Researchers compared a group of gamers' emotional responses to those of others who didn't play frequently and found that their ability to empathize wasn't hindered by violent video games. Researchers at the Hannover Medical School in Germany studied a group of males who played first-person shooter video games for at least two hours daily for the past year. Those subjects were compared to another group of gamers who had not played violent video games or any video games on a regular basis. Each participant underwent an MRI scan while being presented with images designed to produce an emotional response. They were also asked questions on various subjects to determine how empathetic their responses were.

The Amazon Echo, a voice-controlled virtual assistant, is seen at its product launch for Britain and Germany in London, in 2016. After several months of pushback, Amazon has agreed to release user data from an Amazon Echo device involved in a high-profile Arkansas murder trial. The device, a popular, hands-free artificial intelligence assistant named "Alexa" that responds to human directives, contains audio recordings that prosecutors say could could provide information in the murder of Victor Collins, 47, who was found dead in his hot tub on Nov. 22, 2015, in Bentonville, Arkansas. James Bates, 31, was charged with first-degree murder and tampering with evidence in the case. Benton County Prosecuting Attorney Nathan Smith wrote in an email that prosecutors were "pleased" with Amazon's decision.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is not just transforming ecommerce. Ecommerce came about because the internet made it easy to find what you were looking for. The digital age made the physical world appear closer, so you could buy things from distant countries. Early adopters assumed ecommerce would be fueled by economics of scale and lower costs, but those weren't the main drivers: It was convenience. Websites made information freely available.

Imagine that, in 20 or 30 years, a company creates the first artificially intelligent humanoid robot. She looks like a person, talks like a person, interacts like a person. If you were to meet Ava, you could relate to her even though you know she's a robot. Ava is a fully conscious, fully self-aware being: She communicates; she wants things; she improves herself. She is also, importantly, far more intelligent than her human creators.

Machine learning is complex, but nonetheless has pushed its way to professional and maker communities alike. Nvidia has lead much of this with their TK1 and TX1 modules; now, with the new release of the Jetson TX2, the AI capabilities we have access to have just doubled. The new hardware, announced last night at a press event in San Francisco, retains the same form factor as the TX1 -- roughly the size of a credit card, it's meant as a drop-in replacement. It replaces the TX1's Mawell GPU with a Pascal unit, doubles the TX1's storage and memory, and increases its video encoding and decoding specs. With it, the company states that it can get either twice the performance of the TX1 (handling object detection and tracking from two 4K cameras simultaneously), or get double the efficiency running the same configuration as a TX1.

"Let us consider an augmented architect at work. He sits at a working station that has a visual display screen some three feet on a side, this is his working surface, controlled by a computer with which he can communicate by means of small keyboards and various other devices." This vision of the future architect was imagined by engineer and inventor Douglas Engelbart during his research into emerging computer systems at Stanford in 1962. At the dawn of personal computing he imagined the creative mind overlapping symbiotically with the intelligent machine to co-create designs. This dual mode of production, he envisaged, would hold the potential to generate new realities which could not be realized by either entity operating alone.

Stephen Hawking worries that humanity sometimes seems like a bunch of schoolyard bullies ... in a schoolyard littered with loaded machine guns and land mines. "Since civilization began, aggression has been useful inasmuch as it has definite survival advantages," the world's most famous cosmologist told the UK Times. "Now, however, technology has advanced at such a pace that this aggression may destroy us all by nuclear or biological war." Hawking says logic and reason must act as safeties on the triggers of such apocalyptic weapons. Besides catastrophic war, he also worries about climate change, mass extinctions and unchecked artificial intelligence, as he's mentioned before.

Big Data Analytics Tokyo is an event which brings together 400 experts and entrepreneurs from the US and Japanese tech hubs. The event featured 20 talks, panel discussions, business pitch sessions, and lightning talks, where all presentations were bilingual with simultaneous interpretation. Whether you are a business leader, data scientist or investor, this event would be of relevance to you. Presenting at this event was AI Business' Director, Daniel Pitchford, who enlightened the audience about the true business impact of artificial intelligence. Pitchford started off by defining artificial intelligence by looking at practical AI.

NVIDIA Tuesday unveiled the NVIDIA Jetson TX2, a credit card-sized platform that puts AI computing to work in the world all around us. At the same time, GPU-based deep learning has given computers the ability to understand -- and react to -- the data streaming in from all these devices in uncanny new ways. Both through training -- which creates smart systems -- and through inference -- which creates systems that are able to react intelligently to the world around them in real time. "We're seeing a lot of this inference not just in the cloud, but also moving towards the edge, whether it's a robot, or a drone or a security camera," Talla said. "And Jetson is our platform for doing inference and AI computing at the edge."

O2 has announced plans to introduce an AI capable of performing the same job as customer service staff. The voice recognition system, which is called Aura, was unveiled by the mobile operator's parent company Telefonica at MWC this week. It's expected to launch in the UK next year, and will enable the company to cut customer service costs. Aura would be able to deal with customers' issues over the phone, such as questions about bills and requests to make changes to existing mobile plans. Telefonica also believes that Aura will help it boost customer loyalty, by allowing the firm to hand customers' data back to them.