BIALYSTOK, POLAND – Instead of a hello, the head of the Esperanto association in the Polish city of Bialystok opts for "saluton," a sign that the universal language created by Ludwik Zamenhof is alive and well a century after the Jewish doctor's death. "Zamenhof created Esperanto as a counterweight to national languages, which he believed divided people and were a source of conflict," said association President Przemyslaw Wierzbowski. "Today, we know that it's economic, ethnic or religious differences that divide people, but Esperanto still has the goal of uniting us, helping us communicate," the 30-year-old added. Wierzbowski spoke from a table at Esperanto Cafe, which is located in a tower within the eastern city's market square, just steps away from where Zamenhof was born in 1859. During the 19th century, the tower was at the heart of a market packed with stalls that were manned by German, Jewish, Lithuanian and Polish merchants.

The National Police Agency on Thursday unveiled draft rules for testing driverless vehicles on public roads while the vehicles are being monitored remotely. At present no vehicle can proceed along a public road without someone in the driver's seat. Once the rules are officially in place, the agency will start accepting applications to conduct tests this summer, at the earliest. Japan is seeking to promote the development of self-driving car technology in the run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics amid an international race to develop autonomous vehicles. "The development of automated driving could help the elderly secure a means of transportation, slash the number of traffic accidents and ease traffic congestion," said an agency official.

When was the last time you set foot on a farm? If you're a city or suburb dweller, it's probably been quite a while. People in both the developed and developing countries largely take the food available in their grocery stores for granted today. Drive down to your local Super Target or Farmer's Market and you're presented with a seemingly endless supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. Unless you're in a poor country, like Nepal for example, where many families in villages own small pieces of land where they plant, maintain and harvest their crops manually, agriculture has largely been "mechanized."

The world's most advanced poker bot just trounced all comers at a tournament last weekend in Hainan, an island province in southern China. A previous version of the bot defeated several top professional players in a tournament held at a Pittsburgh casino over several weeks this January. Called Libratus, it was developed by Tuomas Sandholm, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes in machine learning and game theory, along with one of his students, Noam Brown. The feat was significant because poker is fundamentally different from the types of games AI researchers have tackled previously. Because an opponent's cards are hidden from view, playing well requires extremely complex strategizing (see "Why Poker Is a Big Deal for Artificial Intelligence").

Zeroth is an accelerator program that is out to fix the lack of talent, and investment options, for artificial intelligence (AI) in Asia, and it has just opened applications for its second program which takes place in Tokyo, Japan, in late July. "There's almost nothing that won't be touched by AI," high-profile investor -- and former Google China head -- Kaifu Lee said at our most recent China event. And yet, Asia's biggest firms still lag their U.S. peers on AI. Things are moving in the right direction but seemingly for a select few. Didi Chuxing recently set up a U.S.-based lab, but it appears some way behind Google and Uber.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese internet firm Baidu Inc has agreed to acquire U.S. computer vision firm xPerception for an undisclosed amount to support their renewed efforts in artificial intelligence as Chinese tech firms face regulatory headwinds in U.S.

Artificial Intelligence is offering the kind of revolution mankind first saw a 100 years ago with electricity, with Andrew Ng, the former Chief Scientist at Baidu claiming he can't think of an industry it won't disrupt in the next 10 years. Google's AI stands at the point where it can recognize user doodles and translate what they're trying to draw; IBM's Watson is quickly expanding its cognitive computing platform across multiple industries; Alexa can now tell you what's in the news, call you an Uber, book you a flight, and incessantly wakes me up to finish my real analysis homework every morning. With more than 35 acquisitions in 2017 and over 200 rounds of financing since 2012, the race for intelligence is picking up fast; Google itself has acquired 11 AI companies. Big Data and increased processing power, which was considered the limiting constraint handicapping the development of AI have picked up the pace in 2016, but with increased horsepower through products such as NVidia's GPUs, and Intel's AI chips, such constraints have decreased. Just in the past month, Elon Musk launched Neuralink, a venture to merge the human brain with AI, NVidia's deep-learning chips showed promise of disrupting the medicine industry, Bots were reported to be chatting in their own language and companies such as Forbes and Intel showed promising signs of boosting AI efforts.

Japan's National Police Agency on Thursday released a list of rules governing the testing of driverless cars on public roads. The regulations will officially take effect by the end of May, pending feedback from the public. It is the first time the agency has greenlighted the use of such vehicles on public roads. Once the rules are officially endorsed, companies and research institutes will be able to test their cars in real traffic situations. A company must meet three conditions to receive a test permit from the NPA: The technology has already been tested on a track; the test vehicle is equipped with a telecommunications system; and the driving conditions during testing can be monitored remotely with the same degree of precision as a person sitting in the driver's seat.

Have you ever chatted with a robot? Well, you may have done so already. Banking, insurance and broking industries have started rolling out chatbots for their consumer services and transactions. You may have come across them on some of the e-commerce websites. However, not all chat windows have a chatbot behind them.

To perfect their attacks, some of Japan's top volleyball players are training against a robot that can mimic the tactics of opposing teams. The Japanese Volleyball Association's "block machine" consists of three pairs of robotic arms that move side to side in front of the net. These represent blockers – players who defend against "spikes" from the attacking team that send the ball forcefully over the net, making it hard for opposing players to return it.