Last year, Timo Boll challenged the KUKA KR AGILUS in his area of expertise: table tennis. Now, it is up to Timo to prove his qualities in a completely different kind of duel. Man and machine are ready. But this time, there are no rackets and no balls – there's only glass. Watch this fantastic commercial featuring two worthy opponents that both provide utmost precision, speed and flexibility.

Infosys' consolidated net profit rose 1.4% to ₹3,483 crore for the first quarter of fiscal 2017-18 compared with the same period a year earlier, but declined 3.3% sequentially from ₹3,603 crore. India's second-largest software services provider said that the consolidated revenue for the quarter under review (Q1) was flat (1.8%) year-on-year at ₹17,078 crore as against ₹16,782 crore in the same period a year ago. This was subdued (0.2%) sequentially from ₹17,120 crore quarter ago. "I am encouraged by the uptick in revenue per employee for six quarters in a row, and the strong momentum in our new high growth services and software, as we accelerate our focus on innovation-led growth," said Infosys chief executive Vishal Sikka. "The widespread adoption of our grass-root innovation and education initiatives continue to fuel our transformation," he added.

Automation, digital platforms, and other innovations are changing the fundamental nature of work. Understanding these shifts can help policy makers, business leaders, and workers move forward. The world of work is in a state of flux, which is causing considerable anxiety--and with good reason. There is growing polarization of labor-market opportunities between high- and low-skill jobs, unemployment and underemployment especially among young people, stagnating incomes for a large proportion of households, and income inequality. Migration and its effects on jobs has become a sensitive political issue in many advanced economies. And from Mumbai to Manchester, public debate rages about the future of work and whether there will be enough jobs to gainfully employ everyone.

According to Gartner, over 85% of customer interactions will be managed without a human by 2020. We have seen a machine master the complex game of Go, previously thought to be the most difficult challenge of artificial processing. We have witnessed vehicles operating autonomously, including a caravan of trucks crossing Europe with only a single operator to monitor systems. We have seen a proliferation of robotic counterparts and automated means for accomplishing a variety of tasks and all of this has given rise to a flurry of people claiming that the Artificial Intelligence revolution is already upon us. However, while there is no doubt that there have been significant advancements in the field of AI, what we have seen is only a start on the path to what could be considered full AI.

Amazon's Fire TV service can now be controlled completely by voice commands, thanks to a new software update. The new feature expands upon a recent overhaul of the service, which allows users to access the firm's Alexa smart assistant via its remote. Now the process is completely hands free and can be activated from Amazon Echo, Dot and other Alexa-enabled devices. Amazon's Fire TV service (picture) can now be controlled completely by voice commands, thanks to a new software update Amazon's Fire TV service can now be controlled completely by voice commands, thanks to a new software update. The changes have been rolled out as part of Fire OS versions 5.2.4.1 and 5.2.4.2.

The machine learning community adopted the use of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) in order to ensure the statistical validity of results. Many scientific fields however realized the shortcomings of frequentist reasoning and in the most radical cases even banned its use in publications. We should do the same: just as we have embraced the Bayesian paradigm in the development of new machine learning methods, so we should also use it in the analysis of our own results. We argue for abandonment of NHST by exposing its fallacies and, more importantly, offer better - more sound and useful - alternatives for it.

Both humans and robots make mistakes, but bots are quicker, cheaper, and don't require 401K retirement plans or medical insurance. As part of an international trend toward machine-written news reporting, Google is giving the United Kingdom's Press Association an $800,000 award to create robot journalists. The use of artificial intelligence is expected to help the overseas Press Association to churn out 30,000 additional articles every month. The award was announced on July 6. Lucy A. Dalglish, dean and professor at the University of Maryland journalism school, said that robots are spreading to newsrooms around the globe, especially to write stories about sporting events, which are data-driven stories.

Tech Review (TR 2017-07-15)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech news: Features • 1) How Google Cloud Plans to Overtake Amazon's AWS: TensorFlow, 2) FCC Net Neutrality Nomination Hearing, 3) Mars Rover 2020 and Europa Clipper, 4) Q2 2017 earnings T-Mobile $TMUS & Qualcomm $QCOM, 5) BlackHat and DefCon, 6) Rural Broadband Internet, 7) ICYMI Tech News. 1) How Google Cloud Plans to Overcome Amazon's AWS Lead in Cloud Computing: TensorFlow TensorFlow: Machine Learning for Everyone "TensorFlow [domain: tensorflow.org] is becoming the clear leader among programmers building new things with machine learning. "We have significant usage today, and it's accelerating," says Jeff Dean, who led TensorFlow's design and heads Google's core artificial- intelligence research group. Once you've built something with TensorFlow, you can run it anywhere--but it's especially easy to transfer it to Google's cloud platform." Other Tech News: 2) FCC Net Neutrality Nomination Hearing FCC - U.S. Senate Committee On Commerce, Science, & Transportation: "Ajit Varadaraj Pai, of Kansas, to be a Member of the Federal Communications Commission (Reappointment) - Jessica Rosenworcel, of Connecticut, to be a Member of the Federal Communications Commission (Reappointment) - Brendan Carr, of Virginia, to be a Member of the Federal Communications Commission," Wednesday, July 19, 2017 10:00 a.m. See also Poll of Republican voters shows that a majority of President Trump's supporters are in favor of net neutrality rules and also oppose the pending AT&T-Time Warner merger TheHill.com.

We're used to searching the web for different kinds of content. Now, one startup is striving to add very different kind of search category: emotion. The first public pilot UK-based Emotions.Tech's artificial emotional intelligence, launched in May, allows users to search according to how they want the results to make them feel. Emotions.Tech CTO Paul Tero says the ability to analyse digital content according to the emotion it provokes can redefine our relationship with technology. Imagine online advertisers able to position their adverts on emotionally appropriate pages.

As Microsoft partners and customers watched Satya Nadella take the stage at the Inspire conference this week in Washington, D.C., Harry Shum, executive vice president of Microsoft's AI and Research Group was speaking at an entirely unrelated, but arguably as important, meeting in London. While Nadella was unveiling Microsoft 365 and a number of complementary apps like Connections, Shum was outlining the Redmond, Wash.-based giant's vision for artificial intelligence (AI). Shum's announced the creation of a new research lab during his address. The Microsoft Research AI hub is based in Microsoft's headquarters and will focus on developing artificial intelligence technologies for both the business and consumer markets. More than 100 scientists from cross-disciplinary AI fields including reasoning, natural language processing, perceptions and learning will comprise the Research AI team.