Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robo-advising are hot sectors in the Fintech space. Kavout is a company that wants to provide powerful AI tools for all investors and, for the time being, these tools are free. Alex Lu, CEO and co-founder of Kavout, explains that hedge funds and investment banks are rapidly hiring AI and machine learning developers – pointing to the fact that Goldman Sachs has more software engineers than Facebook. "None of this is a coincidence," says Lu. "The big players know that there is much more to be gained in the markets by investing in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Our aim is to make those technologies available to all investors."

An automotive venture backed by China tech giant Tencent aims to launch an electric self-driving car before 2020, entering a crowded field dominated by U.S.-based Tesla, the chief executive told Reuters on Tuesday.

DETROIT/SAN FRANCISCO, July 12 (Reuters) - Concerns raised by the first reported fatality in a semi-automated car were expected to speed adoption of more sensitive technology to help vehicles see and drive themselves safely, increasing demand on the emerging autonomous vehicle technology industry, investors and analysts said. Goldman Sachs forecasts the market for advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles will grow from about 3 billion last year to 96 billion in 2025 and 290 billion in 2035. More than half of that revenue in 20 years, Goldman estimates, will come from radar, cameras and lidar, a sensor that uses laser - all tools considered essential to building vehicles that can pilot themselves. The May 7 death of Ohio technology company owner Joshua Brown in a Tesla Motors Inc Model S while the car's semi-automated Autopilot system was engaged highlighted the limitations of current automated driving systems. Tesla's Autopilot system uses cameras and radar, but not lidar.

Look closely at Zhang Wei's portrait of Michael Jackson and you'll see something it isn't quite right. The eyes are wrong, the lips are a bit thin, the hair too straight. The image is among the 72 portraits in Artificial Theater, Wei's sharp commentary on the influence of Western pop culture on China. Wei, who lives in Beijing, has pondered China's changing cultural identity for awhile. He was born not long after the country opened to foreign trade in 1978, and has since seen outside influences pour in.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has spelled out the technologies the company believes will reshape enterprise. Chatbots, machine learning, augmented reality and cloud-based automation will be commonplace within businesses in the near future, Nadella told the company's Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto today. During his keynote, Nadella talked about Microsoft's efforts to help businesses incorporate each of these technologies and satisfy what he said was a desire among CEOs "to use digital technology to change their business outcomes". Microsoft HoloLens is an untethered headset that overlays digital information and images on top of the real world around you. Nadella described the "mixed reality" offered by HoloLens as a sea-change in personal computing, which would transform training within business.

Just as text messaging has become a mainstream form of communication, attention is shifting to the chatbot as the next big thing for information management and customer service. Chatbots are computer programs that interpret human speech or written inquiries and decide which information is being sought. Although chatbots have been around since the 1960s, they have evolved into tools for giving out details or taking orders, such as when people search for a job or buy a movie ticket. The chatbot picks up keywords from sentences and matches them with a database to create replies. Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence and big data processing technology, the machines today can analyze and understand a wide range of speech and produce the exact services sought, said Goshi Yonekura, chief technology officer of Tokyo-based AI developer Alt Inc.

A Chinese automotive startup is raising money with the stated aim of launching its first electric self-driving car by 2020, company executives told news outlets Tuesday, and the first round of funding is expected to be completed by September. Future Mobility Corp. is one of several Chinese startups in the electric vehicles industry, and is backed by heavyweight investors, including internet giant Tencent Holdings, electronics manufacturer Foxconn and car dealership group China Harmony New Energy Auto Holding. In March this year, it poached its leadership team from BMW's electric vehicle line, and in May, at least two executives from Tesla Motors came on board as well. CEO Carsten Breitfeld, who was project manager for the BMW i8 plug-in hybrid sports car before moving to Future Mobility, told Reuters that unlike Tesla, the company will not focus on only one model at a time or have limited production of its models. "Right from the beginning we define the platform, right from the beginning we define the production process to be mass production and right from the beginning we think of more than one model, a family of models, defined from this platform," he said.

Are you on to the next big thing? Does your product have the potential to change lives everywhere? If your software startup is working on an innovation or a brilliant idea, then this might be your first, big opportunity to connect with IDG Ventures India, a leading Indian, early-stage, venture capital firm. IDG Ventures India has launched the Software Innovators' 2016 programme to provide assistance to startups across the software products space. Sudhir Sethi, Founder Chairman, IDG Ventures India, says, "The Software Innovators Program looks to discover disruptive software product companies from India, with a potential to build a global foot print in the machine learning, artificial intelligence, SaaS, fintech and security areas amongst others. This program follows our successful software investments, including, Manthan, Newgen, Fintellix, Unbxd, and Uniphore."

DETROIT/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Concerns raised by the first reported fatality in a semi-automated car were expected to speed adoption of more sensitive technology to help vehicles see and drive themselves safely, increasing demand on the emerging autonomous vehicle technology industry, investors and analysts said. Goldman Sachs forecasts the market for advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles will grow from about 3 billion last year to 96 billion in 2025 and 290 billion in 2035. More than half of that revenue in 20 years, Goldman estimates, will come from radar, cameras and lidar, a sensor that uses laser – all tools considered essential to building vehicles that can pilot themselves. The May 7 death of Ohio technology company owner Joshua Brown in a Tesla Motors Inc Model S while the car's semi-automated Autopilot system was engaged highlighted the limitations of current automated driving systems. Tesla's Autopilot system uses cameras and radar, but not lidar.

A robot has been built with the specific intention of possibly harming someone, a decision it makes of its own volition at least insofar as a robot can. Alexander Reben, a kinetic engineer and an artist, has built the robot to challenge one of the most famous pop cultural rules of robotics and artificial intelligence, Asimov's Three Laws. The Laws, invented by science fiction legend Isaac Asimov, were meant to counteract the the status quo of sci-fi, what Asimov felt were dreary ministrations about the potential dangers of technology. First, a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Second, a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.