Quora Questions are part of a partnership between Newsweek and Quora, through which we'll be posting relevant and interesting answers from Quora contributors throughout the week. Who is leading in AI research among big players like IBM, Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft? First, my response contains some bias, because I work at Google Brain, and I really like it there. My opinions are my own, and I do not speak for the rest of my colleagues or Alphabet as a whole. I rank "leaders in AI research" among IBM, Google, Facebook, Apple, Baidu, Microsoft as follows: I would say Deepmind is probably #1 right now, in terms of AI research.

MIT brainiacs are urging City Hall to tackle Boston's brutal traffic with wild, outside-the-box ideas -- like a futuristic, autonomous electric tricycle -- as officials prepare to unveil Mayor Martin J. Walsh's long-term transportation plan next week. "Most trips in the city are one-person, low-speed, short distance. It doesn't make any sense to put one person in a 4,000-pound vehicle to move across Boston a couple of kilometers," said Kent Larson, co-director of MIT's City Science Initiative. "We should have lighter-weight systems that supplement these more conventional mass transit systems," Larson said. Among the forward-thinking options the city should be considering, he said, is a self-driving, covered tricycle that Hub residents can hail remotely whenever they need a ride.

More than two years after a multi-sided civil war erupted inside Yemen that allowed Al Qaeda's local franchise to amass power and seize territory, President Trump has directed the Pentagon to embark on a complicated counter-terrorism campaign. Trump's decision, just six weeks into his presidency, intends to reverse the largely unchecked expansion across southern Yemen of the group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The willingness to expand counter-terrorism operations inside war-torn Yemen was the latest signal that Trump is more willing to defer to military commanders on national security policy than President Obama, who was criticized publicly by three of his four Defense secretaries and privately by uniformed officers for micromanaging the military. Over two days this week, armed drones and warplanes conducted more than 30 airstrikes against suspected Al Qaeda positions in three Yemeni provinces, marking the first U.S. attacks in the country since an ill-fated Navy SEAL raid in January that killed two dozen civilians, including women and children, Al Qaeda militants and Chief Petty Officer William "Ryan" Owens. The aerial bombardment is expected to continue into the coming week.

Worries that robots may end up replacing human workers have lately sparked debates over the role of artificial intelligence in corporate jobs. During a Fortune conference that tackled the subject and its various implications, voices from IBM and Google proceeded to dissipate concerns and state there's no need for alarm. Present at the Most Powerful Women International Summit in Hong Kong on March 2, women leaders of the two tech companies reassured the public that there's no need to worry about an A.I. takeover, as the technology is here to help and could significantly improve the activity of firms. According to Vanitha Narayanan, chairman of IBM India, the first corporate sector to gain the most from this technology would be that of service-oriented companies. Just like what her boss, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, previously explained at the World Economic Forum, Narayanan reaffirmed the idea of a partnership between humans and machine.

The leader of one of the world's largest automobile producers expects that cars will soon drive themselves and sync to the world around them - but don't count out the human behind the wheel just yet. Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive and chairman of an alliance that includes Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi, said Thursday that humans will remain involved in the operation of vehicles for the foreseeable future, even as cars with self-driving technology enter the market in the next five years. You will push a button to activate the car's autonomous driving feature, he said, but it will encounter everyday scenarios it cannot compute and that require human assistance. "Artificial intelligence is still way below the creativity of the human brain," Ghosn said. Imagine a self-driving car coming upon a broken-down vehicle in the road, but there is a solid line to either side of it, Ghosn said.

Artificial intelligence has made some great developments toward speeding up cancer diagnosis so far in 2017. Last month it was announced that AI from Sophia Genetics was helping to accelerate patient diagnosis across Latin America. Earlier this year researchers at Stanford University developed a deep learning algorithm that can analyse skin cancer as accurately as a human doctor. Now, Israel-based company, Medical EarlySign has announced the ability of its AI tool to identify the top 1% at highest risk of undiagnosed colorectal cancer (CRC). The machine learning developer announced the first-year results of its implementation with Maccabi Healthcare Services (MHS), for ColonFlag, a tool developed in collaboration with MHS to identify individuals with a high probability of having CRC.

Advancement in computers and technology have been incredibly positive for music creators around the globe. You can learn how to produce music on YouTube, purchase the same sample libraries as your favorite composers and create epic scores from your laptop, anywhere in the world. As a result, there are more music producers than ever. Computers helping humans create original music has become today's standard, but there are several companies looking to turn the tables on this process. Computer-generated songs are a fast-growing sector of the industry, looking to disrupt creation, licensing and access for musicians and non-musicians alike.

And after all that, you reach a customer service agent who can't give you the help you need. No wonder we hate customer service. A San Francisco startup founded by particle physics researchers is working to ease that agony, with help from AI and GPUs. The company, Deepgram, created technology that businesses can use to quickly assess customer calls to improve service. "You really don't want to be calling customer service, and you don't want your time wasted," said Scott Stephenson, Deepgram co-founder and CEO.

Naver and LINE Corp. unveiled their artificial intelligence (AI)-based assistant platform Clova at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017 in Barcelona, the companies reported Thursday. According to Naver and its mobile service subsidiary, Clova, which stands for "cloud virtual assistant," aims at an AI platform that works based on the five human senses. "Clova is a platform that incorporates various AI technologies including vocal, visual and conversational engines," LINE Corp. CEO Idezawa Takeshi said in his keynote at the MWC 2017, Wednesday. The two companies are jointly developing Clova by improving Naver Labs' voice-recognizing assistant service AMICA. They said it will expand the system to have more cognitive capabilities to make it more humanlike.

Taking a look back at seven days of news and headlines across the world of Android, this week's Android Circuit includes Samsung's efforts to spoil MWC, new images leaked of the Galaxy S8, asking if the new Nokia handsets are worthy of the Nokia name, a hands-on review of the Nokia 5, the LG G6 design, Huawei's new camera technology, the return of the BlackBerry keyboard, and the designer of the Psion PDA returning with an Android dream machine. Android Circuit is here to remind you of a few of the many things that have happened around Android in the last week (and you can find the weekly Apple news digest here). Although it had previously declared that it would not be announced the Galaxy S8 at this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the South Korean company announced when it would be announcing its new flagship. It looks like a tactical move to remind consumers not to fall in love with the new devices from MWC until it can consider Samsung's latest: But today's news about the Galaxy S8 launch wasn't about reassuring the public. It was about taking away some of the momentum that the S8's rivals could gain from Mobile World Congress.