When AlphaGo, Google's artificial intelligence program, defeated champion Go player Lee Sedol earlier this year, everyone praised its advanced software brain. But the program, developed by Google's DeepMind research team, also had some serious hardware brawn standing behind it. The program was running on custom accelerators that Google's hardware engineers had spent years building in secret, the company said. With the new accelerators plugged into AlphaGo's servers, the program could recognize patterns in its vast library of game data faster than it could with standard processors. The increased speed helped AlphaGo make the kind of quick, intuitive judgments that have escaped other computers trying to conquer the game.

Much of the technology that underpins these systems is shared among the industry. A handful of companies like Bosch, Delphi, and Mobileye provide sensors, control units, and even algorithms to car makers, who then integrate and refine those systems. Depending on the make of car, these advanced driver assistant systems--ADAS in industry speak--might be called Traffic-Aware Cruise Control and Autosteer (Tesla), IntelliSafe Assist and Pilot Assist (Volvo), Distronic Plus with Steering Assist (Mercedes-Benz), Adaptive Cruise Control with Lane Assist and Traffic Jam Assist (Audi), and so on. But all of them work on the same basic principles. A fusion of sensors identify the lane markings on the road, the cars around you, and now even road signs like speed limits or school zones, and use this information to maintain your speed and a safe distance to those other cars.

ROSCON 2016 is happening October 8-9 in Seoul, Korea: http://roscon.ros.org/2016/ Proposals for presentations on all topics related to ROS are invited: http://roscon.ros.org/2016/#call-for-proposals The proposal submission deadline is July 8th, 2016: http://roscon.ros.org/2016/#important-dates Women, members of minority groups, and members of other under-represented groups are encouraged to submit presentation proposals to ROSCon. Proposals will be reviewed by the program committee, which will evaluate fit, impact, and balance.

Based on presale numbers, "Warcraft" is one of China's most anticipated films of all-time. But more importantly, it could give Hollywood another avenue to capitalize on a nearly 7 billion movie market that's growing at nearly 50 percent a year -- but has a select few preferences. Industry analyst Jonathan Papish of China Film Insider noted Universal Pictures' "Warcraft," based on the video game series from Activision Blizzard has reeled in 2 million in ticket presales for its midnight premiere 12 days before it happens, which is already the sixth-best ever. That doesn't necessarily mean "Warcraft" will be a long-tail hit in China like "Furious 7" or "Zootopia." After all, "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" also had strong China presales numbers but ended up being a major disappointment, dropping 80 percent in its second weekend amid reports of bored crowds playing on their phones.

The online world has blossomed with machine-driven riches. We don't send letters; we email. We don't look up a restaurant in a guide book; we look it up on OpenTable. When a computer that makes any of this possible goes wrong, we even search for a solution online. We thrive on the multitude of "signals" available. But where there's signal, there's "noise"--inaccurate, inappropriate, or simply unhelpful information that gets in the way. For example, in receiving email, we also fend off spam; while scouting for new employment, we receive automated job referrals with wildly inappropriate matches; and filters made to catch porn may confuse it with medical photos. We can filter out all of this noise, but at some point it becomes more trouble than it's worth--that is when machines and their algorithms can make things much easier. To filter spam mail, for example, we can give our machine and algorithm a set of known-good and known-bad emails as examples so the algorithm can make educated guesses while filtering mail. Even with solid examples, though, algorithms fail and block important emails, filter out useful content, and cause a variety of other problems. As we'll explore throughout this report, the point at which algorithms fail is precisely where there's an opportunity to insert human judgment to actively improve the algorithm's performance.

These two fields of massive innovation will generate more jobs in the coming 2 decades than anything else as they will become our necessity. The counter-narrative is- how good are these new technologies for us? Will AI replace humans and bots will take over? Will we see bots dictating our 24 hours to keep us healthy and safe? Or will they overpower us, even in thinking?

The world of artificial intelligence (AI) is making rapid strides in technological development, from Google's AI program defeating a human in the game of Go, Russian scientists building the'Terminator' and another project from Google's Brain Team, where the AI program attempts to write post-modern poetry. The AI market is projected to expand to USD 5.05 billion by 2020 (from USD 419.7 million in 2014), at a CAGR of 53.65% from 2015 to 2020, largely due to greater applications in diversified fields, enhanced productivity and increasing consumer satisfaction. Machine learning technology, a key component of the overall AI market, is estimated to gain traction over the next five years, on account of higher anticipated demand in media & advertising and finance sectors, as well as retail, healthcare, law, and oil & gas. Multinational technology giants such as Google, IBM, Microsoft, and governments of different countries across the globe are looking to boost their investment in AI. According to reports, Google has announced a new research project dubbed'Magenta' that is aimed at exploring the use of AI to produce art. The research team will initially study what kind of algorithms are used to generate music and then subsequently move to video and other visual arts.

The Afghan government is looking warily at the conservative religious scholar who has assumed leadership of the Taliban, seeing in him a rigid proponent of hardline orthodoxy who is unlikely to favor peace talks, officials said. A day after the Afghan Taliban announced that Haibadullah Akhundzada would take over after Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan, officials on Thursday were trying to form a picture of a leader best known for relentlessly applying strict sharia, or Islamic law. In his former role as one of the Taliban insurgency's senior judges, he was responsible for issuing a series of death sentences against opponents of Mansour, according to General Abdul Razeq, police chief of Akhundzada's home city of Kandahar. Officials said he appeared to favor a return to the austere and often harsh Islamic rule in Afghanistan before the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-led forces in 2001, something that would be unacceptable to the Afghan government and its Western backers. "He is a simple religious cleric," said Haji Agha Lalai, an adviser to President Ashraf Ghani, who added that Akhundzada would rely heavily on his deputy Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of the feared Haqqani network, for battlefield decisions.

This week, a lot of attention was given during the kick-off of the annual Google I/O conference to three of this year's key technologies: artificial intelligence, conversational interfaces and virtual reality. The attractive force of Google's technologies was in full display with the opening viewed by more than 1 million users in China alone. Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, kicked it off by demonstrating that Google had not missed out on the shift to mobile and that 50% of all search engine queries were already today made from phones, including 20% through voice recognition in the United States. Already, the results of a mobile study that were unveiled extend beyond a simple list of links to include "cards" used to preview related content (photos, results, artists) without having to exit the search engine. The head of Google went on to highlight his company's progress with respect to artificial intelligence and concrete applications for search engines.

According to MarketandMarkets, the artificial intelligence (AI) market is estimated to grow from 419.7 million in 2014 to 5.05 billion by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 53.65% from 2015 to 2020. The Media and Advertising sector is expected to drive the growth of AI during this period. IBM, Microsoft, and Google are key players in the market, and now Salesforce is trying to make inroads into it. For the first quarter of fiscal 2017, Salesforce's revenue grew 27% over the year to 1.92 billion, above analyst estimate of 1.89 billion. Net income was 38.8 billion or 0.06 per share. Non GAAP EPS was 0.24, beating analyst forecast of 0.25.