It's a good time to be Alphabet Inc. (GOOG), the parent company of Google. The holding company that owns Google, YouTube and Android -- as well as so-called moonshots like self-driving cars, the home-networking division Nest and Google Fiber -- is expected to turn in healthy first-quarter results on Thursday, driven by its dominant position in online search and display advertising. On Wednesday, the European Commission is expected to formally charge Google for favoring its own apps and services on its Android mobile operating system, which powers more than 80 percent of the world's smartphones. That will be the latest in a decade of entanglements with regulators on both sides of the Atlantic; Google also got some bad press in Britain earlier this year for having paid just 185 million in taxes over the past decade. Also confronting Google -- and the rest of the tech industry -- is how to manage government and law enforcement requests for information.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer delivers the keynote address at the Yahoo Mobile Developer Conference in San Francisco on Feb. 18, 2016. SAN FRANCISCO -- The news of the day was about Yahoo's latest quarterly earnings, but inquiring minds were riveted on bidding for the company's core Internet business. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer on Tuesday didn't tell curious analysts and the media much, making it clear she wouldn't detail the initial bids for the embattled company or how Yahoo's business trajectory beyond this year impacts that process. But if first quarter results are any indication, the future isn't bright. Yahoo reported 859 million in adjusted revenue, down 17% from 1.04 billion in 2015, and compared to 1.09 billion in 2014.

If you thought you were good at badminton, then step aside and take a look at this robot champion hit a few shots against a human competitor in China. Scientists developed the robot which is modelled to play against an actual person and is being sold as a good alternative player if you're lacking a badminton playing buddy. The playmate was produced by scientists in Chengdu and unveiled at a tournament in southern China's Shenzhen City. Cool! Dubbed the Robomintoner, the machine took part in an amateur badminton competition on April 16 As the footage shows, the robot is the ultimate badminton playing partner. Dubbed the Robomintoner, the machine took part in an amateur badminton competition on April 16.

Machine learning is a subset of the field of computer science known as artificial intelligence (AI), which seeks to simulate the workings of a human brain. Machine learning is a form of programming, where the software improves its response after learning from previous responses, rather than following only scripted responses. Nascent forms of machine learning first emerged some 20 years ago. The most modern form is "deep learning", which tries to model the neural networks of the human brain by identifying millions of patterns in large datasets to predict the next outcome. It plays an important role in big data analytics and is currently the rage in machine-learning research, given the accessibility of big data and computational power.

Malware has proven increasingly difficult to detect via signature or heuristic-based methods, which means most Antivirus (AV) programs are woefully ineffective against mutating malware, and especially ineffective against APT attacks (Advanced Persistent Threats). Typical malware consists of about 10,000 lines of code. Five to six years ago marked the beginning of the use of machine learning to solve non-linear problems such as facial recognition or understanding malware, and what features one needs to extract to uniquely identify such programs. Other techniques, such as sandboxing and machine-based techniques, are not as fast nor as accurate as Deep Learning. Deep Instinct, founded by Guy Caspi and Eli David, Israeli Defense Force Cybersecurity veterans, applies artificial intelligence Deep Learning algorithms to detect structures and program functions that are indicative of malware.

Almost 30 years ago I stood on the steps of a converted Armenian dance hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts, about to start my first day at an MIT startup called Gold Hill Computers. They were the first company to develop software that enabled companies to build expert systems applications on a PC platform. The focus in the 1980s for AI was on industries such as aerospace and defense, computer-aided design and engineering, software engineering, financial services, manufacturing, medicine and science. Never at that point in time did I consider that algorithms could be applied to my own profession in communications. And yet that is just what has happened.

This time last year Steve Wozniak was sounding a cautionary note about the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI), warning that computers would one day take over from humans and joking that we might even end up as their pets. In a recent interview with Australia's ABC TV's Lateline the engineering genius appeared more sanguine about the future of self-aware, super-intelligent Artificial Intelligence and much more concerned with the real world killer robots that are all but with us: Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS). The Apple co-founder maintains that human-level Artificial Intelligence won't happen for "a very long time": It might take 200 years before they are really fully able to operate all of their needs in the world, until then they're going to need human beings … I'm not really worried at all. It's very scary to make autonomous weapons that are just following some programmed set of instructions … even when you're driving a car there is no one set of rules … if a lane is closed off you have to do something against the rules … I don't think it's a good idea at all. I don't think we can really stop it.

Business documents written in foreign languages are no longer the problem they once were thanks to technologies like Google Translate, but what about contracts written in legalese? That's where LawGeex hopes to help with an AI-based online tool. LawGeex offers what it calls the world's first contract review platform based on artificial intelligence. The goal, it says, is to help businesses and individuals "get a fair deal" before signing an agreement. Toward that end, it combines machine-learning algorithms with crowdsourced data, text analytics, and the knowledge of expert lawyers to make in-depth contract reviews accessible to everyone.

Humans have always had a complicated relationship with new "technologies." From awe to fear, centuries ago, Plato even worried that writing would adversely affect people's memories. Modernity has had a particular curiosity regarding artificial intelligence (AI). From Terminator-style killer robots to emotive humanoids, the mention of AI brings to mind the many silver screen renderings of some future civilization. More likely than any of these, however, is the reality that AI will probably turn out to be another commonplace technology that, while novel at first, will end up integrated into our everyday lives.

IBM is reportedly going to combine Blockchain's distributed ledger technology with its artificial intelligence system Watson to make the billions of smart devices in an emerging world of Internet of Things work safer and smarter. According to a lengthy article in CoinDesk written by Michael del Castillo IBM is still in prototype phase in developing this project that brings together the company's Internet of Things Foundation and Watson divisions to create the Watson Internet of Things group. The project is being overseen by IBM's chief architect in charge of Internet of Things security Tim Hahn who told CoinDesk that the possibilities of the collaboration of artificial intelligence, IoT and Blockchain were huge. "What we're doing with blockchain and devices is enabling the information those devices supply to effect the blockchain. You begin to approach the kind of things we see in movies."