John Zimmer isn't shy about making bold pronouncements when it comes to Uber, the ride-hailing industry's Goliath to Lyft's David. "I think we'll ultimately win, yes," the Lyft co-founder tells USA TODAY. "Our focus on the U.S. has been helpful." Lyft has indeed taken a narrower path to success by focusing on the domestic market. Founded in 2012, three years after Uber created the category, Lyft made itself known with the fuzzy pink mustaches that adorned its cars.

It is not a ridiculous overstatement to suggest that the Nintendo Entertainment System saved the games industry. Back in early 1980s, when the company released its fledgling console in Japan (where it was known as the Famicom), the business was undergoing a crisis. A flood of competing consoles and an unregulated, uncontrolled publishing model meant that there were too many machines and too many mediocre games. Some pundits in the US even suggested that video games were just a fad and that the bubble had burst. Then came the Nintendo Entertainment System.

In 1997, a computer program codenamed Deep Blue, defeated Russian chess grandmaster, Garry Kasparov. In 2006, Deep Fritz dethroned the then World Champion Chess player, Vladamir Kramnik. In 2016, Google developed an artificially intelligent computing system named AlphaGo. It added another name on the "list of humans" defeated by a machine, the highly ranked South Korean Go player, Lee Sedol. Prior to the dethroning of Kasparov, Kramnik and Sedol, it was thought that artificial intelligence still had ways to go before it could outwit and outmatch gifted human players.

Google's DeepMind has been making use of Blizzard's StarCraft II Game as a testing platform for AI as well as important machine learning research. It's not just Google that can benefit from this platform either; it's open to anyone who wants to make use of it and is available worldwide. The company commented, "We've worked closely with the StarCraft II team to develop an API that supports something similar to previous bots written with a'scripted' interface, allowing programmatic control of individual units and access to the full game state (with some new options as well)." The two companies are still working together now, this time creating "curriculum scenarios." These are tasks that get more difficult as they are completed and are designed to allow AI researchers to get the system up and running, benchmark algorithms, and advance.

More than half of students are chasing careers that will be made obsolete by advances in technology and automation, according to a report by the Foundation for Young Australians (FYA). The report, entitled The New Work Order, makes recommendations to ensure that Australia's young people are being trained for the future of work, not for the'traditional' model of employment. In a worrying finding, the report states that 70 per cent of young people currently enter the workforce in jobs that will be "radically affected by automation". The CEO of FYA, Jan Owen, said that while the unemployment and underemployment rate for young people in Australia is already around 30 per cent, the chances of getting a foothold in the labour market are going to keep shrinking. This now famous establishment opened two years ago in the Shinjuku district 2/9 The Robot Restaurant Dancers dressed as futuristic characters perform during a show at The Robot Restaurant 3/9 The Robot Restaurant Performances are held three times a day and cater mostly to foreign tourists 4/9 The Robot Restaurant The Robot Restaurant has gained notoriety for its mind-boggling sci-fi cabaret show and its garishly illuminated interior 5/9 The Robot Restaurant The restaurant was completed in 2012 at a cost of $10 million.

In Japan's first reported case of artificial intelligence saving someone's life, an AI has succeeded where a team of skilled human doctors did not. A woman with a rare type of leukaemia was correctly diagnosed by the AI. Even more remarkable, it took just ten minutes to compare the woman's genetic information with 20 million clinical oncology studies to arrive at the life-saving diagnosis. Does this mean robots are going to replace our doctors? Not quite, but increasing volumes of medical data, more powerful computers and smarter algorithms could see a future medical science in which human doctors are helped by AI. Data driven medicine taps into the expanding databases of genomic, clinical, imaging (scans and x-rays), and molecular data.

The next frontier for artificial intelligence may involve teaching computers to distinguish albacore tuna from its yellowfin cousin. The Nature Conservancy, an environmental non-profit, is working with several Pacific Island nations and a big tuna fishing company to more easily count and identify fish caught at sea using cutting edge technology. The goal is to use trendy artificial intelligence techniques like deep learning to help fishermen reduce the number of protected animals like sharks and turtles that are accidentally caught along with the tuna. The Nature Conservancy hopes that the program could prevent overfishing and help threatened and endangered sea life recover without putting fishermen out of work. "We have real optimism that data science community can help us differentiate a turtle from a tuna, and flag when a shark comes on board," said Mark Zimring, a project director for The Nature Conservancy.

BBC Click's Spencer Kelly meets a robot getting ready to help visitors to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics with language translation. Japan is embracing the use of robots across a wide range of industries. The country has an ageing population and is increasingly looking for robots to replace people in the workforce. Fumiyuki Hashimoto of Fujitsu says Japanese people see robots and artificial intelligence as one. Robots are perceived as something that can protect and support humans.

VIDEO: San Jose airport unveils robots to help passengers Robots at center of China's strategy to leapfrog rivals Robots at center of China's strategy to leapfrog rivals Robots at center of China's strategy to leapfrog rivals REDWOOD CITY (KRON)--Redwood City officials approved a pilot program this week that allows robots to deliver groceries and restaurant food to homes and businesses. Starship Technologies Inc. will launch the service with 20 robots. It will begin next month and last for nine months. Each robot is designed to carry three grocery bags and use nine on-board cameras to navigate. They travel four miles per hour and will be controlled by someone when they are crossing intersections, city officials said.

Samsung Electronics Co. is making a drive for control of the car. The South Korean smartphone maker said Monday that it would buy U.S. auto-parts supplier Harman International Industries Inc., based in Stamford, Conn., for $8 billion in an all-cash deal that instantly makes Samsung a major player in the world of automotive technology. The deal -- Samsung's biggest acquisition in its history -- reshapes the pecking order in the global automotive supply chain, reflecting a quickening pace of innovation and an increased role for companies with deep pockets and a keen understanding of mobile services. Harman, an audio pioneer that dates back to 1953, has in recent years pushed aggressively into the automotive world under CEO Dinesh Paliwal, and has secured billions in new business, including big contracts with General Motors Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV. It has projected an order backlog of $24 billion, more than three times annual revenue, and about two-thirds of its current sales come from auto makers.