Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to intelligence exhibited by machines. It lies at the intersection of big data, machine learning and robotics. Robotics contributes the necessary design, construction and operational framework. A robot can be defined as "a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by a computer". Modern robots are often virtual algorithms performing not only physical but also cognitive tasks.

FILE - In this June 1, 2014 file photo, people cycle towards the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany. Officials and cycling campaigners in Berlin have agreed to massively expand bike lanes with the goal of reducing car traffic in the German capital. Local media report that the two sides agreed on an annual investment of some 50 million euros ($53 million). Berlin daily B.Z. reported Friday. April 7, 2017 that the money will be used to create protected bike lines of the kind seen in Chicago and New York, build 100 kilometers of dedicate cycling highways and install 100,000 bike parking spaces.

The artificial intelligence (AI) revolution has begun, and it's going to take all of us -- government, businesses and employees -- to steer through the resulting workforce disruption. More than just helping our kids avoid jobs that machines will take over in the future -- from driving trucks and reading X-rays to picking stocks and balancing the books -- we need to look at ways of retraining the millions of adults who will be displaced by machines and get them back doing meaningful, relevant work. Change is happening so fast that waves of today's professionals -- educated, established, many in mid-career -- may see their jobs swept away with the technological tide. These white-collar workers with six-figure lifestyles, long the backbone of the knowledge economy, face what the World Economic Forum calls the fourth industrial revolution. What happens when their jobs disappear?

The recent weaponization of drones has seen its share of inventiveness. But now, militants in Yemen are foregoing clever hacks and add-ons for a far more blunt approach: ramming drones into anti-missile systems, to keep them from knocking ballistic missiles out of the sky. It shows how militant groups and smaller military forces in the Middle East are exploiting gaps in the air defenses of better-equipped forces by using drones in new and unexpected ways, increasing demand for counter-drone technologies in the process. The United Arab Emirates, as part of a Saudi-led coalition, has been trying to oust the Houthi Ansar Allah movement in Yemen since Houthi militants seized control of the country from then-President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi in 2015. Recently, according to a report from weapons-tracking research organization Conflict Arms Research, the UAE picked up seven drones, used by the Houthi militia to render the coalition's Patriot ballistic missile defense systems unable to intercept missiles fired from Yemen into Saudi territory.

Microsoft has made the Windows 10 Creators Update available to download ahead of its official release next week. Members of the Windows Insider Program have had access to the operating system's new features for a little while already, but you no longer have to join the testing team in order to jump the queue for the update. Simply download the Windows 10 Update Assistant and follow the instructions. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

LONDON – Scientists are getting closer to building life from scratch and technology pioneers are taking notice, with record sums moving into a field that could deliver novel drugs, materials, chemicals and even perfumes. Despite ethical and safety concerns, investors are attracted by synthetic biology's wide market potential and the plummeting cost of DNA synthesis, which is industrializing the writing of the genetic code that determines how organisms function. While existing biotechnology is already used to make medicines like insulin and genetically modified crops, synthesizing whole genes or genomes gives an opportunity for far more extensive changes. Matt Ocko, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist whose past investments include Facebook, Uber and Zynga, believes the emerging industry has passed the "epiphany" moment needed to prove it can deliver economic value. "Synthetic biology companies are now becoming more like the disruptive, industrial-scale value propositions that define any technology business," he said.

Olivier Gevaert is an assistant professor at Stanford University focusing on developing machine-learning methods for biomedical decision support from multi-scale biomedical data. He is an electrical engineer by training with additional training in artificial intelligence, and a Ph.D. in bioinformatics at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He continued his work as a postdoc in radiology at Stanford and started his lab at the Department of Medicine, Biomedical Informatics. His lab focuses on multi-scale biomedical data fusion primarily in oncology and neuroscience.

Today and tomorrow, I am attending the Statlearn17 conference in Lyon, France. Which is a workshop with one-hour talks on statistics and machine learning. And which makes for the second workshop on machine learning in two weeks! Yesterday there were two tutorials in R, but I only took the train to Lyon this morning: it will be a pleasant opportunity to run tomorrow through a city I have not truly ever visited, if X'ed so many times driving to the Alps. Interestingly, the trip started in Paris with me sitting in the train next to another speaker at the conference, despite having switched seat and carriage with another passenger!

Most people think they know what the term "artificial intelligence" means, based on the results of a survey Pegasystems released Tuesday. However, their responses suggested that they probably don't fully understand how it's being used today, including in the customer service realm. Researchers polled 6,000 adult consumers in the United States, the UK, the Netherlands, France and Germany. Seventy-two percent of the survey participants said they understood what was meant by "artificial intelligence." While 32 percent said they weren't sure if they had interacted with AI, 34 percent said they had.

The world's leading software technology companies, designers and business executives will be gathering is Dublin's Science Gallery on Thursday, May 4 for the landmark'ConverCon' gathering. The event will examine the best way of making'conversational interfaces' work in real life for businesses, brands and customers. It will get underway from lunchtime on May 4 and is billed as an absolute must for anyone managing customer experiences or call centres, digital transformation directors, heads of design and anyone who wants to ensure their company is tech fit for a very different future. ConverCon 2017 is the first conference of its kind where all the players required to deliver a usable, working, conversational interface will gather. The event is supported by Swrve and is being run in conjunction with Webio, ESB and the internationally recognised centre of excellence for ICT research and innovation, the Telecommunications, Software & Systems Group (TSSG) at Waterford Institute of Technology.