Microsoft's CEO has warned the technology industry against creating a dystopian future, the likes of which have been predicted by authors including George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Satya Nadella kicked off the the company's 2017 Build conference with a keynote that was as unexpected as it was powerful. He told the developers in attendance that they have a huge responsibility, and that the choices they make could have enormous implications. 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 robotics wave began sweeping into automobile and other plants decades ago, stopping short of shops staffed with a relative handful of people. Many businesses couldn't afford the contraptions, which weren't designed to squeeze into tight spaces or operate very close to human beings. A Rethink Robotics Inc. Baxter robot operated by DHL, a unit of Deutsche Post AG. Technological advances have made industrial robots more compact and kinder. Collaborative models, members of a new generation called cobots, have sensors to prevent them from harming real-life colleagues.

The two largest semiconductor companies in the world, Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), share a long rivalry, even though they specialize in and dominate different areas of the global processor market. So let's examine Qualcomm and Intel in three important areas to find which stock looks like the better buy today. Through the power of their business franchises, Intel and Qualcomm each earn a clean bill of financial health. The companies excel in these measures of financial fortitude in different regards. When it comes to net cash -- financial shorthand for cash and investments minus debt -- Qualcomm's $17.1 billion in net cash is miles ahead of Intel's $8.4 billion in net debt.

We now turn to one area at the cutting edge of scientific development: artificial intelligence, or AI. The field is advancing rapidly in the realm of games, and we're now seeing robots winning over top human competitors. We're also seeing AI that can do tasks previously exclusive to humans more frequently, such as writing stories, creating movies, composing music, and even conducting behavioral analysis. How close is the world to having artificial intelligence sophisticated enough to take over jobs requiring human creativity? And are humans ready for that?

Most robots are programmed using one of two methods: learning from demonstration, in which they watch a task being done and then replicate it, or via motion-planning techniques like optimization or sampling, which require a programmer to explicitly specify a task's goals and constraints. Robots that learn from demonstration can't easily transfer one skill they've learned to another situation and remain accurate. On the other hand, motion planning systems that use sampling or optimization can adapt to these changes, but are time-consuming, since they usually have to be hand-coded by expert programmers. Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have recently developed a system that aims to bridge the two techniques: C-LEARN, which allows non-coders to teach robots a wider range of tasks simply by providing some information about how objects are typically manipulated and then showing the robot a single demo of the task. Importantly, this enables users to teach robots skills that can be automatically transferred to other robots with different "kinematics" (ways of moving) – a key time- and cost-saving measure for companies that want a range of robots to perform similar actions.

Jeff Heepke knows where to plant corn on his 4,500-acre farm in Illinois because of artificial intelligence (AI). He uses a smartphone app called Climate Basic, which divides Heepke's farmland (and, in fact, the entire continental U.S.) into plots that are 10 meters square. The app draws on local temperature and erosion records, expected precipitation, soil quality, and other agricultural data to determine how to maximize yields for each plot. If a rainy cold front is expected to pass by, Heepke knows which areas to avoid watering or irrigating that afternoon. As the U.S. Department of Agriculture noted, this use of artificial intelligence across the industry has produced the largest crops in the country's history. Climate Corporation, the Silicon Valley–based developer of Climate Basic, also offers a more advanced AI app that operates autonomously. If a storm hits a region, or a drought occurs, it adjusts local yield numbers downward. Farmers who have bought insurance to supplement their government coverage get a check; no questions asked, no paper filing necessary.

WhatsApp conversations backed up in Apple's iCloud are now protected by encryption. The messaging app reportedly introduced the security measure in 2016, but only confirmed the move this week. It's designed to protect the privacy of iPhone users, and should make it harder for government agencies to access their messages. 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.

Earlier today, Amazon made its long-rumored screen-based Echo device official. The Echo Show is basically a cuboid Echo with a touchscreen and camera attached to it. It supports all of the far-field voice commands as the original, so you can use it to play music, control smart home gadgets, add items to a shopping list, check the weather, and do thousands of other things. The new screen provides a way for the Show to display its answers in addition to speaking them aloud. It will display cards for the weather, products to buy on Amazon, videos on YouTube, and whatever else developers think of.

Paris, France, 2 May, 2017 – We are on the threshold of an extraordinary development that makes the automation heart beat faster. Recent announcements by both Facebook and tech pioneer Elon Musk to build brain interfaces are great examples. But together with the expanding possibilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI), emotions run higher and higher. A new report from SogetiLabs'The Frankenstein Factor: the Anatomy of Fear of AI' recommends taking these emotions seriously and pleads for a therapeutic approach. A focus on IT efficiency and effectiveness should be accompanied by a focus on human existence.

How's it gone so far? Microsoft's big annual conference kicks off today, and we've sniffed out what you can expect. We also get the full reveal of Amazon's Echo-with-a-screen. It's not pretty, but it does sound pretty smart. What to expect at Microsoft's Build 2017 conference While it's a mobile computing world, Microsoft has no shortage of projects we need to be updated on.