In 2008, Max Yankelevich was in India, visiting the cubicle farms where big banks and insurance companies outsource business processes -- the invoices, memos, and other papers pushed to keep organizations humming. The employees were smart, says Yankelevich, who was running a cloud computing startup at the time. There was good money in doing this sort of back office work -- but it was mind numbing. Companies were trying to figure out the back office work with "the brute force of human power," says Yankelevich, who studied artificial intelligence while getting his MIT computer science degree in the 1990s. "I started thinking ... there's gotta be a way where artificial intelligence can be used generically enough to learn some of these things that these people are doing," he says.

With rotors and radios, we are witnessing the birth of a new sport. Aerial acrobatics, sharp turns and staggering climbs that NASCAR can only imagine, all done on the cheap with toys and remote controls, from woods to warehouses to special courses in Dubai. Welcome to the new age of drone racing, as it moves from backyards to broadcasts. Today, ESPN announced it will livestream the U.S. National Drone Racing Championships, a 3-day drone racing event held on New York City's Governor's Island in early August. And then, in October, ESPN will cover the 2016 World Drone Racing Championships at Kualoa Ranch, Hawaii. The drones are flown by pilots wearing goggles and watching through first person vision cameras.

Artificial consciousness[1] (AC), also known as machine consciousness (MC) or synthetic consciousness (Gamez 2008; Reggia 2013), is a field related to artificial intelligence and cognitive robotics. The aim of the theory of artificial consciousness is to "define that which would have to be synthesized were consciousness to be found in an engineered artifact" (Aleksander 1995). Neuroscience hypothesizes that consciousness is generated by the interoperation of various parts of the brain, called the neural correlates of consciousness or NCC, though there are challenges to that perspective. Proponents of AC believe it is possible to construct systems (e.g., computer systems) that can emulate this NCC interoperation.[2] Artificial consciousness concepts are also pondered in the philosophy of artificial intelligence through questions about mind, consciousness and mental states.[3] As there are many hypothesized types of consciousness, there are many potential implementations of artificial consciousness. In the philosophical literature, perhaps the most common taxonomy of consciousness is into "access" and "phenomenal" variants. Access consciousness concerns those aspects of experience that can be apprehended, while phenomenal consciousness concerns those aspects of experience that seemingly cannot be apprehended, instead being characterized qualitatively in terms of "raw feels", "what it is like" or qualia (Block 1997).

When it comes to human senses, we've found ways to reproduce the look and sound of the real world reasonably accurately. There are even technologies for reproducing the feel of certain experiences, such as flight and car simulators. But the problem of reproducing smell is much more intractable. The 1960 SmelloVision experiment is a case in point. This involved some 30 odors that were released into the cinema at certain times during a movie.

In 2008, Max Yankelevich was in India, visiting the cubicle farms where big banks and insurance companies outsource business processes -- the invoices, memos, and other papers pushed to keep organizations humming. The employees were smart, says Yankelevich, who was running a cloud computing startup at the time. There was good money in doing this sort of back office work -- but it was mind numbing. Companies were trying to figure out the back office work with "the brute force of human power," says Yankelevich, who studied artificial intelligence while getting his MIT computer science degree in the 1990s. "I started thinking ... there's gotta be a way where artificial intelligence can be used generically enough to learn some of these things that these people are doing," he says.

In the league of continuous additions to the Unicorn Startup List, China makes the maximum number of entries. Though getting in to the list just before some time was rare, the current scenario is getting different. It all turned around when a recently founded biotech startup Icarbonx announced a Series A round of funding on Monday that now values it at US 1 billion. Icarbonx was founded in late of October, 2015. The company aims to "Manage Your Digital Life", as its name suggests; the name centers around "carbon" – the element of life, while the "i" and "X" indicate the company's plan to fuse the internet and artificial intelligence to create something entirely new.

Yuuta Banda poses for a photo with OriHime, his robot avatar. When Yuuta Banda was just four years old, he suffered a car accident that left him paralyzed, connected to a respiratory machine, and confined to bed for life. But almost two decades later, he's been able to experience different places, and even find a job thanks to OriHime, his robot avatar. "At first I couldn't understand what was so great about OriHime, but I gradually learned through using it that [the robot] afforded people with a sense of presence," Banda told me in an email. "I felt a greater sense of satisfaction as I spoke with people in different places to me through the robot."

I was reflecting on the demonstrations of Deep Mind against Go champion Lee Se-dol, along with Watson at CeBIT and other artificial intelligence (AI) developments. It soon becomes apparent that we are evolving rapidly to a state where data learning through data analytics will be the battleground. In fact, it's clear that the battle over data is already won by those who have data architectures fit for AI. If you don't recognise this chart, please read the series of blogs I wrote in 2014 about such things. In this chart, I outlined the structure of a bank as front, middle, and back office (or retailer, processor, manufacturer), and that this structure is being attacked by technologies.

Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi plans to enter the artificial intelligence (AI) market by becoming an AI component provider for traditional electronics manufacturers looking to make their products intelligent, according to a top executive. "Our artificial intelligence technology will be everywhere," co-founder and vice-president Wong Kong Kat told the South China Morning Post on Wednesday. He expects the company's thrust to result in a wider adoption of intelligent devices in the future. "Even a chair can be smart enough to understand you and move to where you would be seated," said Wong, who now leads the company's efforts in AI and virtual reality. They are the twin focuses of the recently established Xiaomi Exploration Lab, a department in Xiaomi similar to Google's X (formerly known as Google X) that develops products using advanced technologies.

An iPhone is connected to a 2016 Chevrolet Malibu equipped with Apple CarPlay apps, displayed on the car's MyLink screen. With 220 million Internet connected cars expected to be on the roads within five years, a national security expert on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, urged automakers to be mindful of the growing cyber-security threats posed by terrorists, information crooks and spies who could potentially try to hack into wired vehicles. DETROIT -- In its quest to build connected and self-driving cars, the automotive industry is facing a daunting task that national security experts say is a must: Design a car that's terrorist-proof -- or at least try. With 220 million Internet connected cars expected to be on the roads within five years, a national security expert visited Detroit on Tuesday and urged automakers to be mindful of the growing cyber-security threats posed by terrorists, information crooks and spies who could potentially try to hack into wired vehicles and cause mayhem of all sorts. " 'What are the bad buys thinking?' We've seen them be creative before," said John Carlin, assistant attorney general for national security, who met with auto executives and law enforcement personnel at Cobo Center at a presentation titled, "Emerging National Security Cyber Threats and Their Implications for the C-Suite."