Robots can paint, but when it comes to writing, they shouldn't quit their day jobs. That's the combined conclusion from results of two contests announced this week. On the upside, artificial intelligence created some pretty impressive works for RobotArt.org's The contest challenged artists and engineers to create a robot that painted like a real artist. Essentially, the aim was to get "as many teams as possible to set up a robot that can do any sort of painting," the contest site explains.

Artificial intelligence has been around since 1956 and has made some giant leaps in that time: beating the best human at chess, the best human at US gameshow Jeopardy and recently beating the best human at complex strategy game Go. Brands have only recently started adopting artificial intelligence for core consumer services. Google's voice recognition technology now claims 98% accuracy and Facebook's DeepFace is said to recognise faces with a 97% success rate. IBM's Watson, which uses artificial intelligence to perform its question-answering function, is 2,400% "smarter" today than when it achieved the Jeopardy victory five years ago. There is no doubt that the relationship between men and machines is changing, and brands are on the cusp of making artificial intelligence an everyday element of their customer offerings.

WIRE)--TSYS (NYSE: TSS), today announced an agreement with Featurespace, a global leader in adaptive behavioral analytics, that will reduce fraud for its clients with a revolutionary machine learning software platform -- the ARICSM engine -- that monitors every individual -- one customer at a time -- to deliver real-time decision capabilities. "TSYS' collaboration with Featurespace aligns with our overall strategy of integrating with advanced, innovative technology partners to help our clients grow their business, reduce costs, and deliver an exceptional customer experience," said Andrew Mathieson, group executive, issuer product group, TSYS. "We will incorporate these capabilities across the credit risk lifecycle, enabling our issuers to catch more fraudulent transactions while dramatically reducing false-positive alerts for genuine transactions -- a sharp contrast to the industry paradigm of blocking more valid transactions in order to detect actual fraudulent activity." The new agreement allows TSYS to strengthen its position in faster payments by leveraging machine learning to provide clients with actionable insights in real time, using adaptive behavioral analytics that result in operational efficiencies. "TSYS has a long-standing leadership position in authorization processing and fraud management and we are excited to integrate our ARIC engine for TSYS' clients," said Martina King, chief executive officer, Featurespace.

Google's self-driving car may own the streets on the west coast, but Uber has staked its claim on the east. The ride-sharing pioneer announced it will begin testing autonomous vehicles around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the next coming weeks. The hybrid Ford Fusions, complete with Uber logos, will soon be seen mapping Steel City and testing its self-driving capabilities on public streets. Uber announced that in the next coming weeks it will be testing autonomous vehicles around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in a car that'should be driven by a superhero'. Uber will be testing autonomous vehicles around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the next coming weeks.

Flapping two tiny wings, the small, thin robot wobbles its way towards the underside of a leaf, bumps into the surface and latches on, perching motionless above the ground. Moments later, its wings begin to flap once more and it jiggles off on its way. The little flying machine, dubbed a "RoboBee", has been designed to perch on a host of different surfaces, opening up new possibilities for the use of drones in providing a bird's-eye view of the world, scientists say. Know as micro aerial vehicles, such robots could be invaluable in reconnaissance of disaster zones or to form impromptu communication networks. But there is a hitch: flying takes energy, so the time these robots can spend in the air is limited by the size of the battery pack they can carry.

Many years ago, my wife and I went on a trip to Spain. On the way to the airport she realized she had forgotten her Palm Pilot (Remember them?), and she was in despair. Half of my brain is in there! She kept everything in that device: Reservations, addresses, phone numbers. Fast forward to today, where everyone's "half brain" is on their smartphones.

Back in 1950, computer scientist, codebreaker, and war hero Alan Turing introduced the world to a very simple premise: If a robot can engage in a text-based conversation with a person and fool that person into believing it is human at least 30 percent of the time, surely we could agree that the robot is a "thinking" machine. Turing's goal was to force people to think more creatively about computer interaction, but he inadvertently ended up creating the test that robot intelligence developers and commentators have relied on for years. They're focused on more substantive metrics. Fundamentally, the problem with the Turing Test is that it's poorly defined therefore facilitates hype (i.e. that fake teaching assistant in Georgia) rather than offering easily duplicated results. Beyond that, one can argue that it measures human weakness, not artificial strength.

Many say that programmatic reached a tipping point in 2015, because for the first time last year, programmatic transactions surpassed non-search digital ad spending. That's an important milestone, but there's still a big gap for marketers who want to automate the ad buying process. The customer journey -- especially for considered purchases -- rarely happens entirely online. Our purchasing habits are not only becoming more digital -- they are becoming more omnichannel. Take the example of buying insurance.

Life would be pretty dull without imagination. In fact, maybe the biggest problem for computers is that they don't have any. That's the belief motivating the founders of Vicarious, an enigmatic AI company backed by some of the most famous and successful names in Silicon Valley. Vicarious is developing a new way of processing data, inspired by the way information seems to flow through the brain. The company's leaders say this gives computers something akin to imagination, which they hope will help make the machines a lot smarter.

Artificial intelligence and robots could deprive 7.35 million people of their jobs by fiscal 2030 if Japan fails at this pivotal time to structurally reform the labor market, the economy ministry said. The estimated job losses were included in the ministry's survey on the impact on labor of the "fourth industrial revolution," said to be driven by AI and big data. If nothing is done to adjust to the changes, employment for all job types, except certain low-wage work, will decrease, and the number of employees will drop by more than 10 percent in fiscal 2030 from fiscal 2015, according to the preliminary calculation. The survey says if structural reforms are implemented, employment opportunities would be created in some sectors, and the number of job losses would shrink to 1.61 million from 7.35 million. The survey results were presented at an April 27 meeting of an expert committee discussing how to respond to the spread of AI, the Internet of Things (IoT) and robots.