Discussions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality ( VR) inevitably evoke descriptive images of a room full of gamers. But, AI and VR will change the way you communicate and do business. This post comes from the perspective of Montserrat Corominas Founder & Managing Partner at Intergroup Partners.Zürich, Switzerland Most business leaders are not quite sure yet how AI and VR are relevant to their companies and what is in it for them. To my understanding, these are only contemporary descriptions of state of the art technologies. The most important topic to discuss for boards, founders and management teams in regards to AI/VR is the inherent new way of communication through digitization.

Netatmo is known for connected home products like the Presence AI-assisted security camera that can tell crooks from coyotes, but for CES, it's expanding into a new niche: built-in products. On top of a new smoke alarm and siren, the company has teamed up with French companies Velux and Legrand on AI-equipped in-wall smart switches, power outlets, skylights and blinds. On the consumer side, Netatmo launched the Smart Smoke Alarm (above) as an addition to its home security and monitoring lineup. Much like the Nest Protect, it sounds an 85 decibel alarm when it detects smoke, but also sends a real-time alert to your smartphone. That's accompanied by a message like "smoke detected in the kitchen," telling you where, exactly, the problem is.

President-elect Trump and green jobs advocates rarely find themselves on the same side. All it seems to have taken was a little trolling. Ford Motor Company said this morning that it's spending $700 million to expand its Flat Rock, Michigan, plant to develop a new generation of electric and autonomous vehicles. The expansion will add 700 production jobs, according to the company's official announcement. Ford is also scrapping plans to open a new $1.6 billion factory in Mexico, where it was set to manufacture its line of Ford Focuses.

Amid all the sound and fury over Brexit, progressives disorientated by 2016 should remember a vital fact - it is only the firing gun on a decade of much wider disruption. As the UK negotiates its new place in the world, a wave of economic, social and technological change will reshape the country, in often radical ways. It is vital progressives better understand the forces driving these changes and the challenges and opportunities they will create. After all, progressives historically have won when they have a strong set of demands allied to a sense they own the future, and have change in their bones. The IPPR's new report, Future Proof: Britain in the 2020s, sets out the five key trends that will drive change in the 2020s and the major challenges they will create.

Way back in 1969, as a kid, I watched a very interesting movie - "2001: A Space Odyssey." It was a science fiction where a super intelligent computer program HAL is in charge of a mission to Jupiter which also carries several astronauts. The program becomes rogue and tries to kill all the astronauts. The hero survives and manages to disable the program. There is a lot more to the plot, but the fight between human and computer is still vivid in my memory. In 1969, such a scenario looked possible. After all 32 years is a lot of time given the rate of our progress.

After 15 years of development and more than 200 flights, an Israel firm is confident its autonomous flying ambulance will be ready to hit the market by 2020 – and will come with a $14 million price tag. The Cormorant, formally known as the'AirMule', can transport about a half a ton (500kg) of weight at 115 miles (185 km) per hour. Designed by Urban Aeronautics, its developers say the military drone will be able to reach areas unfit for helicopters to deliver supplies and carry wounded soldiers to safety. After 15 years of development and more than 200 flights, an Israel firm is confident its autonomous flying ambulance will be ready to hit the market by 2020 – and will cost about $14 million. The Cormorant, formally known as the'AirMule', can transport about a half a ton (500kg) of weight at 115 miles (185 km) per hour'Just imagine a dirty bomb in a city and chemical substance of something else and this vehicle can come in robotically, remotely piloted, come into a street and decontaminate an area,' Urban Aeronautics founder and CEO Rafi Yoeli told Reuters.

All Mark Rittman wanted was a cup of tea. Little did he know he would have to spend 11 hours waiting for his new hi-tech kettle to boil the water. Rittman, a data specialist who lives in Hove, England, set about trying to make a cup of tea around 9am. But thanks to his Wi-Fi enabled kettle it wasn't long before he ran into trouble. Still haven't had a first cup of tea this morning, debugging the kettle and now iWifi base-station has reset. Three hours later the kettle was still having problems.

Last year Google recognized Coeur d'Alene as Idaho's eCity (beating out Boise and Moscow), and in a recent article in Chatbots Magazine, journalist Kelly Kissack speculated that the little resort town in the Idaho wilderness might just be the "cradle of civilization for artificial intelligence and robotics" in America. Kissack's piece follows the accomplishments of CDA native, Nick Smoot, and his "Innovation Collective". You can find her article here. It seems, however, that historically there is even more evidence to support Kissack's premise. In fact, a decade and a half earlier, a small Coeur d'Alene startup launched an A.I. that could very well have beaten the Turing test more than ten years before "Eugene" in 2014 -- had it competed. The development and origin of this A.I. technology is an intriguing story, and one that personally first drew me to the area and its talent.

For thousands of years humans believed that authority came from the gods. Then, during the modern era, humanism gradually shifted authority from deities to people. Jean-Jacques Rousseau summed up this revolution in Emile, his 1762 treatise on education. When looking for the rules of conduct in life, Rousseau found them "in the depths of my heart, traced by nature in characters which nothing can efface. I need only consult myself with regard to what I wish to do; what I feel to be good is good, what I feel to be bad is bad." Humanist thinkers such as Rousseau convinced us that our own feelings and desires were the ultimate source of meaning, and that our free will was, therefore, the highest authority of all.

Kolibree, a smart oral care company, has unveiled what it claims is the first toothbrush embedded with AI at CES 2017. The Ara is clearly no ordinary mouth scrubber. Just read how Kolibree founder and CEO Thomas Serval describes Ara's tech: "Patented deep learning algorithms are embedded directly inside the toothbrush on a low-power processor," he said in a release. "Raw data from the sensors runs through the processor, enabling the system to learn your habits and refine accuracy the more it's used." Ara picks up precisely where you're brushing, and will log information, such as frequency, duration and location, in either on or offline mode.