The big news on March 12 of this year was of the Go-playing AI-system AlphaGo securing victory against 18-time world champion Lee Se-dol by winning the third straight game of a five-game match in Seoul, Korea. After Deep Blue's victory against chess world champion Gary Kasparov in 1997, the game of Go was the next grand challenge for game-playing artificial intelligence. Go has defied the brute-force methods in game-tree search that worked so successfully in chess. In 2012, Communications published a Research Highlight article by Sylvain Gelly et al. on computer Go, which reported that "Programs based on Monte-Carlo tree search now play at human-master levels and are beginning to challenge top professional players." AlphaGo combines tree-search techniques with search-space reduction techniques that use deep learning.

Microsoft has published its latest Security Intelligence Report (SIR), which it does twice a year, covering security issues for the prior six months. This latest edition covers the second half of 2015, analyzing the threat landscape of exploits, vulnerabilities and malware using data from Internet services and over 600 million computers worldwide. It is a massive effort, with dozens of Microsoft staff from different groups contributing. For the first time, they looked at not only PC malware but threats to its Azure cloud service as well, which the company says "reveals how we are leveraging an intelligent security graph to inform how we protect endpoints, better detect attacks and accelerate our response, to help protect our customers." Every day, Microsoft's machine learning systems process more than 10 terabytes of data, including information on over 13 billion logins from hundreds of millions of Microsoft Account users and Azure Active Directory accounts, according to the company.

How close are technologies to simulating or overtaking human intelligence and what are the implications for industry and society?

Over 21 million adults in the United States suffer from impaired vision. Several companies are have been racing to develop wearables and implants that can improve or restore eyesight in these patients. One such wearable vision device, made by Israeli startup OrCam, just got an enthusiastic thumbs up from eye doctors who tested the gadget on 12 legally blind patients. OrCam's little camera device, which clips on to eyeglasses, reads aloud words on labels and signs, and names objects and faces for the wearer. Opthalmologists at the University of California Davis Eye Center published results of their study in the journal JAMA Opthalmology.

I wasn't planning to chip in this time, but I stumbled upon an article so compelling I felt I ought to. Uncanny Valley, published by Anna Weiner on N 1 Magazine, is a short literary piece which lives up to its title. Weiner's nameless narrator is going through most commonplaces of the Valley, both physically and mentally, without really being a part of it. "I learn the bare minimum, code-wise, to be able to do my job well -- to ask questions only when I'm truly in over my head," she confesses. She is going from being the start-up's inaugural customer support rep to become a "success manger", a title so corny for her she can't stand having it on her email signature.

In a blitzkrieg attack that took place over 12 hours in late 2012 and early 2013, criminals stole 45-million (U.S.) from two banks by hacking into credit card processing firms in India and the United States, then withdrawing money from ATMs in 27 countries. "In the place of guns and masks, this cybercrime organization used laptops and the Internet," New York attorney Loretta Lynch said at a news conference. "Moving as swiftly as data over the Internet … they became a virtual criminal flash mob, going from machine to machine, drawing as much money as they could, before these accounts were shut down." The mob infiltrated credit card processing firms, stole prepaid Visa and MasterCard debit card account numbers issued by the banks in the Middle-East and programmed them with extreme balances. The account numbers were emailed or texted to cohorts on the ground, who used a device to encode the account numbers onto the magnetic stripes of dummy cards.

Humanyze has rolled out Wyze, its flagship product that is designed to measure social interactions and improve teamwork and processes in companies. BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Humanyze, the global leader in people analytics technology, announced 4M in Series A financing today from Romulus Capital. The announcement comes as Humanyze rolls out the first of its kind Wyze people analytics platform to its strong Fortune 500 customer base in the US and industry leaders in Japan with the goal of making large corporations more agile and accurate about their most valuable resource (people), and to make these same people more in control of their performance and improvement. "Our customers – which include the largest multinationals and consulting firms – are investing heavily in technology and personnel to make full use of our data-driven people analytics platform. Employees are almost universally opting in as they see the individual benefits. These additional resources from Romulus provide us strong footing to support new customers and grow with them over the long term," Humanyze CEO Ben Waber said.

When will the technology arrive that makes you obsolete in your current job? It's no idle question, and one that none other than Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took up this week in remarks to hundreds of Seattle technology and business leaders. We'll explore his comments, a new offering from Textio, the media's failures in covering the presidential primaries; have some fun with drones, Star Wars, Disney's Frozen, and STEM education; and wash it down with a cold home brew in this edition of Xconomy Seattle's Week in Review: He shared his view of Microsoft's unique culture, and how that gives the company an advantage. One aspect is Microsoft's global mindset, which Nadella, born in Hyderabad, India, talked about in a personal way. "I wouldn't be CEO of Microsoft if it was not for Microsoft's technology being a global force," Nadella said.

IBM Japan has teamed up with Subaru to investigate how its Watson Supercomputer could help improve the automaker's EyeSight driver assist technology. As well as developing a data analytics system, the two companies are keen to integrate cloud and artificial intelligence technologies, which bodes well for the ongoing development of autonomous, networked cars. The benefits of networked autonomous vehicles were recently demonstrated by the European Truck Platooning Challenge, where teams of autonomous trucks made their way from their respective factories to Rotterdam. As well as demonstrating the fact autonomous vehicles can effectively make long trips without causing the end of the world (shocking, we know), the trucks were able to maintain a gap of just 15 m (49 ft) and react to sudden braking manoeuvres in just 0.1 seconds thanks to a WiFi connection keeping them all linked. Daimler has also invested in Car-to-X technology, which features in its latest E-Class.

As a species, we are excellent at imbuing life into the lifeless--just as we are proficient in giving meaning to the meaningless. One could argue that the ability of our brains to recognize patterns quickly is part of what gives us our humanity. Seeing faces on Mars, yelling at our cars for breaking down and giving animals more agency than they may possess are all results of our psyche. Our penchant for gestalt is important in the ever increasing world of social robots and machines. When it comes to technology and social robotics, the whole is often seen as more meaningful than the sum of the parts. The field of social robotics includes machines that use social behaviors and cues to interact with people.