SAN FRANCISCO – Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt says artificial intelligence is key to advances in diverse areas such as healthcare and datacenter design and that security concerns related to it are somewhat misguided. In a wide-ranging on-stage conversation here at the RSA Security conference with Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of The Great A.I. Awakening, Schmidt shared his insights from decades of work related to AI (he studied AI as a PhD student 40 years ago) and why the technology seems to finally be hitting its stride. In fact, last year Google CEO Sundar Pichai said AI is what helps the search giant build better products over time. "We will move from a mobile-first to an AI-first world," he said. Asked about that, Schmidt said that Google is still very much focused on mobile advances.

Mumbai, January 27, 2017: HDFC Bank Ltd., today announced the launch of IRA, its interactive humanoid, at the Kamala Mills branch in Mumbai. IRA, which stands for Intelligent Robotic Assistant, will help branch staff in servicing customers. With this launch, HDFC Bank becomes the first bank in the country to introduce a humanoid for customer service. Developed using Robotics and Artificial Intelligence technologies, IRA will be positioned near the Welcome Desk, where it will greet customers and guide them to the relevant counter in the branch such as Cash Deposit, Foreign Exchange, Loans, among others in the first phase. After the customer selects an option, IRA will offer to guide the customer to the respective counter, by displaying'Take Me There' on the screen.

TECH billionaire Elon Musk believes artificial intelligence could be catastrophic for humanity who are set to become a cyborg race which will have to grapple with 15 per cent of the global work force being without a job. The creative genius added a'universal income' would have to be introduced for the global population because robots will do everything. Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai, the entrepreneur also told the 4000 strong conference he saw space flights to the far reaches of the solar system being as common as a plane ride in 50 years. And self-driven cars were just 10 years away from usurping human driven vehicles completely. The business magnate, who was being interviewed by Mohammad Abdulla Alergawi, the Minister of Cabinet Affairs and the Future for the UAE, told the slightly perplexed crowd: "One of the most troubling questions is artificial intelligence. I don't mean narrow A.I – deep artificial intelligence, where you can have AI which is much smarter than the smartest human on earth. This is a dangerous situation."

In the hope of bringing internet access to even the most remote corners of the globe, Google parent Alphabet's'Loon' project has taken a big step closer. Alphabet said artificial intelligence-infused navigation software has significantly sped up plans, helping to smartly guide high-altitude balloons to improve coverage. While the firm has not said when it expects the balloons to be up and running, Astro Teller, head of the team at Alphabet unit X said: 'We are looking to move quickly, but to move thoughtfully.' Alphabet said artificial intelligence-infused navigation software has significantly sped up plans, helping to smartly guide high-altitude balloons to improve coverage. Teller said: 'Our timelines are starting to move up on how we can do more for the world sooner.'

An official German watchdog has told parents to destroy an internet-connected doll because hackers can use it to spy on children. My Friend Cayla was found to be equipped with an insecure Bluetooth device, which cybercriminals could hijack, in order to steal personal data and listen and talk to the child playing with it. Germany's Federal Network Agency, the regulatory office for electricity, gas, telecommunications, post and railway markets, has now warned parents to destroy it. 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. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

The latest robot attempting to find the 600 tons of nuclear fuel and debris that melted down six year ago in the wrecked Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant met its end in less than a day. The scorpion-shape machine, built by Toshiba Corp., entered the No. 2 reactor core Thursday and stopped 3 meters (10 feet) short of a grate that would have provided a view of where fuel residue is suspected to have gathered. Two previous robots aborted similar missions after one got stuck in a gap and another was abandoned after finding no fuel during six days of searching. After spending most of the time since the 2011 disaster containing radiation and limiting ground water contamination, scientists still don't have all the information they need for a cleanup that the government estimates will take four decades and cost ¥8 trillion. It is not yet known if the fuel melted into or through the containment vessel's concrete floor, and determining the fuel's radioactivity and location is crucial to inventing the technology needed to remove it.

Automakers Toyota and GM and ride-sharing firm Lyft called on the US government to create US-wide standards to ease the testing and adoption of autonomous cars. The problem, they say, is that rules vary widely across the country are more restrictive in some states (like California) than others (Michigan). "Self-driving cars won't drive while impaired by drugs or alcohol [and] they won't be distracted by a cell phone," GM VP Michael Abelson told a subcommittee on Tuesday. "We have the further opportunity to avoid crashes altogether." It's not as though the US Department of Transport (DoT) is doing nothing, as it released a policy document last September.

The reality will lie between these two extremes. Based on research gathered from surveying Asian business leaders and human resources and AI professionals, this report argues that AI's future will cleave much more closely to the positive outcome. Moreover, this future appears to be approaching quickly: advances in deep learning and the rapid expansion of process automation in such diverse sectors as manufacturing, transportation, and financial services mean that AI's impact is growing exponentially with each passing year. Decision makers in all organizations must now begin to understand how AI will alter their own operational processes and those of suppliers, partners, and customers. Asia's business landscape is poised not only to benefit greatly from AI's rise, but also to define it.

Machine learning, artificial intelligence and augmented reality have been bubbling away in research labs for decades, but in recent years they have burst into business consciousness. For marketers, the rise in big data, programmatic advertising and marketing clouds have all coincided with the commercial emergence of cognitive computing -- the umbrella label for technologies that ingest data and then learn as their knowledge base grows. According to industry analyst Gartner, cognitive computing is a "disruptive platform with a shift more impactful than many other technologies in the past 20 years". For an industry which seems to reinvent itself every three years, this is a suitably bold claim. And yet, clearly, cognitive computing is already having a serious impact across a range of industry sectors.

Earlier this month, another robot, designed for cleaning debris for the main "scorpion" probe, had to return midway through because two of its cameras became inoperable after two hours when its total radiation exposure reached a maximum tolerance of 1,000 Sievert -- a level that can kill a human within seconds. The original duration planned for the robot was 10 hours, or 100 Sievert per hour.