The recent killing of the Taliban Chieftain, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, by a drone inside the Pakistan province of Baluchistan, is a striking reminder that we have entered a futuristic world where war is waged by flying killer robots and that we have witnessed a massive leap forward in the history of human conflict. Given that war accelerates history and the Islamic world is incapable of producing the cell phones on which its Islamists plot to kill us, the mullah's death by drone reminds us of immutable laws governing the fall of civilizations. Declining civilizations will always face superior firepower from ascending civilizations because sovereignty is only temporarily uncontested. The U.S. agency that conducts drone warfare worldwide, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), was constituted in 2002 and has grown ten-fold since its inception. Staffed by both the CIA and military, it now operates in super-secret locations across the globe. For the first ten years of its existence, JSOC conducted operations which were largely under reported and therefore garnered very little public scrutiny.

Honda Motor Co. said Thursday that subsidiary Honda R&D Co. plans to establish a research and development base specializing in artificial intelligence in the Akasaka district of Tokyo in September. The major automaker will consolidate almost all of its AI-related R&D activities in the nation into the new base, called Honda R&D Innovation Lab Tokyo. Honda aims to speed up the development of robots and autonomous driving technologies, which it hopes to put into practical use on expressways in 2020. Honda R&D, in the city of Wako, Saitama Prefecture, is known for developing the Asimo humanoid robot. Honda believes that having an AI base in central Tokyo will make it easier for the company to cooperate with universities and other institutions, as well as information and technology companies.

If you want to get under Diane Bryant's skin these days, just ask her about GPUs. The head of Intel's powerful data center group was at Computex in Taipei this week, in part to explain how the company's latest Xeon Phi processor is a good fit for machine learning. Machine learning is the process by which companies like Google and Facebook train software to get better at performing AI tasks including computer vision and understanding natural language. It's key to improving all kinds of online services: Google said recently that it's rethinking everything it does around machine learning. "It's a big opportunity, and there will be a hockey stick where every business will be using machine learning," she said in an interview.

Japan's Mouse Computer has developed add-on biometric sensors that will bring Windows Hello to any PC running Windows 10. Windows Hello is Microsoft's biometric security system. It allows users to dump passwords for facial or fingerprint recognition, but only on PCs that have the correct hardware. Many new PCs do, but generations of older machines that can run Windows 10 don't have the infrared camera or fingerprint sensors that are required. That's where the new add-on peripherals come in.

People often get stuck when they are asked to improve the performance of existing predictive models. What usually they do is try different algorithms and check their results. But often they end up not improving the model. Here are some of the steps you can take to boost your existing models. The question is when we should ask for more data?

When Adrian Ludwig describes the ideal approach to computer security, he pulls out an analogy. Computer security, he says, should work like the credit card business. A credit card company, he explains, doesn't eliminate risk. It manages risk, using data describing the market as a whole to build a different risk profile (and a different interest rate) for each individual. Computer security, Ludwig believes, should work in much the same way. "The model of good and bad--white and black--that the security community prescribes?" he says.

Shepherds – yes, this is a reference to the popular medical drama "Grey's Anatomy" – who work in hospitals around the world may soon get a new assistant. No, not just another intern but an extra pair of virtual eyes to help them better diagnose stroke victims. Tel Aviv-based MedyMatch Technology Ltd., which hopes to have its first commercially available product as soon as the first half of 2017, is developing an artificial intelligence (AI) platform for critical areas of patient care. The platform is meant to help study data more quickly and accurately than the human eye, and help physicians with their clinical decisions in a wide set of healthcare issues. MedyMatch's first area of focus will be for stroke patients.

Streaming video helps sell shoes because Amazon Prime members buy more, Bezos says. Inc. chief executive officer spoke at Recode's Code conference Tuesday night about artificial intelligence, privacy on the internet, his goals with the Washington Post, Amazon's ambitions in entertainment, and more. Amazon is No. 1 in the Internet Retailer 2016 Top 500 Guide. For Netflix, Amazon is a particularly complex competitor because their goals aren't the same. The way Bezos looks at streaming video: "It helps us sell more shoes," he said.

Sony (NYSE:SNE) outlined a cautious outlook for the financial year 2016. However this did not convince the market as the stock price strengthened further on its release. As I pointed out in an article in March Sony has set out a strong position in the youth dynamic. This is headlined by its move into Virtual Reality and further Playstation products, as well as a strengthening position in the fast-growing streaming Music business. Its successful re-organization moves and new products I highlighted in an earlier article. The establishment of their "Business Incubation Group" to brainstorm on new products and new concepts shows that creativity is back at the front of the company's agenda.

Google announced new messaging app Allo at its I/O developers conference today. Allo is a smart messaging app that makes your conversations easier. Like WhatsApp it's based on your phone number, so you can get in touch with anyone in your phonebook. And with deeply integrated machine learning, Allo has Smart Reply built in (similar to Inbox). So you can respond to messages without typing.