Although financial terms of the deal were not revealed, it's said that an undisclosed number of SalesPredict employees will be joining eBay's team, working out of the Israeli development center in Netanya, including SalesPredict chief executive Yaron Zakai-Or, who will be director of product management for technology, and chief technology officer Kira Radinsky, who's been named director of data science and the chief scientist for eBay in Israel. Founded in 2012, SalesPredict specializes in helping businesses grow revenue through analytics that identify ideal potential prospects, thereby improving conversion to actual customers. It follows similar moves, including its pickup of AI startup ExpertMaker in May. In a statement, Zakai-Or explained that by being a part of eBay, "we will help arm eBay sellers with more information about the value of items, ultimately helping to increase customer sales conversions." The inclusion of SalesPredict seems to match the second part of this strategic effort.

AlphaGo's uncanny success at the game of Go was taken by many as a death knell for the dominance of the human intellect, but Google researcher David Silver doesn't see it that way. Instead, he sees a world of potential benefits. As one of the lead architects behind Google DeepMind's AlphaGo system, which defeated South Korean Go champion Lee Se-dol 4 games to 1 in March, Silver believes the technology's next role should be to help advance human health. "We'd like to use these technologies to have a positive impact in the real world," he told an audience of AI researchers Tuesday at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in New York. With more possible board combinations than there are atoms in the universe, Go has long been considered the ultimate challenge for AI researchers.

A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry. The more I think about the recent breakthroughs in machine learning and deep learning algorithms, the more I think we are finally heading toward a smarter software future. Our smartphones are really not that smart when it comes to the intelligence equation. That is about to change. For years, I had been writing about the need for better predictive intelligence in our software.

With the JIMU robot, UBTECH Robotics, a Schenzen-based company that has been around for eight years, is stepping into a space that's quickly getting cluttered with motorized toys. The company already has a lineup that includes industrial bots in China and commercial humanoids like Alpha 2, but now they're using their existing infrastructure to build affordable, programmable robots for kids, eight and older, with DIY inclinations. They might also find a home in schools that are looking to adopt coding in their curriculum. The MeeBot kit, which is available exclusively at Apple stores for 130 starting today, comes with interlocking parts that include colorful blocks, connectors, motors and a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. A platinum grey control box with a U-shaped line across the front doubles as a smiling face.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba introduced its first automobile last week, the RX5 sport utility vehicle, set to be delivered to customers in August. The company called the vehicle, made with Chinese carmaker SAIC, the first "Internet car" in a news release. It will run software developed by Alibaba's YunOS division to connect with other smart devices, the company said. It will retail for 148,800 yuan, or 22,300. Alibaba in its announcement said the car will use the company's own e-commerce platform to deliver such services as finding parking spaces, locating gas stations or making restaurant reservations.

The use of a robot to deliver an explosive device and kill the Dallas shooting suspect has intensified the debate over a future of "killer robots". "Other options would have exposed our officers to greater danger," the Dallas police chief said. Remote killing is not new in warfare. Technology has always been driven by military application, including allowing killing to be carried out at distance - prior examples might be the introduction of the longbow by the English at Crecy in 1346, then later the Nazi V1 and V2 rockets. More recently, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones such as the Predator and the Reaper have been used by the US outside of traditional military battlefields.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition is eBay's latest move to build up its machine-learning capabilities in order to clean up its vast product catalog. "For our buyers, it will help us better understand the price differentiating attributes of our products, and, for our sellers, it will help us build out the predictive models that can define the probability of selling a given product, at a given price over time," explained Amit Menipaz, eBay's vice president and general manager of structured data. The acquisition of SalesPredict follows eBay's announcement in May that it is buying the Swedish machine-learning startup Expertmaker. Once the acquisition is complete, SalesPredict CEO Yaron Zakai-Or will serve as a director of product management, technology.

Big tech firms acquiring artificial intelligence startups are paying top dollar for them and are increasingly looking for those yet to bring in revenue, bucking the trend of wider tech M&A. "A good AI engineer is worth more than many company chief executives right now," said Victor Basta of advisory firm Magister Advisors which identified the pursuit of talent in AI as one of the most significant drivers of acquisitions in the sector, leading to significantly large sums being spent on relatively small and early stage startups. The analysis found that the average acquisition was valued at 2.4m ( 1.8m) per employee for AI startups based on 26 deals in Europe, the US and Israel since 2014. Twitter's surprise 150m deal for Magic Pony last month had a significantly higher value of 10m per employee. It also noted that there were more companies chasing each startup as the sector attracts a greater range of businesses which would traditionally not have competed with each other in the race to build their AI capabilities.

When a police robot is used to kill, one has to ask if we are at a tipping point. The dangerous events in Dallas, in which 12 policemen were shot, made it seem permissible to repurpose a robot to apply lethal force. When an armed suspect refused to surrender, a Remotec robot armed with plastic explosives was dispatched to kill him. This wasn't Robocop and it didn't operate autonomously. It was a bomb disposal robot remotely controlled by police officers.

Back in December of 2015, Beijing city government issued its first red alert to signal that air pollutant levels were significant enough to cause risk to human health. As part of active red alert protocols, the city demands that automobile usage be reduced by 50%, and that heavy-load vehicles like garbage trucks and semis be banned from the road. This, in turn, slows local business, industry, and commerce to a near grinding halt. Flight cancellations are another common and undesirable side effect of these red alert transportation restrictions. Even worse still, however, are the ways in which this level of air pollution is affecting human health throughout Beijing and China at-large.