In the next five to ten years, millions, if not billions of things will become smarter. This smartness goes beyond connected things in our homes like the fridge, thermostat and fancy lighting, and into heavily regulated industries including aerospace, pharmaceutical/medical devices and energy. "Smartness" will embed itself within individual products that are part of our daily lives. We will engage with smart products - learning from them, informing them, and communicating with them. Smart products will accumulate information and data wherever they go and will be able to recount this information on command when needed.

The Artificial Intelligence market is expected to reach $16 billion by the year 2022 and will continue to grow at a projected rate of 63% over the next five years. The proliferation of Artificial Intelligence across industries is ushering in an age of rapid digital transformation and disruption. Old paradigms are being tossed aside and what was once thought impossible is becoming the everyday norm. "According to a 2016 Markets and Markets Report, the artificial intelligence (AI) market is expected to be worth $16.06 Billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 62.9% from 2016 to 2022," reported hiring agency Paysa. Amazon leads the way by far investing almost $100 billion more than that of runner-up, Google.

USA Today's Ed Baig tries out Samsung's new smartphone before it hits store shelves. Samsung Electronics' Galaxy S8 and S8 smartphones are shown off during a media day in Seoul, South Korea, (Photo: Lee Jin-man, AP) NEW YORK--Samsung's Galaxy S8 and its larger sibling the S8 are strong new smartphones I can highly recommend. The devices, which hit stores Friday (for around $720 on up), aren't perfect. Cool-sounding features like iris and facial recognition were extremely spotty for me. Water and dust resistance are great, but other phones now share these traits.

The latest technology to catch the fancy of a lot of businesses are chatbots--self-learning computer programs designed to have intelligent conversations with humans over the Internet. Several announcements were made recently by leading Indian banks and insurance companies about deploying chatbots. Fullerton India Credit Company Ltd. launched ASHA, a loan acquisition and fulfillment chatbot for Facebook Messenger that customers can chat with to apply, structure, submit documentation, and receive loan approvals, without downloading any other application. YES Bank launched an AI powered chatbot called mPOWER for FB Messenger for instant loan offering. HDFC Life Insurance launched an AI based chatbot that takes customers through a 60 seconds quiz and then computes their Insurance Quotient for the company's various insurance products, like tax planning, retirement, health, etc. Chatbots can be highly beneficial for both businesses and customers.

As banking organisations, financial services providers and brands predict and plan for the way consumers will manage their money in the future, artificial intelligence (AI) is high on the business development strategy for 2017 and beyond. AI is already around us and used everyday within payments, money management and for robo-advice, particularly in the area of intelligent digital assistants that handle regular customer service enquiries and tasks. It can process'big data' far more efficiently than humans and can recognise speech, images, text, patterns of online behaviour, for example to detect fraud as well as appropriate advertisements for upselling. Smart machines and technology can turn data into customer insights and enhance service provisions, bringing the digital experience closer to the human interaction for consumers. Santander announced it is to provide secure transactions using voice recognition via its banking app, while Royal Bank of Scotland has trialled'Luvo' AI customer service assistance to interact with staff and potentially serve customers in the future.

A device that reads people's minds through their brainwaves has been created by scientists. It could lead to an'easily-operated' machine that links up to smartphones in the next five years, the researchers said. The breakthrough could one-day help handicapped people who struggle to speak to communicate again, such as those who have suffered a stroke. It could be used as a'telepathic typewriter' that automatically notes down what we are thinking. A device that reads people's minds through their brainwaves has been created by scientists.

SINGAPORE: The Woodlands Health Campus (WHC), the first hospital in Woodlands, is expected to use the widespread adoption of technology to improve the patient care experience. The 1,800-bed facility, which broke ground on Tuesday (Apr 18), will open progressively from 2022. Located along Woodlands Drive 17, it will be about the size of 11 football fields and serve more than 935,000 residents. It will feature an integrated acute and community hospital, specialist outpatient clinics and a long-term care facility. Speaking at the groundbreaking event, Health Minister Gan Kim Yong said the use of smart technology to raise the bar for patient care and the development of new care models towards greater community-based care were two areas he hoped to see the healthcare complex pioneer.

Los Angeles start-up Coin-In develops mobile games, pictured above, aimed at driving gamblers back into casinos. It's among companies recently backed by Tech Coast Angeles members. Los Angeles start-up Coin-In develops mobile games, pictured above, aimed at driving gamblers back into casinos. It's among companies recently backed by Tech Coast Angeles members. He says concern about missing the boat on Los Angeles' next big thing is the most noticeable local trend during the first quarter.

A new study has found that Facebook users could be better off letting strangers choose their profile pictures for them. Researchers at the University of New South Wales Sydney, in Australia, conducted an experiment in which 102 social media users were asked to select 12 pictures of themselves from Facebook and choose the two they'd be most likely to use as a profile picture across a number of different sites. The participants' 12-picture selections were then shown to complete strangers, who were told to choose what they thought would make the best profile pictures. 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.

Google has been forced to open up Android to rival search engines and applications in Russia, after settling a two-year battle with competition authorities for 439m roubles (£6.2m). The deal sets a new precedent for Google, which until now has resisted permitting the pre-installation of rival search engines and certain applications on to the world's most popular operating system. In 2015, Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) ruled that the Android-maker was breaking the law and abusing its dominant position through restrictions on third-party manufacturers, fining Google 438m rubles (£6.2m) in August 2016. The FAS said that Google will no longer demand exclusivity of its applications on Android devices sold in Russia and will not restrict the pre-installation of rival search engines and other applications. Google will also develop a tool allowing users to choose the default search engine on new and existing Android devices, a similar measure put in place by Microsoft for browser choice on Windows following antitrust action by the European Commission.