Machines are already working in our factories, hospitals and call centres. Now, they're making us look bad at the ancient art of chess. I have some bad news, team. If I'm the one chosen to defend humanity against the robot uprising, we're all going to die. They've found my weakness, and it's chess.

Andy Rubin, who developed the Android operating system at Google then went on to lead Google through multiple acquisitions into robotics, has launched a new consumer products company. Anthony Levandowski, who, after many years with Google and their autonomous driving project, launched Otto which Uber acquired, was sued by Google, and just got fired by Uber. People involved in robotics – from the multi-disciplined scientists turned entrepreneurs to all the specialists and other engineers involved in any aspect of the industry of making things robotic – are a relatively small community. Most people know (or know of) most of the others, and get-togethers like ICRA, the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, being held this week in Singapore, are an opportunity to meet new up-and-coming talent as they present their papers and product ideas and mingle with older, more established players. Two of those players made headline news this week: Rubin, launching Essential, and Levandowski, getting fired.

Google has confirmed it is adding an ad blocker to Chrome in early 2018. The controversial plans have been rumoured for weeks, and the company has now shared concrete details about them. Google makes the vast majority of its revenue from advertising, and there has been concern that the company will take great care to protect its own interests. 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.

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.

Facebook has completely overhauled albums. The social network has essentially transformed them into digital scrapbooks where you can dump lots of different types of content. Albums used to be an extremely popular feature, and Facebook is hoping to revive them. 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.

The vast majority of bank customers in Europe would not let a computer program make and act upon financial decisions on their behalf, a survey showed on Wednesday, in a sign of caution over the rising so-called robo-advice industry. Robots ranked below financial advisers, friends or even using the internet as a means of making investment decisions, according to the fifth annual International Survey Mobile Banking conducted by Dutch bank ING Groep (ing). The survey of 15,000 people across 15 countries said that 91% of respondents would not let robo-advisers act unilaterally. A quarter of those surveyed would be willing to use the machines' advice so long as the human customer got final approval. The fact that people are reluctant to cede control over a decision - even when the outcome from outsourcing the choice could be more beneficial - explains why so few would hand money choices to a robo-adviser, ING said in its report.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the cutting edge in technology. It is fast getting mainstream and coming out of the confines of science fiction. The onset of AI-based technology in India is evident in the sectors of e-commerce and research, where entities that are already using data analytics, are now looking to explore AI. I got great perspectives on the potential of AI at Intel's AI Day at Bangalore recently. I also got to know the various parts that make up AI and why it is so complex.

EU antitrust regulators aim to slap a hefty fine on Alphabet unit Google over its shopping service before the summer break in August, two people familiar with the matter said, setting the stage for two other cases involving the US company. The European Commission's decision will come after a seven-year investigation into the world's most popular internet search engine was triggered by scores of complaints from both US and European rivals. The EU competition authority accused Google in April 2015 of distorting internet search results to favour its shopping service, harming both rivals and consumers. The Commission and Google declined to comment. The US company has in the past rejected the charges, saying that regulators ignored competition from online retailers Amazon and eBay.

Snapchat Spectacles have just launched in the UK. The high-tech glasses let you record short videos with the push of a button, without having to get your phone out of your pocket. They were previously only available to buy in the US, having first been unveiled in September 2016. 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.

When I first told to one of my girlfriends that our chatbot would do period tracking, her smile disappeared from her face. She asked why would anybody still do period tracking anywhere in the era of so many other applications that focus on women and their reproductive health. Well, I think the market is still underserved and there are still many opportunities, and one leads to creating a mix of a friend and a virtual gynaecologist using AI. Let's face it: we are absolutely not living in an equal world. As much as we fought to have this freedom and rights, we still have a lot to do.