"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.

Airbus has unveiled a new concept that could put an end to traffic jams. Called Pop.Up, the modular system consist of a two-seater capsule that functions as a car or can be carried to the rider's destination by a vertical take-off and landing air vehicle when the roads are too congested. Once passengers reach their destination, both the the air and ground modules will return to dedicated recharge stations, where they will wait to be summoned by the next customers. Airbus has unveiled a new concept that could put an end to traffic jams. Called Pop.Up, the modular system consist of a two-seater capsule that functions as a car or can be carried to the rider's destination by a vertical take-off and landing air vehicle when the roads are too congested Passengers summon the two-seater capsule using a designated app.

Anyone can teach themselves to have a memory the size of a champion, a study shows. Scans found ordinary members of the public had brains as sharp as the world's greatest memorisers after a simple brain training course using'memory palaces'. It means the ability to perform astonishing feats - such as remembering lists of several dozen words - can be learned, say scientists. After 40 days of daily 30-minute training sessions individuals who had typical memory skills at the start and no previous practise more than doubled their capacity. In this study, the learning strategy scientists chose was loci training, also known as creating a'memory palace'.

The UK government has announced extra funding for technologies including robotics and driverless cars as part of the 2017 budget. Chancellor Philip Hammond announced plans to "enhance the UK's position as a world leader in science and innovation" by allocating £270 million to support research into "biotech, robotic systems and driverless vehicles". Driverless vehicle trials have already begun in several locations around the UK, including Milton Keynes and Greenwich in London. Hammond also confirmed that £16 million will be used to create a hub for running trials into 5G connectivity, while £200 million will be invested to fund local projects testing ways of accelerating the rollout of full fibre broadband across the UK. Analysts say the projected funds may struggle to have a long-term impact.

In addition, the money will be used for "cutting-edge" AI and robotics that can "operate in extreme and hazardous environments," including nuclear energy, space and deep mining environments. Today's Budget also unpacked the government's plans -- again, hinted at in last year's Autumn Statement -- to support fibre broadband and 5G connectivity in the UK. Starting this year, the treasury has promised to spend £200 million on a suite of local projects that will "test ways to accelerate market delivery of new full-fibre broadband networks." These include connection vouchers for businesses, new connections for schools, hospitals and other public sector buildings, and a push to bundle local public sector users "to create enough broadband demand to reduce the financial risk of building new full-fibre networks," Google Fiber style. We heard a lot about 5G at Mobile World Congress, however the super-fast network technology is still a way off.

This January, a video game chip started a scientific reckoning. It all began when some "microchip archaeologists" photographed the chip--the MOS 6502 microprocessor that lived inside Atari--and built a digital model of its interconnections. Then some neuroscientists put it to the test. One by one, they knocked out the transistors in their map, trying to get at what the circuit was for. It's similar to what neuroscientists do when they lesion a part of the brain, or silence single neurons.