SoftBank chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son reacts as SoftBank's human-like robots named "Pepper" performs. Singularity -- the point when machine intelligence surpasses our own and goes on to improve itself at an exponential rate -- will happen by 2047, according to Masayoshi Son, the Japanese tech mogul leading SoftBank. Son was speaking on Monday at the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona, Spain. He said: "I totally believe this concept. In next 30 years this will become a reality."

Not long ago, I stepped into a lift on the 18th floor of a tall building in New York City. A young woman inside the lift was looking down at the top of her toddler's head with embarrassment as he looked at me and grinned. When I turned to push the ground-floor button, I saw that every button had already been pushed. Kids love pushing buttons, but they only push every button when the buttons light up. From a young age, humans are driven to learn, and learning involves getting as much feedback as possible from the immediate environment. The toddler who shared my elevator was grinning because feedback – in the form of lights or sounds or any change in the state of the world – is pleasurable. In 2012, an ad agency in Belgium produced an outdoor campaign for a TV channel that quickly went viral. The campaign's producers placed a big red button on a pedestal in a quaint square in a sleepy town in Flanders. A big arrow hung above the button with a simple instruction: Push to add drama. You can see the glint in each person's eye as he or she approaches the button – the same glint that came just before the toddler in my elevator raked his tiny hand across the panel of buttons.

SoftBank Founder and CEO Masayoshi Son today outlined his vision for artificial intelligence and said computers running AI programs will exceed human intelligence within three decades. Delivering a keynote address at the Mobile World Congress here, Son said he expects one computer chip to have the equivalent of 10,000 IQ within this period. "In the past 2,000 years, the hardware in our brains has not improved… In the next 30 years, AI will overtake human intelligence," he said. Son added that with the strong growth seen for Internet of Things (IoT), the number of embedded chips that are recording and transforming data into something useful will top "one trillion". Son, who sported a black turtleneck sweater and black pants, joked that even a pair of sneakers will have more computing power that a person.

This week is big for fans of video games. On Friday, a new home console enters the market, which is always an exciting industry moment. Meanwhile, Tuesday marks the arrival of an early PlayStation hit. Horizon: Zero Dawn is the latest adventure from studio Guerrilla Games, best known for its work on Killzone. The PlayStation 4 game stars Aloy, an outcast of hunting tribes roaming a post-apocalyptic landscape once seemingly dominated by technology. All that's left of that tech are hidden ruins and machine-like animals lurking in the environment.

If you're looking for the future of mobile, it may be time to stop staring at the palm of your hand and look instead toward the open roads and sky. On Monday, the ginormous trade show Mobile World Congress will open its 2017 edition in Barcelona, where about 100,000 people are expected. While there will be the usual unveiling of select smartphones and tablets, MWC has dramatically increased the presence of drones and autonomous vehicles as it seeks to expand the concept of what we mean by the word "mobile." The event is dedicating almost an entire day each to vehicles -- both connected and autonomous -- and drones. In addition, the conference has added multiple sessions on artificial intelligence, as it relates to vehicles and drones, as well as other mobile uses.

BARCELONA: SoftBank Founder and CEO Masayoshi Son today outlined his vision for artificial intelligence and said computers running AI programs will exceed human intelligence within three decades. Delivering a keynote address at the Mobile World Congress here, Son said he expects one computer chip to have the equivalent of 10,000 IQ within this period. "In the past 2,000 years, the hardware in our brains has not improved... In the next 30 years, AI will overtake human intelligence," he said. Son added that with the strong growth seen for Internet of Things (IoT), the number of embedded chips that are recording and transforming data into something useful will top "one trillion".

Artificial Intelligence seems like the perfect tool for the financial market, using forecasts to make vital trading decisions. Financial success depends heavily on predicting where the market is heading. AI is predictive by nature, and can analyse mass data sets with incredible speed and accuracy, it's not difficult to see why businesses in the sector have been quick to adopt AI and machine learning. In the last couple of years, financial trade has seen the rise of administrative AI, from AI customer services and, now, AI-powered hedge funds aiming to provide alternative investment while generating the highest returns regardless of market fluctuations. Even with AI this can still be risky but it's clear why AI is so valuable when it comes to maximising potential gain, especially when it can gather so much information about the financial climate and simulate risk scenarios.

Porsche Design had another Mobile World Congress revelation besides a limited edition version of Huawei's Watch 2. The design group has also announced a laptop-tablet convertible and detachable hybrid of its own called Book One, which looks like it was designed to rival Microsoft's Surface Book. It runs on Windows 10 Pro and is loaded with all the feature's you'd expect on a Windows hybrid: it has Cortana and facial recognition through Windows Hello. Plus, you can take notes and draw all over the tablet's touchscreen using Windows Ink. Its other specs and hardware might look familiar, because they're very similar to Surface Book's. The device's 13.3-inch display has a 3,200 x 1,800 pixel resolution, it runs on an Intel Core i7 processor, has 512GB of storage, 16 GB of RAM, two USB-C and two USB 3.0 ports. Even its pricing is pretty similar: at $2,495, it's just $100 more expensive than the cheapest configuration of Microsoft's Surface Book.

Sony Corp. and Line Corp., Japan's most popular messaging service, are considering joining forces to develop devices powered by artificial intelligence. The companies are exploring opportunities around digital personal assistant technology to co-create a new communication experience, Sony said in a statement at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Monday. Sony unveiled concept earphones powered by Xperia Agent, a virtual butler that responds to voice commands and head gestures. While Sony's Xperia smartphones are an also-ran in a market dominated by Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai has resisted pressure to shutter the mobile business. He argues it will serve as a springboard into the nascent market for wearable and interconnected devices known as the Internet of Things.

SINGAPORE, 22 February 2017 -- In our increasingly digital world, new and emerging innovations are set to disrupt the way people live, work and play. According to youth across the Asia Pacific region, the most exciting technologies expected to have the largest impact on their future lives will be artificial intelligence (AI), virtual/mixed/augmented reality (VR/MR/AR), and Internet of Things (IoT), based on survey findings released today by Microsoft. In the Microsoft Asia Digital Future Survey, 1,400 youth were polled across 14 markets across the Asia Pacific region, comprising Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Artificial intelligence (AI) is ranked as the top technology that youth expect to have the biggest impact on their lives. In recent years, the confluence of power devices, cloud and data has enabled bold visions on how AI can be an integrated part of our digital future.