Nvidia wants its graphics processing units (GPUs) to handle the artificial intelligence computing and other heavy-duty parallel processing tasks in giant data centers. To that end, the company is launching a program that makes it easy for its big manufacturing partners to package its GPUs in AI supercomputers. Nvidia HGX is a kind of starter recipe for original design manufacturers (ODMs) -- Foxconn, Inventec, Quanta, and Wistron -- to package GPUs in data center computers, said Ian Buck, general manager of accelerated computing at Nvidia, in an interview with VentureBeat. Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is announcing HGX at the Computex tech trade show in Taiwan today. HGX has already been used as the basis for the Microsoft Project Olympus initiative, Facebook's Big Basin systems, and Nvidia DGX-1TM AI supercomputers.

Japan and Germany may be sitting on a ticking demographic time bomb where aging populations begin to drag down economic growth.

It may be a common sight in the world of Star Wars, but so far laser weapons have struggled to make it onto a real battlefield. However, that could soon change as Department of Defense bosses have revealed a new $3.2m project with Clemson University engineers to investigate the science behind laser weapons. The military has already deployed some lasers as defensive weapons to shoot down incoming missiles and drones, but the two new projects will address underlying issues with making them more widespread. The two new projects are based on helping develop the fundamental technology that could see laser weapons such as those seen here in Star Wars: The Force Awakens become a reality. John Ballato and Lin Zhu are taking two different but complementary approaches to creating a high-energy laser that could be used as a weapon.

Inspite of all the current hype, AI is not a new field of study, but it has its ground in the fifties. If we exclude the pure philosophical reasoning path that goes from the Ancient Greek to Hobbes, Leibniz, and Pascal, AI as we know it has been officially started in 1956 at Dartmouth College, where the most eminent experts gathered to brainstorm on intelligence simulation. This happened only a few years after Asimov set his own three laws of robotics, but more relevantly after the famous paper published by Turing (1950), where he proposes for the first time the idea of a thinking machine and the more popular Turing test to assess whether such machine shows, in fact, any intelligence. As soon as the research group at Dartmouth publicly released the contents and ideas arisen from that summer meeting, a flow of government funding was reserved for the study of creating a nonbiological intelligence. Atthat time, AI seemed to be easily reachable, but it turned out that was not the case.

When Russia's Yandex revealed that it, too, was working on self-driving cars, it was hard not to be a bit skeptical. Wouldn't it be well behind American counterparts with a years-long head start, like Waymo? Clearly, it's making up for lost time: Yandex (or specifically, its on-demand service Yandex.Taxi) has unveiled a prototype self-driving car. The heavily modified Toyota Prius V touts loads of sensors, AI and "proprietary computing algorithms" that can help it navigate around traffic and tricky obstacles. The demo video below doesn't show any mind-blowing concepts, but that's really the point -- Yandex is showing that it already has a functional machine.

After AlphaGo's historic victory against South Korean grandmaster Lee Sedol in March 2016, Go teacher Jianlun Qian felt a sense of impending crisis. He fretted about the demise of the game brought about by AI. Now that a more powerful AlphaGo has beaten the world's number one player, though, Qian feels differently. At DeepMind's Go summit in Wuzhen last week, Qian, a teacher at the local Go association's training center, contemplated a very different future in which humans and AI can complement each other. "I'm indifferent to the results now," said Qian, who coaches about 50 preschoolers in Wuzhen.

While many people assume that artificial intelligence is something we'll be seeing well into the future, the truth is, many businesses are already using AI, and are successfully implementing business transformation strategies, connecting with their customers, and scaling faster than ever before. Most of these businesses are located overseas. A recent survey by Vanson Vourne, (commissioned by Infosys) polled business leaders across Australia, the United States, France, Germany, China, the UK, and India with at least US$500m in annual revenue and more than 1,000 staff. Of the 1,600 business leaders surveyed, Australian businesses only invested an average of $7.9m in artificial intelligence last year, and placed last in plans for AI integration and the skills required to implement AI. Andrew Growth, Infosys regional head, says that the results of the survey show that Australia is risking becoming uncompetitive.

It's no secret artificial intelligence is the hottest technology in insurance. Insurtechs and incumbent carriers alike are excited for the technology's potential in underwriting, customer service and claims. However, the relatively new technology does have some shortcomings, experts say. A lack of historical data, insurers' legacy systems and AI's inability to decipher natural language beyond basic speech has stymied the technology's growth. And for all of AI's industry-wide adoption, carriers appear to only trust machine learning to carry out the same tasks as web portals or mobile apps.

When on the subject of successful leaders, it is evident that the how and why of success help derive inspiration. Forbes has come up with its second list of game changers--those who are not happy with the status quo and are transforming their industries by making a difference to the lives of their consumers. The youngest game changers are two contenders--Evan Spiegel, 26-year-old CEO of Snap, and Stripe cofounders John (26) and Patrick Collison (28). The oldest is 75–year-old Christo Wiese, chairman of South Africa-based retail company Steinhoff. These are the innovative trailblazers who are redefining and reimagining the lives of people, and taking the requisite action to bring that vision to life. Forbes embarked on this initiative to acknowledge not just typical corporate achievements such as profits and growth, which are largely limited to employees and shareholders, but also the flair for making a true difference to the larger society.

Apple recently updated online availability of 15-inch MacBook Pro on its website to June 6-8 to coincide with the Worldwide Developers Conference next week, MacRumors first spotted. The move comes after a Bloomberg report said Apple plans to announce its new laptop lineup at WWDC. Apple will reportedly announce new versions of the 12-inch MacBook and MacBook Pro at the event. The company is also said to be considering updating the MacBook Air, which hasn't been upgraded in years. In-store pickup of the 15-inch MacBook Pro is available for June 8.