This week – a massive investment in the world's first neural prosthetic for human intelligence enhancement, Chinese version of DARPA's Grand Challenge, MIT is ready for Halloween with a horror AI, the self-driving truck delivered a precious cargo of 50 000 beers and more! Bryan Johnson announced he's investing $100M dollars into Kernel, a company that built the world's first neural prosthetic for human intelligence enhancement. Bryan said he did it "in an effort to enhance human intelligence and reimagine our future. Unlocking our brain is the most significant and consequential opportunity in history -- and it's time sensitive." Wired takes a closer look at three teams that were competing at the first Cyborg Olympics – one from exoskeleton race, one from arm prosthetic competition and one that was stimulating paralyzed muscles in a cycling race.

Health care executives from IBM Watson and Athenahealth athn debated that question onstage at Fortune's inaugural Brainstorm Health conference Tuesday. In addition to partnering with Celgene celg to better track negative drug side effects, IBM ibm is applying its cognitive computing AI technology to recommend cancer treatment in rural areas in the U.S., India, and China, where there is a dearth of oncologists, said Deborah DiSanzo, general manager for IBM Watson Health. For example, IBM Watson could read a patient's electronic medical record, analyze imagery of the cancer, and even look at gene sequencing of the tumor to figure out the optimal treatment plan for a particular person, she said. "That is the promise of AI--not that we are going to replace people, not that we're going to replace doctors, but that we really augment the intelligence and help," DiSanzo said. Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush, however, disagreed.

Facebook has banned an insurance company from using people's profiles to price their insurance. Just hours after Admiral announced that it would launch a new app that scoured Facebook profiles and tried to work out their personalities, the site has said that the plan breaks its terms and so will be banned. Admiral had hoped that by using Facebook information it could build up a picture of people, and hopefully work out whether they were more or less likely to crash. Customers could be given up to a 15 per cent discount if they signed up to the app. Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

Project Tokyo was inspired in part by the results of related research at Microsoft that demonstrate possibilities from emerging technology. The Cognitive Services Face API used in the Seeing AI research project highlights the potential benefit of improved facial recognition technology. The Cities Unlocked project taps rich streams of geo-based data to accurately inform users of the proximity of landmarks and destinations via a 3D SoundScape experience. We're excited about the prospect of entirely new prototypes emerging in Project Tokyo as a result of the enhanced expertise developed under these efforts along with the expertise provided from our partners.

Last week, Apple launched its latest MacBook Pro laptops. They are deluxe, powerful machines with innovations including the Touch Bar, where the top row of function keys is replaced by a touch-sensitive screen where different functions appear, changing as you change programs. The new models also have a fingerprint sensor built into the power button, to buy stuff online faster than you can say "impulse purchase". In this exclusive interview, Philip Schiller, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, told The Independent all about them. Schiller is a familiar face at Apple keynotes, mixing a dry sense of humour with bullish, on-message statements.

Hollywood gets A.I. all wrong. Silver screen depictions often feature a robot impersonating a human, a prospect that's about as likely, and about as abused in screenwriting, as discovering humanoid extraterrestrial life. That's why I found Lucas Carlson's new technothriller novel, Big Data, so refreshing. Carlson combines an engineer's view on the future of A.I. with a cast of characters that can't stop until the dark secret brooding at the heart of the tale is revealed. It's a perfect summer read that you'll burn through in a day or two, and will leave you with a disturbing vision of what tomorrow might look like.

Earlier this year, Thomson Reuters announced a partnership with Watson, IBM's artificial intelligence system. Thomson Reuters is committed to better serving its customers by providing cognitive solutions, and we are working on a number of initiatives in the legal and risk space. As part of our investment in artificial intelligence, Thomson Reuters is working with IBM Watson to accelerate the development of cognitive capabilities in our products. We have also recently established a Centre for Cognitive Computing which provides dedicated focus and resources to explore and develop in-house capabilities in the rapidly developing field of cognitive computing. I can't be too specific at the moment, but we are targeting to bring some capabilities into beta in Q4 2016, and launching a new product in the first half of 2017.

Artificial intelligence is creeping into our daily lives in unexpected ways. It is not just transforming online services with innovations such as Apple's Siri voice recognition app, which will send emails when you instruct it to, or Microsoft's Skype translation services, which enable you to communicate online with people whose languages you do not speak. Wider applications of artificial intelligence, such as image and pattern recognition (classifying data or objects based on common features), natural language processing (how computers understand and respond to human speech) and machine learning (when software learns something without being programmed to do so) will soon be featuring in many products and services. Pest control In recent years, pest control company Rentokil Initial has been experimenting with rodent traps equipped with sensors and WiFi. These send data to a command centre, which the company has built with partners Google and PA Consulting.

Three years ago, Jeff Bezos announced that drones are eventually going to deliver Amazon orders. In the past year, he brought out Amazon's Alexa artificial intelligence service, which understands speech well enough that you can say, "Alexa, I really need a waffle cone maker," and she'll put one in your Amazon online shopping cart, even though nobody needs a waffle cone maker. Both of these technologies--drones and cloud AI--are exciting today, yet still wobbly works in progress. But in coming years, Amazon or some other company is going to put them together. And that, finally, will evolve into a technology that could become as significant to humans as domesticated dogs.

Bengaluru: Wipro Ltd, which launched its artificial intelligence (AI) platform Holmes 18 months ago, is now making its biggest push to embrace automation by allowing more of its managers to identify work which will not require engineers in each of the over 20,000 projects currently underway. This "bold" development, according to one executive who did not want to be identified will mean Wipro doesn't just save on costs (thereby arresting falling profitability), but fundamentally alters the traditional model of deploying armies of engineers to undertake maintenance work. To be sure, that could also mean that its current workforce needs to learn new technology skills swiftly to stay relevant. Wipro is in the process of appointing individual leaders in each of the six industry-serving segments (which the company calls strategic business units) and five solution offering verticals or practices, who will be entrusted with the job of automating mundane maintenance work. Until now, Wipro's chief technology officer K.R. Sanjiv, in consultation with various segment heads used to decide which projects could use Holmes.