Whenever one separates sociology and technology, one misses the point.

Nokia's trademark application for Viki comes just as the new Android-powered 5.5-inch Nokia 6 launches. A new trademark application by Nokia suggests the former mobile-device giant could be building a phone-based digital assistant called Viki. Nokia filed the European trademark application for the name Viki just ahead last week's launch of the new Android-powered 5.5-inch Nokia 6 from HMD Global, the sole licensee of Nokia handsets, which plans to sell its first Nokia mobile exclusively in China this year for around $250. Nokia's involvement in the new phones is limited to branding and IP. However, the new trademark application could suggest it still may be eyeing a prominent place on Nokia-branded Android devices via Viki, which could be its answer to artificial intelligence-powered digital assistants such as Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, Google's Assistant, and Microsoft's Cortana.

Major AI researchers and textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents", where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success. John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1955, defines it as "The science and engineering of making intelligent machines". AI research is highly technical and specialized, deeply divided into subfields that often fail to communicate with each other. Some of the division is due to social and cultural factors: subfields have grown up around particular institutions and the work of individual researchers. AI research is also divided by several technical issues.

They never take days off and never strike -- artificial intelligence is set to replace more than 30 human workers at a Japanese insurance firm. The system will be based on IBM's Watson Explorer technology, and will help calculate payouts to Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance policyholders from January 29, the company said in a statement. IBM describes Watson as "cognitive technology that can think like a human". The AI will scan hospital records and medical certificates, and then extract data on injuries, patient medical histories and administered procedures to determine insurance payouts. Fukoku Life said it hoped the AI would increase productivity by 30 per cent, although final payments will still be processed by human staff.

HONG KONG: McDonald's Corp has agreed to sell the bulk of its China and Hong Kong business to state-backed conglomerate CITIC Ltd and Carlyle Group LP for up to $2.1 billion (Dh7.71 billion), seeking to expand rapidly without using much of its own capital. Zurich The Swiss National Bank expects a 2016 full-year profit of 24 billion francs (Dh86.68 billion; $23.6 billion), enabling it to shell out money to the federal government and municipalities. Foreign-currency holdings contributed more than 19 billion francs, and valuation gains on its gold holdings added 3.9 billion francs, the central bank said on Monday, citing an initial estimate. Last year's result is set to be the second-best in the Read More ... Tags: Corporate Enterprises Finance Sectors Banks Profits Financial institutions German automaker Volkswagen saw sales jump 16 percent in December for its namesake brand, propelled by a big increase in China, Volkswagen's biggest market. Global sales reported Monday rose to 567,900 from 487,700 despite the damage to the company's reputation from its scandal over cars rigged to cheat on diesel emissions tests.

Video games as a professional sport made no sense to Lars Windhorst, a European oil and agriculture investor, until a summer evening in Seoul. Before him lay an impressive sight: Thousands of kids in lawn chairs outdoors watching teams battle in the 2012 championship for "League of Legends." "It was exotic," Windhorst recalled. Over the next four years, his firm Sapinda Group invested upwards of $40 million in Azubu, a Sherman Oaks start-up developed to stream such e-sports matches online. But in the last year, several employees resigned and the only other major investor clawed back funding, exposing long-simmering troubles inside Azubu.

A robot developed by engineers in Taiwan can pour coffee and move chess pieces on a board against an opponent - but he's looking for a real job. The robot spent last week playing games against opponents at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It was displaying what developers call an'intelligent vision system' which can see its environment and act with greater precision than its peers. A robot developed by Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute plays chess at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 8, 2017 Rob Lever (AFP) With this enhanced vision, the robot can perform variety of tasks for service and manufacturing, and can also learn on the job with artificial intelligence. Playing chess is just a hobby showcasing the robot's visual acuity - such as the ability to distinguish between different chessmen- and dexterity in gripping and moving objects.

For those of you mourning the end of'Planet Earth II', there's good news – a new animal documentary is set to hit our screens this week. Spy in the Wild is the BBC's latest documentary, in which cameras are concealed within lifelike robots, tracking how animals interact with them in the wild. In the first episode, a group of langur monkeys mistakes a robot as one of its own, and even goes into a state of grief when the robot is mistakenly dropped from a height. At first sight they look exactly like the real thing – cute, cuddly and in some cases terrifying creatures of the wild. It's only when you take a closer look that you realise the stars of BBC1's brilliant new wildlife series Spy In The Wild are nothing of the sort.

ZHEJIANG – A Chinese factory is hatching giant inflatable chickens resembling Donald Trump to usher in the Year of the Rooster. The five-meter (16-foot) fowls sport the distinctive golden mane of the U.S. president-elect and mimic his signature hand gestures with their tiny wings. Cartoon figures of animals from the Chinese zodiac are ubiquitous around Chinese New Year at the end of this month. The balloon factory is selling its presidential birds for as much as 14,400 yuan ($2,080) on Chinese shopping site Taobao for a 10-meter version. "I saw his image on the news and he has a lot of personality, and since Year of the Rooster is coming up I mixed these two elements together to make a Chinese chicken," factory owner Wei Qing said.

Tim Cook has said that the "best" of the iPhone is still yet to come, as Apple celebrates its 10th birthday. The first phone was introduced on 9 January 2007 at a Macworld event in San Francisco, by Steve Jobs. The late Apple co-founder described the pocket computer as three products in one – "a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone and a breakthrough internet communications device". Now, 10 years later, the company is celebrating the anniversary by promising that the upcoming phones – presumably including the much-rumoured iPhone 8 – will bring updates better than those seen in the phones since 2007. 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.