Microsoft is creating a small early-stage investment group that is targeting startups in the cloud, security and machine-learning markets. The new group is taking over the old "Microsoft Ventures" name. The entity formerly known as Microsoft Ventures, which was owned by the Developer Evangelism team, has been rebranded to "Microsoft Accelerator." The Microsoft Accelerator will continue to aid startups with technology and consulting through Microsoft's existing seven accelerators worldwide, officials explained in a May 30 blog post announcing the Ventures make-over. The head of the new Microsoft Ventures group is Corporate Vice President Nagraj Kashyap, who joined Microsoft from Qualcomm earlier this year.

The Taiwanese electronics manufacture Asus has unveiled a home robot called Zenbo that can talk, control your home and provide assistance when needed – all for the cost of a top-end smartphone. It is capable of independent movement, can respond to voice commands and has both entertainment protocols for keeping kids amused and home care systems to help look after older people. Jonney Shih, the Asus chairman, said: "For decades, humans have dreamed of owning such a companion: one that is smart, dear to our hearts, and always at our disposal. Our ambition is to enable robotic computing for every household." Zenbo will remind older people of doctor's appointments or medication schedules, and will monitor the home for emergency situations such as falls.

TAIPEI, TAIWAN--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - Computex - NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) won big at the Computex Best Choice Awards, with the NVIDIA Tesla M40 GPU and NVIDIA Jetson TX1 module hauling in Gold Awards and the NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV clinching a Category Award. Garnering these three prestigious awards extends the company's winning streak -- the longest of any international Computex exhibitor -- to eight consecutive years. Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen will hand out the awards. The Best Choice Awards, established in 2002, honor innovation, functionality and market potential. The Gold Award-winning NVIDIA Tesla M40 GPU is the world's fastest deep learning training accelerator.

I've said before that Computex is ASUS' show -- and what better demonstration than having the recently-elected President of Taiwan "talk" to your newly announced home robot? Crowd noise necessitated several repeated commands to ASUS' Zenbo play some music, but if it was apparently a live demonstration (ASUS' PR affirmed to our Engadget Chinese colleagues that it was), then it's pretty impressive. Unfortunately, the Zenbo's SOS "lifesaving" feature failed in the midst of the trade show chaos. Check out the successful part of the interaction between world leader and... 600 house robot, right after the break.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, processor manufacturers raced to offer processors with ever-increasing clock speeds, which more or less equaled performance. Then, when clock speeds hit a wall at about 4 GHz due to a variety of factors, they took a back seat, and manufacturers started a race to increase the number of processor cores in a single CPU. Intel introduced its first dual core processor for home use in 2006, and it took about seven years for the number of cores in processors for desktops and laptops to reach eight. Now, at the Computex trade show in Taipei on Monday, Intel launched its first 10-core processor aimed at home users (the company already sells 10-core Xeon processors, but those are for professional use). SEE ALSO: Why is Elon Musk so afraid of artificial intelligence?

Officials of Bangladesh Bank may have been involved in the calculated theft of 81 million from its account with the New York Federal Reserve Bank, the head of a government-appointed panel investigating the cyber heist has told reporters. After learning how the organisation worked, the group of cyber attackers broke into the computer systems of the Bangladesh central bank in February and issued instructions through the SWIFT network to transfer 951 million of its deposits held at the New York Federal Reserve Bank to accounts in the Philippines and Sri Lanka. The group had installed malware in systems at the bank's Dhaka headquarters, which allowed them to spend several weeks spying upon the bank's systems and processes. Most of the transactions were blocked but four went through, amounting to 81 million, sparking allegations by Bangladeshi officials that both the Fed and SWIFT had failed to detect the fraud. The breach was uncovered by accident, with an alert only raised as a result of a small spelling error on one of the transactions that blocked other queries that had not yet been processed.

TechCrunch is pleased to bring you Microsoft Accelerator's Machine Learning Demo Day this Thursday, June 2 from the Showbox SoDo in Seattle. The Microsoft Accelerator is an immersive three- to six-month program aimed at helping entrepreneurs get through the challenges of building a company, finding customers and scaling to global markets. There are seven accelerators located around the world, from Bangalore to Beijing, from Berlin to Tel-Aviv. While most of their programs have a focus on enterprise startups, this demo day in Seattle is for companies specifically leveraging machine learning. Investors and press will hear pitches from nine companies solving problems ranging from natural gas pipelines to on-demand medicine.

Computer companions for elderly people are'emotionally dangerous' and will never be good enough to take the place of real human contact, an artificial intelligence expert has warned. In December the University of Singapore introduced'Nadine' the world's most lifelike robot whose creators say will eventually provide childcare and offer friendship to lonely pensioners. More basic'care-bots' which simply show an image of a computerised face are already on the market for as little as 3,000. But Maggie Boden, professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex, warned that machines would never be able to understand abstract ideas such as loyalty or hurt. "Computer companions worry me very much," Prof Boden told an audience at The Hay Literary Festival at Hay-on-Wye, Wales.

The latest robotic cockroach can jump more than five feet in the air, and flip itself over to continue scurrying. Using a new method for storing energy and a height-adjustable trigger, the robo-roach can achieve more ground than those which rely solely on crawling. Though the enhanced jumping capabilities have been built into a small package for the project, the concept has potential to be scaled up for much larger robotics systems. The bug crawls across a desk before opening its'wings' to jump high in the air. The JumpRoACH features a height-adjustable trigger, allowing it to jump between 1.1 and 1.62 meters (3.6 – 5.2 feet) JumpRoACH has six feet for crawling and can move at a speed of up to .62 meters (2 feet) per second.

Technicians of Tianjin Deepfar Ocean Technology Co., Ltd., tests a new developed Underwater Unmanned Vehicle which is named'White Shark Max' in water on March 28, 2016 in Tianjin, China. For the next three years, China will be ramping up the development of its artificial intelligence (AI) sector as it aims to establish a lucrative market that could be more than 100 billion yuan ( 15.26 billion). This, according to a statement released by the National Development and Reform Commission through its website last Monday. Based on the Central Government's three-year implementation plan for its "Internet Plus" artificial intelligence program, China will create platforms for fundamental AI resources and innovation, and work towards achieving breakthroughs on basic core technology, The plan is a collaborative effort of the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Cyberspace Administration of China. Through these efforts, China's artificial intelligence sector seeks to be at par with its global competitors by 2018.