TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan's Sony Corp said it plans to build up its artificial intelligence business and eventually turn it into a major revenue source, beginning with an investment in a U.S. startup. The electronics maker has invested an undisclosed sum in California-based Cogitai. The year-old firm, founded by three researchers, focuses on technology that allows machines to learn continually and autonomously from interaction in the real world. The move comes a time when major technology companies such as Facebook Inc, Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google are spending aggressively on AI ventures. "From an objective perspective, we are lagging behind," Chief Executive Hiroaki Kitano at Sony Computer Science Laboratories said in an interview. "But there are still unexplored areas – some in cyberspace but vastly more in the physical world," Kitano said.

In case you needed more proof that all our jobs will one day be occupied by robots, a Hong Kong V.C. firm has just named an artificial intelligence tool to its board of directors. The company's also insisting the tool will be treated as an "equal" to the other board members. A press release from Aging Analytics UK, a company that conducts research on biotechnology and regenerative medicine, made two announcements this morning: first, that they've launched an new A.I. tool called VITAL (Validating Investment Tool for Advancing Life Sciences); and second, that they've licensed VITAL to Hong Kong V.C. firm Deep Knowledge Ventures, where the tool will become an "equal member of its Board of Directors." Yes, that means it'll have exactly the same power as a living, breathing, presumably college-educated human being. VITAL uses machine learning to predict which life science companies will make for successful investments, the press release explains.

SoftBank Robotics Corp. said Thursday it has expanded opportunities for app developers to use Google's Android platform for its humanoid robot Pepper. It hopes to encourage more programmers to develop apps for the device. An Android-ready Pepper model will go on sale in July, though only for developers, and on Thursday an Android development toolkit was made available for download, Fumihide Tomizawa, SoftBank Robotics chief, told a news conference at the firm's headquarters in Tokyo. Previously, there was a development platform specially designed for Pepper, but it was not based on Android. Tomizawa said the number of developers could increase 100-fold, as there are only several thousand Pepper app designers but hundreds of thousands of Android coders.

CloudMinds, a cloud robotics start-up founded by the former head of the research division of China Mobile, has raised US 30 million seed financing from SB China Capital (SBCVC), Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., Walden International and Kaixuan Capital. Cloud robotics is an emerging field of robotics rooted in cloud computing and cloud storage centered around the benefits of converged infrastructure and shared services. Huang Xiaoqing left the Research Institution of China Mobile last March to launch CloudMinds, according to an article published by Caixin Media. "A robot with similar capabilities of a real human requires a computer system that may be one million times bigger in size than that of a human brain, which means the brain of a robot must be on the cloud," Huang told the Chinese media organization. CloudMinds is targeting to reveal a full-service housekeeping robot in 2025 to service individual families.

Game lovers are likely to be familiar with Nvidia's graphics processors. The US tech firm continues to derive the bulk of its revenue from gaming-related semiconductors, but there is now a new growth segment -- chips for artificial intelligence (AI). Business related to deep learning, a core part of an artificially intelligent machine, is one key factor behind Nvidia's impressive first-quarter results. The advanced machine learning function is being applied to numerous areas, including speech recognition, video search, face detection and self-driving vehicles. Nvidia is already working closely with automaker Tesla in development of driverless car technology, which deploys AI to detect pedestrians and track lanes and to recognize traffic signs.

I wanted to put some of my ideas together, so as usual I'm writing a blog post. These are all pretty basic ideas but maybe they are helpful to people who are new to thinking about machine learning! When explaining what machine learning is, I'm giving the example of predicting the country someone lives in from their first name. So John might be American and Johannes might be German. In this case, it's really easy to imagine what data you might want to do a good job at this -- just get the first names and current countries of every person in the world!

The world got its first glimpse of Allo at Google's yearly I/O conference on Wednesday. Its creators hope the Android and iOS app will transcend similar services like Amazon Alexa, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. Receiving a photo of clam linguini prompted Allo to offer responses like "Yummy!" and "I love linguini!" Known as Smart Reply, the feature may one day keep thumbs from worrying about autocorrect, as full conversations could be had at one tap per message. As Allo gets to "know" its user over time, other responses, such as "I wish I wasn't allergic," could conceivably be produced. The app will do more than just recognize images and suggest responses, however.

The science and technology wants to make our living easy but at the same time it is affecting our lifestyle and health. The scientists are curious beings and we know that but they are quite stubborn too when it comes to reaching their goals. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is cool if you think about it but at the same time it does have some drawbacks. Every technology has its cost like after sitting in air conditioner rooms we no longer are able to tolerate a bit of heat. Likewise invention of vehicles was needed to travel long distances but now people can't even walk a mile, nowadays everyone is using vehicles to reach very nearby places as well.

Futurist, author and inventor Ray Kurzweil delivered a keynote speech to 800 attendees at 2016 Tech Leadership Conference in Waterloo, Canada. Ray Kurzweil envisions the future -- by year 2020, 3D printing will transform manufacturing. People will print their own clothing, he predicts. In Asia, builders are making small office buildings using modules made by 3D printers. Inventors created jet engines and cars out of printed parts, Kurzweil says. Impact on a declining manufacturing industry could be catastrophic. Jobs will be lost, manufacturing will turn into an information industry, but there's a silver lining behind industry disruption, he says. The fashion industry will explode with new ideas as people design, make and share clothes using 3D printers. Kurzweil sees manufacturing moving into open source design and production.

Life would be pretty dull without imagination. In fact, maybe the biggest problem for computers is that they don't have any. That's the belief motivating the founders of Vicarious, an enigmatic AI company backed by some of the most famous and successful names in Silicon Valley. Vicarious is developing a new way of processing data, inspired by the way information seems to flow through the brain. The company's leaders say this gives computers something akin to imagination, which they hope will help make the machines a lot smarter.