The minute-long video, posted Monday by Iran's judiciary news agency, shows Siamak Namazi amid a montage of clips, including an Iranian drone flying over a U.S. aircraft carrier and American sailors on their knees being detained in January.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Hard-liners in Iran have released a video showing a detained Iranian-American businessman for the first time since his arrest last October. The minute-long video, posted Monday by Iran's judiciary news agency, shows Siamak Namazi amid a montage of clips, including an Iranian drone flying over a U.S. aircraft carrier and American sailors on their knees being detained in January. The video has no audio other than what sounds like a dramatic film score. It shows Namazi's U.S. passport, a United Arab Emirates ID card and a clip of him in a conference room, his arms raised at his sides. Namazi is a son of Baquer Namazi, a former UNICEF representative who once served as governor of Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan province under the U.S.-backed shah.

The stakes are high and the largest public and private technology companies have set their sights on transportation as the next growth area. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that transportation represents 17% of consumer spending, topped only by housing expenses at 33%. Together, Google, Apple, Uber and Tesla pack the biggest threat to established automakers. They have spurred a flurry of deal making, engineering team building, and set a pace for innovation that the automobile industry has not seen for decades. Google: The data giant ready to fund any project to put them ahead Google has heavily promoted its work with autonomous vehicles and stands to benefit from one of the most aggressive mapping endeavors ever undertaken on our planet.

KARIYA, Japan & TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--DENSO Corporation and Toshiba Corporation have reached a basic agreement to jointly develop an artificial intelligence technology called Deep Neural Network-Intellectual Property (DNN-IP), which will be used in image recognition systems which have been independently developed by the two companies to help achieve advanced driver assistance and automated driving technologies. DNN, an algorithm modeled after the neural networks of the human brain, is expected to perform recognition processing as accurately as, or even better than the human brain. To achieve automated driving, automotive computers need to be able to identify different road traffic situations including a variety of obstacles and road markings, availability of road space for driving, and potentially dangerous situations. In image recognition based on conventional pattern recognition and machine learning, objects that need to be recognized by computers must be characterized and extracted in advance. In DNN-based image recognition, computers can extract and learn the characteristics of objects on their own, thus significantly improving the accuracy of detection and identification of a wide range of objects.

I've been thinking about bots lately (who hasn't?) and it occurred to me that the landscape is fairly confusing. Sure Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Kik have launched bot platforms, but a platform doesn't answer the questions: What type of bot is good for my business? And do I even need to build a bot at all? Luckily, with some help from a presentation by Josh Jacobs, the President of Kik,--one of the largest bot-platforms on the market--I was able to codify the types of bots that you'll be seeing a lot more of in 2017. Think of them as a non-fleshy friend that you can text back-and-forth with. Here's an example: rather than going to your favorite flight-aggregator app to find a sweet airline deal, savvy texters are asking travel bots to find them the cheapest flights from the comfort of their favorite messaging platform.

Apple CEO Tim Cook hinted that Japan has a big part to play in the company's ongoing development of AI, as he continued his travels around the country via bullet train on Monday. Speaking to Nikkei Asian Review, Cook revealed that Apple's new advanced R&D center in Yokohama, currently scheduled for completion in December, would focus on "deep engineering" and would be "very different" from the R&D base Apple is building in China, without giving away specifics. Photo via Tim Cook However, Cook intimated that one of its main focuses would be on developing Apple's artificial intelligence services – which recently drew some criticism in the press – and emphasized that the company wanted to leverage specifically Japanese expertise in the field. "AI is horizontal in nature, running across all products, and is used in ways that most people don't even think about," said Cook. "We want the AI to increase your battery life, to recommend music to Apple Music subscribers... [to] help you remember where you parked your car."Japan's robotics heritage is legendary, coming on the back of years of successfully building industrial robots, however the state of its AI research remains ambiguous, given its relative lack of investment in deep learning from large amounts of analyzed data, which U.S. companies like Facebook and Google are already heavily researching. To improve on this front, Japan has just opened a Center for Advanced Integrated Intelligence Research in Tokyo (RIKEN), which specifically aims to develop systems of AI that will be able to solve problems using "Big Data".

Apple will celebrate the iPhone's 10th anniversary next year, but in chief executive Tim Cook's view, the technology is anything but mature. The Nikkei Asian Review caught up with Cook aboard a bullet train last week and asked him about artificial intelligence, his plans for Asia, and the experience of succeeding Steve Jobs. Cook, who was visiting Japan for the first time as CEO, said Apple will open a research and development base in Yokohama, near Tokyo, later this year. The facility -- the first of its kind outside the U.S. -- will develop AI and other technologies. Cook described it as a center for "deep engineering" and said it will be "very different" from the R&D base Apple plans to build in China. "I cannot tell you the specifics," he said.

Artificial intelligence, or "AI," is the current direction of technological innovation, but if the U.S. does not step up its game, another world power may lead the future. The number of journal articles mentioning "deep learning" or "deep neural networks" produced by China…

Technology company Nauto has entered into agreements with BMW i Ventures and Toyota Research Institute, as well as with Allianz Ventures, part of the leading global financial service provider and insurance company Allianz Group. Nauto developed deep learning capabilities that run both in the cloud and on retrofit devices that can be mounted in any vehicle. Nauto is already deployed into commercial passenger, logistics and delivery fleets and enables these fleets to manage vehicle and driver safety and operate more efficiently. Nauto detects driver attention, coaches drivers and warns of collisions, keeps fleet managers in touch with their drivers and helps them optimize vehicle deployment. In fact, Nauto claims, its algorithms provide 5X more risk differentiation between the best and the worst drivers.

On Thursday, before President Obama had arrived, the Frontiers conference began with several sessions explaining how artificial intelligence (AI) and data science affect various levels of policy. The local and national sessions, called tracks, took place on the second floor of the Cohon Center. The panels were a who's who of academic and corporate giants in the field of AI such as Engineering Director at Uber's Advanced Technologies Center Raffi Krikorian and Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Research Jeanette Wing. The local policy track also featured municipal government officials who embody the spirit of making data "work for us" as the president often says. The National Frontiers track opened with Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf telling the story of innovation in Pennsylvania, beginning with William Penn's idea of freedom of conscience, winding through the founding ideas of American government born in Pennsylvania, touching on the agricultural and industrial revolutions, and finally landing on the transportation revolution which still roils on today as self driving cars become frequent sights on the streets of Pittsburgh.