By Stefan Nicola and Joe Mayes Mobile World Congress, the wireless industry's biggest conference, begins next week in Barcelona, where more than 100,000 people are set to see the latest smartphones, artificial intelligence devices and autonomous drones exhibited by roughly 2,300 companies. The event is also the industry's largest networking opportunity for executives, bankers, analysts and the like to talk shop -- and potential deals. Some 5,500 CEOs, among them Deutsche Telekom AG's Tim Hoettges and Vodafone Group Plc's Vittorio Colao, will jostle for airtime discussing the major trends shaping the industry such as cybersecurity, the arrival of ultrafast fifth-generation mobile networks and blockchain. Here are the big themes likely to dominate the event: Samsung to Sony in device battle MWC has long been a venue for companies to show off their latest mobile devices and vie for consumer attention. This year, Samsung is back to unveil its latest flagship phone, widely expected to be the Galaxy S9.

In July, Chinese tech giant Xiaomi jumped into the smart speaker race with its answer to Amazon's Alexa and Google Home, the $45 Mi AI -- though it probably won't find its way to American shores, given how had a time it's had penetrating the US and European markets. Today, the company made a different move with artificial intelligence, signing a deal with Microsoft to partner up on projects involving AI, cloud computing and hardware to help the device company expand into other markets. As part of the Memorandum of Understanding, Xiaomi will harness Microsoft's Azure cloud platform to expand services for its users, including data storage and bandwidth. The American tech company will consult the Chinese tech giant on joint marketing and channel support to get Xiaomi's laptops into new international markets. And, of course, partnering will give Microsoft access to Xiaomi's users across the world.

"The different achievements in this country, including in science, art and the academic field make it an ideal place for the creation of a centre of theoretical research in artificial intelligence," Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said in a statement. The announcement came as Macron welcomed 140 multinational business leaders to Versailles in Paris on Monday night, ahead of the opening of the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday. Google said it will be extend it's headquarters in the capital to accommodate the centre -- the third to open worldwide, after California and Switzerland. The number of staff in Paris is set to increase from 700 to 1,000. Facebook earlier announced its intention to double the number of researchers at its own AI centre, opened in Paris in 2015, from 30 to 60.

GraphGrail Ai, the world's first AI-based natural language processing platform with a DApps marketplace is passing through its TGE stage and has already garnered the acclaim of several prominent rating agencies with high rankings. Such results were made possible thanks to the extensive experience that the GraphGrail Ai development team has in implementing AI solutions for businesses and government agencies. To demonstrate and consolidate the experience of the GraphGrail Ai team for our followers, we have compiled a list of prominent cases that the development team had participated in over the last few years prior to undertaking the implementation of their solutions on blockchain systems. The GraphGrail Ai team was involved in the development and launch of a service that searches for extremist statements based on the legislation of the Russian Federation for the Rostov Center for Forensic Expertise. The system was used extensively and had successfully detected dangerous publications.

Aidoc, a startup company pioneering the use of deep learning in radiology, announced on Wednesday the world's first comprehensive, full-body solution utilizing artificial intelligence to help analyze CT scans. Aidoc's solution will also highlight medical findings for radiologists, and the workflow-integrated solution offers support for radiologists covering areas such as the head, c-spine, chest, and abdomen. "Aidoc's differential approach positions them to overcome the challenging threshold for true adoption of AI (artificial intelligence - ed.) solutions by providing significant and clinically relevant value to the radiologist's practice, in respect to both efficiency and quality," University of Chicago School of Medicine Vice-Chairman of Radiology Informatics Paul J. Chang, M.D., FSIIM, said. AI-powered technology can have significant impact analyzing acute findings, where time and accuracy are essential. The Aidoc platform expands medical imaging analysis far beyond available solutions – which remain relatively specialized with limited application – extending the clinical value of AI to a major portion of radiologists' daily workload.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. An extra special thank-you to Boston Dynamics this week for posting another video of SpotMini that includes a nice, detailed explanation of what's actually going on: A test of SpotMini's ability to adjust to disturbances as it opens and walks through a door. A person (not shown) drives the robot up to the door, points the hand at the door handle, then gives the'GO' command, both at the beginning of the video and again at 42 seconds.

The Swedes appear to have embarked on an audacious project resembling something from an episode of the sci-fi series Black Mirror; they intend to make fully conscious copies of the dead in a bid to offer digital immortality.

The increase in how technology affects our day to day lives can be seen by everyone. From personal assistant tools like Siri, ordering anything at the touch of a button and yes, even self-checkouts… If you consider the capabilities of your mobile phone compared to your first, you can see how quickly things can change! Get our free ebook on how the Soviet Union became Putin's Russia. According to Oxford University it is believed that "47% of the human workforce will be replaced by 2035" - A staggering number! What job roles will still be around for humans in the future?

French startup Snips is announcing two things for its voice assistant SDK. First, the company is showing off an interesting use case in Nuremberg with a Snips-powered voice assistant in a car. Second, you can now build voice assistants in German. Snips isn't technically competing with Alexa Voice Service or Google Assistant SDK as they're not designed the same way. Snips lets you build a voice assistant that runs locally.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO: "The world is running out of computing capacity. Moore's law is kinda running out of steam … [we need quantum computing to] create all of these rich experiences we talk about, all of this artificial intelligence." Seth Lloyd, author of Programming the Universe: "A classical computation is like a solo voice – one line of pure tones succeeding each other. A quantum computation is like a symphony – many lines of tones interfering with each other." David Deutsche, Physicist at the Centre for Quantum Computation, Oxford University: "Quantum computation will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes."