BENGALURU: Former Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani once said to American journalist Thomas Friedman that the global playing field is being levelled -- a reference to the global, web-enabled playing field that had allowed countries like India to challenge developed ones in areas like software. That statement became the trigger for the title of Friedman's bestselling book'The World is Flat'. Now, the current CEO of Infosys, Vishal Sikka, is laying out a fresh thesis. He says a "far bigger" disruptive force is emerging in the IT industry "than the flat world shift from about 20 years ago" - automation, enabled by artificial intelligence (AI). "All our clients look to us for help with innovation, in bringing digital and computing technologies to their businesses' future... In all my meetings with clients, in all their communication, this is crystal clear. They no longer want engagements that deliver to a bottom line, they need to see the value, the proactive generation of innovation in their engagements with vendors. And increasingly, the need for IT innovation is outside the IT teams," he said in an email to employees ahead of the company's flagship client showcase called Confluence in San Francisco.

Nietzsche, if alive today, will probably be convinced that artificial intelligence will be the final nail in the coffin of god (reference to his famous statement: god is dead). Nietzsche's controversial statement, which is widely understood to be referring to the concept that science will diminish the role and belief system related to religions (the rise of nihilism), can be resurrected to analyze the developments in AI. Religion has been an extremely important part of our species. From the recent archeological findings in Gobekli Tepe (Turkey), experts now believe that 11,000 years ago, before humans settled into organized farming communities, hunters and gatherers erected a temple for worship (1). It means that religion plays such an important role in our lives that before we built our own homes, we built homes to hoist gods and goddesses.

Anyone looking for a book about driverless cars -- smart, wide-ranging, nontechnical, easy to understand -- was pretty much out of luck until "Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead" was published in September. The authors, Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman, have a reputation for clear, succinct writing about emerging technologies. It's geared toward nonexperts, but scientists, engineers and computer programmers can learn new things too. Lipson is a roboticist and professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University, where he directs the Creative Machines Lab. Kurman, a former product manager and industry analyst at Microsoft, is an author and speaker with a specialty in technology and its effect on our daily lives and the economy.

In the popular 2014 animated film Big Hero 6, the protagonist has a robot called Max. This robot Max follows the commands of its master and scans a human to detect any physical harm done. Such a robot seems to be a novelty to own in case one would get the chance. But now a Hong Kong-based company has made it possible for us to own a robot which would follow our commands and work accordingly. NXRobo has created the first personalized family robot, the BIG-i robot.

When the engineers had at last finished their work, Eugenia Kuyda opened a console on her laptop and began to type. "This is your digital monument." It had been three months since Roman Mazurenko, Kuyda's closest friend, had died. Kuyda had spent that time gathering up his old text messages, setting aside the ones that felt too personal, and feeding the rest into a neural network built by developers at her artificial intelligence startup. She had struggled with whether she was doing the right thing by bringing him back this way. At times it had even given her nightmares. But ever since Mazurenko's death, Kuyda had wanted one more chance to speak with him. A message blinked onto the screen. "You have one of the most interesting puzzles in the world in your hands," it said. Born in Belarus in 1981, Roman Mazurenko was the only child of Sergei, an engineer, and Victoria, a landscape architect. They remember him as an unusually serious child; when he was 8 he wrote a letter to his descendents declaring his most cherished values: wisdom and justice. In family photos, Mazurenko roller-skates, sails a boat, and climbs trees. Average in height, with a mop of chestnut hair, he is almost always smiling.

TAIPEI – Pepper, SoftBank Corp.'s humanoid robot, greeted customers at a Taiwan bank and a life insurer on Thursday, one of the first countries outside Japan to use the shiny machine in a front-line role with clients. The robot was handed an employee ID card at a First Commercial Bank branch in Taipei and joined staff in an exercise routine before meeting the public. "I think this is pretty good for customers . . . to kill time or to have more fun interacting with Pepper," said bank customer Chang Cheng-kang. First Commercial, a unit of First Financial Holding Co. which plans to roll out 20 Peppers island-wide, said the robots would mainly interact with customers. Pepper also started work on Thursday for Cathay Life Insurance, an arm of Cathay Financial Holding Co., which plans to deploy 10 robots.

There are many arguments surrounding whether or not marijuana should be grown and used for medical reasons. But the impact on the climate is one factor in the debate that may have been overlooked, - until now. A new report, by a clean energy policy research institute, has found growing marijuana makes up one per cent of energy use in states like Colorado and Washington. The impact on the climate is one factor in the debate that may have been overlooked, until now. A new report, by a clean energy policy research institute, has found growing marijuana makes up 1 per cent of energy use in states like Colorado and Washington.

Pop culture has primed us to think that our robot friends of the future will be quick-witted quipsters. Television and films have their fair share of sardonic androids, from the foul-mouthed alcoholic Bender in Futurama to the acerbic J.A.R.V.I.S. from Ironman. But the reality of such amusing sidekicks remains far off. Cognitively speaking, sarcasm is one of the most complex forms of human expression--and it's therefore one of the hardest to teach AI systems. While voice recognition, machine translation, and other such tools are constantly improving, AI still lacks the ability to detect this uniquely human linguistic trait in either verbal or written conversation.

Any future war with Russia or China would be "extremely lethal and fast" and produce violence on the scale not seen for 60 years, according to US generals. Artificial intelligence and automated weapons systems will accelerate any future conflict, Major General William Hix has warned. "A conventional conflict in the near future will be extremely lethal and fast," he told a future-of-the-Army panel on Tuesday, Defense One reports. "And we will not own the stopwatch." General Hix described his vision of accelerated future warfare: "The speed of events are likely to strain our human abilities.

Samsung Electronics Co. is acquiring Viv Labs Inc., a U.S.-based artificial-intelligence software company, seeking to bolster its expertise as smartphones become virtual assistants for complex tasks. The deal is a coup for Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung; the developers behind Viv also founded Siri, which was sold to Apple Inc. and became the voice-based digital assistant on iPhones and other gadgets. Viv has been working on an AI platform that understands plain language so that users can interact with computers and software programs. "We envision that our users will be able to freely use their smartphones even without touching their interfaces," said Rhee, who runs the mobile division's software research-and-development business. "A lot of your phone's fun functionalities will be covered by voice and conversation."