Hours before the Federal Reserve Bank of New York approved four fraudulent requests to send 81 million from a Bangladesh Bank account to cyber thieves, the Fed branch blocked those same requests because they lacked information required to transfer money, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Last week the smart watch company Pebble announced a Kickstarter campaign for a new device that has no watch face and lives on your key ring. While optimized for exercise (it streams Spotify and quantifies your run) the Pebble Core also can be retooled easily to perform a variety of different functions, limited only by the apps that developers might imagine. Buried in the company's Kickstarter pitch was one of those ideas: "Add a Bluetooth or wired headset to create an always-on walkie-talkie or personal voice assistant." The italics are mine, but today Pebble itself is boldfacing those last few words, by announcing that the Core will integrate the capabilities of Amazon's Alexa super-bot. Pebble has been upfront about its broad vision for the Core, and while its pocket gadget has no microphone, a simple mobile-phone earbud or Bluetooth headset enables two way voice interaction.

Robot-authored news stories rated'more credible' by humans Facebook's iOS apps describe photos to blind users China wants to beat Google's AlphaGo with own AI program The development of artificial intelligence is progressing so fast that humans will soon need a technological interface inserted into their brains to be able to keep up with the ever smarter machines, Elon Musk said at a tech conference in California this week. The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors was among a line-up of high-profile tech experts and entrepreneurs discussing the evolution of AI and machine learning at the Code Conference organised by tech publication Recode. He said that judging by the tempo of development, it is likely that AI systems will soon become so sophisticated that they will be able to create even more intelligent computers by themselves that could side-line the human race. Although Musk's comments may seem a bit far-fetched, other speakers at the conference, including Google CEO Sundar Pitchai and Amazon's chief Jeff Bezos, agreed that the technology could start affecting the world within the next five to 20 years. "I would say in five years, there's no doubt in my mind that cognitive AI will impact every decision made from healthcare to education to financial services," said Ginni Rometty, the CEO of IBM, which has been developing its own AI supercomputer, called Watson, since 2005. Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos, predicts that AI will dominate the technology sector in approximately 20 years.

Toyota and Honda have unveiled separate initiatives for car connectivity and artificial intelligence, the latest moves by Japan's auto industry to counter emerging tech rivals in Silicon Valley. Toyota has formed a partnership to create a global communications platform that will support unified car connectivity worldwide, rather than relying on varying networks in different markets. Meanwhile, Honda will establish a Honda R&D Innovation Lab in Tokyo around September to work on "intelligent technologies" beyond mechanical engineering, such as vehicle connectivity, robotics, brain research and visual recognition. The projects, announced independently on Thursday, June 2, underscore a new urgency felt by Japanese automakers to invest more in next-generation technologies for autonomous driving and safety systems. They are stepping up as entrants from outside the industry, such as Google and Uber, take the lead in the fields.

Google's secretive AI division is working on a'big red button' that can halt its artificial intelligence software. Researchers have previously warned that AI could threaten humanity, with doomsday scenarios of AIs taking over, with one expert involved in the new paper admitting Google's historic win over Go world champion proves AI can be'unpredictable and immoral'. Now the DeepMind team say they have the answer - an off switch. Google's DeepMind team say AI agents are'unlikely to behave optimally all the time' and have called for'safe interruptibility' to be built into systems. Google has set up an ethics board to oversee its work in artificial intelligence.

Back in March, Microsoft had announced that Windows 10 has surpassed 300 million active devices since its launch in July 2015 and now the company claims it is the most successful operating system till date. Despite the initial success, Microsoft is moving away from excessive dependence on Windows to new growth areas like artificial intelligence and conversational bots. At the Build Tour in Pune on Friday, Microsoft announced how the company is realigning its strategies on three pillars – cognitive computing, Augmented Reality and conversational bots. Microsoft, which is essentially out of the mobile business, is now relying on platforms like cloud computing and Cortana intelligence suite for its next growth verticals. At the Build Tour, the consensus was strongly in favour of Windows 10.

One video, for me, changed everything. It's footage from the old Atari game Breakout, the one where you slide a paddle left and right along the bottom of the screen, trying to destroy bricks by bouncing a ball into them. You may have read about the player of the game: an algorithm developed by DeepMind, the British artificial intelligence company whose AlphaGo programme also beat one of the greatest ever Go players, Lee Sedol, earlier this year. Perhaps you expect a computer to be good at computer games? Once they know what to do, they certainly do it faster and more consistently than any human. DeepMind's Breakout player knew nothing, however. It was not programmed with instructions on how the game works; it wasn't even told how to use the controls. All it had was the image on the screen and the command to try to get as many points as possible. At first, the paddle lets the ball drop into oblivion, knowing no better. Eventually, just mucking about, it knocks the ball back, destroys a brick and gets a point, so it recognises this and does it more often.

Practicing the scientific approach to the data exploration one should know at what extent certain method can be applied. Neural Nets are futile for the stock market's predictions. Monte-Carlo algorithms couldn't offer much help either, and poorly implemented Random Forest algorithm can literally ruin your vacation in South-East Asia, especially if it was implemented by NSA. In this article we will briefly introduce machine learning methods classification and see how they are relevant to the different lines of business. From the cradle to the grave, we are making decisions – from our first decision to attract mother's attention to one of our last decisions when asking the doctor for pain treatment.

Dogo goes up stairs, rolls out in pairs, and fits on a squadmate's back. Dogo is a new remotely operated robot made by Israel's General Robotics, and inside its tiny frame it carries another, more familiar weapon. And then they reveal their deadly secret. Nestled sideways inside the Dogo is a 9mm Glock 26 compact pistol. It's like the kind of thing Nerf would make, only it's real and instead of foam darts this shoots actual bullets to kill actual people. Like the Nerf toy, Dogo is remotely controlled from a special handset, which displays live video and lets the human remotely fire the weapon.

Nearly 250 million video surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the world, and chances are you've been seen by several of them today. Most people barely notice their presence anymore -- on the streets, inside stores, and even within our homes. We accept the fact that we are constantly being recorded because we expect this to have virtually no impact on our lives. But this balance may soon be upended by advancements in facial recognition technology. Soon anybody with a high-resolution camera and the right software will be able to determine your identity.