In a milestone for artificial intelligence, a computer has beaten a human champion at a strategy game that requires "intuition" rather than brute processing power to prevail, its makers said Wednesday. Dubbed AlphaGo, the system honed its own skills through a process of trial and error, playing millions of games against itself until it was battle-ready, and surprised even its creators with its prowess. "AlphaGo won five-nil, and it was stronger than perhaps we were expecting," said Demis Hassabis, the chief executive of Google DeepMind, a British artificial intelligence (AI) company. A computer defeating a professional human player at the 3,000-year-old Chinese board game known as Go, was thought to be about a decade off. The clean-sweep victory over three-time European Go champion Fan Hui "signifies a major step forward in one of the great challenges in the development of artificial intelligence--that of game-playing," the British Go Association said in a statement.

McCann Erickson Japan has created and appointed the world's first AI robot creative director, AI-CD?. The robot, which will provide creative direction for commercials then evaluate and gain learnings, will attend McCann's new employee welcoming ceremony on 1 April along other college graduates. AI-CD? was developed by'McCann Millennials' staff born between 1980 and 2000, and draws from a database of tagged and analysed TV commercials from winners of the All Japan Radio & Television Commercial Confederation's annual CM Festival over the last decade. "Our team didn't have a creative director, so we thought, why not create one ourselves with artificial intelligence?" said McCann Millennials founder and McCann Japan creative planner Shun Matsuzaka. "That's how the Creative Genome Project got started. Our hope is for our AI creative director to work on many projects, gain experience, and to grow into a world-class creative director that will leave a mark in the advertising industry."

Daniel Kottke is a regular among familiar eucalyptus groves outside Stanford University's Frost Amphitheater, seeing the Dead there whenever he gets the chance. Into the '80s, the venue remains a picnic ground for Stanford research scientists and Silicon Valley characters old and new, conspiring on various levels of future building. Apple founder Steve Jobs accepts the acid from Daniel Kottke, and they go their separate ways. Spontaneously, Daniel offers his old friend a few hits of Windowpane he has in his pocket. "An old-times gesture," Daniel says.

To arrive at those numbers, the WEF surveyed 15 countries that make up 1.9 billion workers, including China, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the UK and US. There is hope, though, and it comes in the form of retraining workers so that they can adapt as technology changes. "To prevent a worst-case scenario -- technological change accompanied by talent shortages, mass unemployment and growing inequality -- reskilling and upskilling of today's workers will be critical," WEF founder Klaus Schwab and board member Richard Samans explained. The full report, titled "The Future of Jobs," is available here.

Taanayel, Bekaa, Lebanon - After more than five years of brutal conflict, Hope of Syria may sound like an ambitious name - but this young team of robot engineers is eager to help shoulder the responsibility of rebuilding their country. The team, composed entirely of Syrian refugee students, recently won a national robotics competition in Lebanon, when their robot, SYR01, managed to shoot the most balls into a net. They will now compete in the Vex world robotics competition on April 20 in the US state of Kentucky, coming up against some 450 other teams from around the world. While winning the tournament is their first priority, team member Amjad al-Homsi, 17, says they also want to draw attention to the plight of Syrians. "[It's about] putting the spotlight on Syrians," Homsi, the team's engineering network manager, told Al Jazeera.

As part of the auto show 2015 Tokyo Motor Show was shown a lot of amazing new products. However, the most striking is the machine invented by engineers Yamaha. Yamaha has decided to all hit, unveiled its new development – a humanoid robot motorcycle racer Motobot. This electro-mechanical humanoid creature, able to control the bike on the track. It can easily manipulate the controls like knobs accelerator, brake lever and shift.

Is this the Steph Curry of robotic basket throwing? The competitors entered the arena, all clattering metal and fidgeting gears. They held balls, ready to hurl into their corner basket, and before them stretched several ball towers. Two years ago the sport didn't exist. Now, the robotic opponents built to play it were assembled and ready to play. The sport, invented by the VEX Robotics, is called "Nothing But Net," and is designed for mostly autonomous vehicles.

In a wide-ranging keynote address that included aspirational statements, updates, and announcements, Ginni Rometty, the chairwoman, president, and CEO of the Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM, on Tuesday morning shared her vision of cognitive computing with attendees at the World Health Care Congress, being held this week at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. Telling her audience that "Healthcare has been central to us for a long time," Rometty framed the broad work that IBM is doing in cognitive computing in terms of what she sees as its potential to change the healthcare industry in three fundamental ways: with regard to "how to reinvent discovery," how to "help change how delivery happens," and how to "transform wellness." Indeed, she said, "Cognitive computing is the future of healthcare," and said that IBM's work in that area, embodied in its development of IBM Watson, its cognitive computing entity, which IBM data scientists and technologists are using to transform knowledge in a broad range of areas. Framing IBM's broad strategic thrust around cognitive computing, Rometty told her audience, "Analytics, cloud, mobile--those are all very important to be a part of the digital society and economy. I always think of digital as foundational; I believe it is disruptive… It is the dawn of a new era. Think of digital business and business intelligence put together, and that will give you cognitive," she said.

In previous articles, we've defined some of the terms being thrown around lately like "machine learning" and "artificial intelligence". These disruptive technologies will soon change the world as we know it. While some pundits predicted that we were years away from a computer that could beat a human expert at "Go", this achievement was recently announced. If a "deep learning" program can now beat a game that has more possible moves than atoms in the known universe, then what's stopping us from unleashing it upon the stock market and making millions? The idea of using computers to trade stocks is hardly new.

Mark Zuckerberg at F8. "I've never met anyone who likes calling businesses." ANALYSIS: Love it or hate it, Messenger is Facebook's most important product. Already, Facebook the social network feels like the clunky backend of the real product, an app where you actually talk to your friends, who barely post anything personal on the site itself any more. It's not as splashy as Snapchat, but there's a reason it consistently beats those apps in engagement and app downloads. Sixty billion messages are sent a day on Messenger.