Staffers at McCann Erickson Japan in Tokyo recently met their new colleague: AI-CD? The concept was sparked by an idea at South by Southwest, and data-driven success stories -- including Netflix's and Buzzfeed's approaches in creating targeted original content -- helped to trigger the development of AI-CD beta. To set AI-CD beta apart as an advertising prodigy (albeit, a robotic one), it initially analyzed and categorized the winners of the All Japan Radio & Television Commercial Confederation annual CM Festival for the past 10 years, which celebrates creative excellence in TV advertising in Japan. Depending on the creative challenge, it mines patterns including how weather, location or current events have affected an existing campaign, or how related commercials have performed historically on YouTube. This logic-based direction then results in a targeted strategy for a product or brand, which is actually written out using a brush attached to a robotic arm.

We take a look at how robots are changing the world by counting down the top robotic technology right now. When it comes to robots, there are many ways you can look at them. But the fact is, most of that is just fantasy – the tales of sci-fi movies and novels. Of course, we'll more than likely see a day when robots are mainstream or even our equals, although that won't happen any time soon. They're mostly prototypes and elaborate plans put together by billion-dollar companies at this stage. However, that's not to say robotic technology doesn't have potential.

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 22, 2016) - Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU), China's leading search engine, today announced it has formed a self-driving car team in Silicon Valley focused on research, development and testing. The team will be part of Baidu's newly-created Autonomous Driving Unit (ADU). Baidu plans to grow the team to over 100 researchers and engineers by the end of the year. The team will include machine learning researchers as well as hardware and software engineers across a variety of technical domains, from robotics and computer vision to onboard computers and sensors. Additionally, the company is looking for individuals with experience in the automotive industry.

Internet giant Google has asserted that its Artificial Intelligence(AI) and cloud computing is the most lucrative and promising businesses in the tech industry. That AI type of service-based business is fast becoming the new way to reap profits in the tech industry, the California-based tech giant said. "We've always been doing cloud, it's just that we've been consuming it all internally at Google. But as we have grown, really matured in how we handle our data center investments and how we can do this at scale, we have definitely crossed over to the other side to where we can thoughtfully serve external customers," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said. "We have been investing in machine learning and AI for years, but I think we're at an exceptionally interesting tipping point where these technologies are really taking off. That is very, very applicable to businesses as well. So thoughtfully doing that externally we view as a big differentiator we have over others," Pichai added.

GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA – Wearing black headsets with tentacle-like sensors stretched over their foreheads, the competitors stared at cubes floating on computer screens as their small white drones prepared for takeoff. "Three, two, one … go!" the announcer hollered, and as the racers fixed their thoughts on pushing the cubes, the drones suddenly whirred, rose and buzzed through the air. Some struggled to move, while others zipped confidently across the finish line. The competition -- billed as the world's first drone race involving a brain-controlled interface -- involved 16 pilots using willpower to drive drones through a 10-yard (9.1-meter) dash over an indoor basketball court at the University of Florida on April 16. Organizers hope to make the event an annual intercollegiate spectacle, involving ever-more dynamic moves and challenges.

SEOUL--Humanity has fallen to artificial intelligence in checkers, chess, and, last month, Go, the complex ancient Chinese board game. But some of the world's biggest nerds are confident that machines will meet their Waterloo on the pixelated battlefields of the computer strategy game StarCraft. A key reason: Unlike machines, humans are good at lying. StarCraft, created in 1998, is one of the world's most popular computer game franchises. It pits three races against one another: the humanlike Terrans, the slimy insectoid Zerg and a mystical race with psionic powers called the Protoss.

Artificial intelligence is being used to reduce poaching. Scientists have developed an AI system that uses – and learns from – information on where poaching is taking place to map out the most effective patrols for rangers seeking to protect wildlife. Thousands of animals are illegally killed every day for their skin, traditional medicines and trophy hunting. As a result, wild tiger populations have decreased 95% over the past 100 years, black rhinos have reduced by 98% since 1960, and more than 30,000 elephants are killed each year for their ivory. Human patrols are the most direct way to protect wildlife from poachers.

Today, inside the towering glass and steel Four Seasons Hotel in downtown Seoul, South Korea, Google will put the future of artificial intelligence to the test. At one o'clock in the afternoon local time, a digital Google creation will challenge one of the world's top players at the game of Go, the ancient Eastern pastime that's often compared to chess--though it's exponentially more complex. This Google machine is called AlphaGo, and to win, it must mimic not just the analytical skills of a human, but at least a bit of human intuition. Over the years, machines have topped the best humans at checkers, chess, Othello, Scrabble, Jeopardy!, and so many other contests of human intellect. But they haven't beat the very best at Go.

It's fun to ponder a future filled with self-driving cars, a world with breezy commutes where robot navigators have made deadly crashes a thing of the past. But how far off is that future, really? Last month, Google suggested that this driverless utopia may actually be much further away than many people may realize. In a speech at SXSW in Austin, Google's car project director Chris Urmson explained that the day when fully autonomous vehicles are widely available, going anywhere that regular cars can, might be as much as 30 years away. There are still serious technical and safety challenges to overcome. In the near term, self-driving cars may be limited to more narrow situations and clearer weather.

Baidu, China's most popular search engine, like its US-based counterpart Google, is heavily investing in autonomous driving technologies and today it officially announced the launch of a self-driving car R&D center in Silicon Valley, right in Google's backyard. The company expects its team will grow to over 100 researchers and engineers by the end of the year. The company already moved several of its staff from its newly-created Autonomous Driving Unit (ADU) to Sunnyvale and recently hired a Tesla Autopilot software engineer. Liang Heng, a PhD graduate in Electrical Engineering from Stanford,joined Tesla's Autopilot team last year after CEO Eon Musk called for "hardcore software engineers" to join the company's effort to make the next generation of Autopilot fully autonomous. Now he leaves the automaker only 5 months later to join Baidu's autonomous driving team as a'Software Architect'.