bomb: the dawn of robotic warfare. We are on the cusp of a massive shift in military technology that threatens to make real the stuff of I, Robot and The Terminator. Blending historical evidence with interviews of an amaz ing cast of characters, Singer shows how technology is changing not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and the ethics that surround war itself. Travelling from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan to modern-day "skunk works" in the midst of suburbia, Wired for War will tantalise a wide readership, from military buffs to policy wonks to gearheads.

Who's going to be the next Mobileye? Computer vision is a hot topic for the tech industry, and especially in Israel. It seems like Israeli entrepreneurs are one step ahead when it comes to developing computer vision technology. That's why we're excited to announce that three computer vision experts are going to join us on stage to share their knowledge about this space. First up, Inon Beracha has become a well-known name in Israel.

Edgar van Tuyll van Serooskerken, head of Quantitative Strategies at Pictet Wealth Management, explains how Pictet uses machine learning for two purposes: first, to hunt for profitable investment opportunities; and second, to search for patterns in big data that are similar to those of past periods. For the first use, machine learning can sift through the mass of data we now have on the past prices of assets in various classes, on company performance and on macro-economic developments, in order to look for hidden treasure. It will hunt for relationships between data points that could allow us to make returns and we study them with our experts to see if they make sense – we don't just trust the machine and trade off them. Nonetheless, since 2013 we have come up with a whole series of automated strategies, which have beaten the hedge fund index by a wide margin. They tend to reflect human behaviour which doesn't change very much and makes those strategies stable for long periods.