DUBAI // A 125cm-robot rescuer is the latest addition to Dubai Municipality's safety system for the emirate's beaches. The robot, which is shaped like a boat and manoeuvred by remote control, can reach a speed of 35kph or approximately 12 times the speed of a human. The goal behind launching this type of technology was to keep beachgoers safe, said Alya Al Harmoudi, director of the Environment Department at Dubai Municipality. "The move is also in response to the Dubai government directives to keep up with the latest technologies and innovations," she said, adding: "It was to ensure that all the necessary requirements and precautions are in place to enhance the rescue operations on the public beaches of Dubai." The device is fitted with an electric pump to facilitate movement and speed and travel up to a distance of 130km.

In an effort to bolster its hold in artificial intelligence in developing Siri and alikes, Apple has acquired a Hyderabad (India)-based machine learning startup Tuplejump–that helps companies to store, process and visualize Big Data– for an undisclosed amount. "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans," While Rai and Buddhavarapu, according to their LinkedIn pages, have moved to Apple–working as Software Engineer and Engineering Manager respectively– post-acquisition, Alur has joined Anaplan and is heading the engineering team at the cloud-based analytics platform for sales, operations and finance sector. Techcrunch also cited that, Apple is particularly interested in Tumplejump built "FiloDB", an open-source project that aims at applying machine learning concepts and analytics to massive amounts of complex data sets. While Tuplejump, as a standalone company, claimed to be an early adopter of Big Data technology and help Fortune 500 companies manage the same. According to Venturebeat, the Tumplejump team was well acquainted with open source big data tools such as the Apache Spark processing engine, the Apache Cassandra NoSQL database, and the Apache Kafka via publish-subscribe messaging system.

Google has achieved something major in artificial intelligence (AI) research. A computer system it has built to play the ancient Chinese board game Go has managed to win a match against a professional Go player: the European champion Fan Hui. The research is documented in a paper in this week's issue of the journal Nature. The Google system, named AlphaGo, swept France's Hui, who is ranked a 2-dan, in a five-game match at the Google DeepMind office in London in October. AlphaGo played against Hui on a full 19-by-19 Go board and received no handicap.

Yes Bank, India's 5th largest private sector bank, has announced that YES TAG - India's 1st Chatbot-based banking app, has crossed the mark of 10,000 transactions. YES TAG was launched recently by Yes Bank and offers a "conversational smart banking" experience. Customers can download YES TAG and enjoy seamless Chat Banking on five messaging platforms: Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Skype, Telegram and WeChat. YES TAG app enables the chat bot to perform easy, anywhere and anytime banking. For instance, users can simply launch Facebook Messenger app from YES TAG and send'BAL' to the Yes Bank bot to know their account balance.

Apple Inc. has acquired Indian machine-learning start-up Tuplejump Software Pvt Ltd as it seeks to expand its expertise in artificial intelligence. The iPhone maker bought the Hyderabad, India-based company in June, according to a person familiar with the deal who asked not to be identified. Tuplejump's software specializes in processing and analysing big sets of data quickly. The deal was reported earlier by TechCrunch. The purchase price wasn't disclosed.

Apple has just triggered a flurry of speculations as news was confirmed that it had acquired Tuplejump Software Pvt Ltd., a machine learning company operating in Hyderabad, India. The acquisition was reportedly completed last June and it rounded up the series of Apple startup purchases dabbling in artificial intelligence. Previously, the company acquired Turi Inc. for 200 million and it was followed by Emotient for a still unconfirmed amount. This last company is known in the industry for its employment of AI on facial expressions. These purchases are widely believed to be part of Apple's drive to improve its virtual assistant technology amid growing competition with Google.

Tech giant Apple Inc. has acquired Hyderabad-based machine learning startup Tuplejump as part of efforts to boost its artificial intelligence capabilities. The development was first reported by tech news portal TechCrunch. The startup, which had a dozen employees, was launched by three Indian engineers--Rohit Rai, Satyaprakash Buddhavarappu and Deepak Alur--in 2013. The first two co-founders have joined Apple while Alur is now working with US cloud-tech firm Anaplan. Terms of this deal are not clear.

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Public perception of A.I. and robots has changed often in the last 100 years. A.I. robots have been represented in pop culture as both friendly helpers like Wall-E, and sentient computer killers like HAL 9000. But now that actual homes and automobiles run on smart technology, it's no longer just pop culture. As robots are starting to look an awful lot like humans, science fiction is starting to look a lot less like fiction. If true A.I. (i.e. a machine/robot as smart and with behavior capabilities as skillful and flexible as ours) becomes a reality, is a world where humans have been replaced as dominant species nigh?

Bengaluru: Wipro Ltd expects its artificial intelligence platform Holmes to offset the pricing decline in commoditized outsourcing contracts, a development that could help India's third-largest software services firm arrest falling profitability in the current financial year. "We are currently deploying Holmes very aggressively," K.R. Sanjiv, the chief technology officer at Wipro, said in an interview. "Overall profitability is a function of many things, the pricing, how we structure the contracts. But certainly hyper automation should result in a beneficial impact and you can see the first meaningful impact by the end of March 2017." The comments should bring some relief to Wipro investors.