Two of today's major business and intellectual trends offer complementary insights about the challenge of making forecasts in a complex and rapidly changing world. Forty years of behavioral science research into the psychology of probabilistic reasoning have revealed the surprising extent to which people routinely base judgments and forecasts on systematically biased mental heuristics rather than careful assessments of evidence. These findings have fundamental implications for decision making, ranging from the quotidian (scouting baseball players and underwriting insurance contracts) to the strategic (estimating the time, expense, and likely success of a project or business initiative) to the existential (estimating security and terrorism risks). The bottom line: Unaided judgment is an unreliable guide to action. Consider psychologist Philip Tetlock's celebrated multiyear study concluding that even top journalists, historians, and political experts do little better than random chance at forecasting such political events as revolutions and regime changes.1 The second trend is the increasing ubiquity of data-driven decision making and artificial intelligence applications. Once again, an important lesson comes from behavioral science: A body of research dating back to the 1950s has established that even simple predictive models outperform human experts' ability to make predictions and forecasts. This implies that judiciously constructed predictive models can augment human intelligence by helping humans avoid common cognitive traps.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

Apple has reportedly purchased artificial intelligence and machine learning startup Turi over the weekend, another signal that the world's biggest tech firms see a bright future in AI applications. The acquisition was first reported by the tech blog GeekWire. Turi, a Seattle-based company, offers a selection of tools aimed at helping developers easily scale machine learning applications, including Predictive Services, a server product for hosting and managing machine learning models, and GraphLab Create, an extensible machine learning framework that enables developers and data scientists to build and deploy intelligent applications and services. Apple responded to the publication with its standard comment explaining that the company buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and does not generally discuss the purpose or plans behind the deal. In October 2015, Apple acquired Perceptio, which has developed deep learning and AI capabilities that could be added to Siri.

From Google's purchase of Deepmind to Apple's purchase of VocalIQ, big deals in UK's intelligence technologies are booming. However, commercial innovations are only part of the story. Join Digital Catapult to meet SMEs, academics and investors working in this space. It's a fantastic opportunity to find out what the UK's leading academic and research organisations and businesses are doing and attending, you'll also gain exclusive insights into market opportunities, challenges and exciting advances. This event is part of ColLab Fest (19-23 September), a week of events sourced from Digital Catapult's network of five centres, nine associates and numerous partners.

Elon Musk's SpaceX successfully landed a reusable Falcon 9 rocket on a floating drone ship at sea on Sunday morning. The company's eighth launch this year was part of its ongoing effort to re-use costly rocket parts instead of discarding them into the ocean. It is the fourth time SpaceX has vertically landed a Falcon 9 rocket on a floating platform at sea. The company has also landed another rocket safely on land. The rocket launched under a dark night sky from Cape Canaveral, Florida in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Flash memory is being drawn into the mainstream of enterprise storage, but its tendency to deteriorate with use remains an Achilles' heel. A paper released at the Aug. 9 start of the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, Calif., finds that machine learning can counteract that deterioration and drastically extend its life cycle. The paper was written by Tom Coughlin, president of Coughlin Associates (PDF), a solid state consultant in Atascadero, Calif. He is also general chairman of the summit. The paper was sponsored by NVMdurance, a Limerick, Ireland, firm that is applying machine learning in the software it creates for managing solid state devices.

The Global Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Summit has opened in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Our reporter Ge Yunfei went to China's southern technology center to find out more about the potential of the budding industry. The success of Alpha Go in defeating the human mind has aroused the world of artificial intelligence. But at the Global Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Summit in Shenzhen, it's limitations have been projected. Michael Wooldrige -- who is leading a cooperation initiative between Oxford University and Google on artificial intelligence -- said although Alpha Go is unique in its own right, it's not THAT smart.

ISLAMABAD – The U.S. drone strike that killed the Islamic State group's commander for Afghanistan and Pakistan was the latest blow to the Middle East-led movement's ambitions to expand into a region where the long-established Taliban remain the dominant Islamist force. The Islamic State group has enticed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of jihadi fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan to switch loyalty and has held a small swath of territory in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, where leader Hafiz Saeed Khan was killed on July 26 by a U.S. drone, Washington confirmed late Friday. But outside that pocket of territory, security officials and analysts say that the group remains -- for now -- more of a "brand name" than a cohesive militant force in much of the region. "Groups around the world want to jump on that bandwagon and cash in on their popularity and the fear they command," said a Pakistani police official based in Islamabad, on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media. Anxiety over the Islamic State group -- also known as ISIS or "Daesh" -- in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been building since the al-Qaida breakaway movement seized portions of territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014 and began promoting itself worldwide.

This article was written by Gregory Roberts for Bloomberg BNA. Entrepreneurs and innovators are invading the complex and often arcane world of regulatory compliance with some of the same technologies that have disrupted the core operations of the financial services industry. Machine learning, biometrics and the interpretation of social media and other unstructured data show promise as potential compliance tools for regulatory obligations that have mushroomed in the aftermath of the financial crisis, along with the investment and costs associated with them. Regtech is "the use of new technologies to solve regulatory and compliance requirements more effectively and efficiently," as the Institute for International Finance (IIF), a research-oriented trade association in Washington, put it in a March report. "I would define it as technological advancement that assists those focused on compliance and regulatory-related activities in their professions," Kari Larsen, counsel at Reed Smith LLP in New York, and formerly in the Enforcement Division of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, told Bloomberg BNA.

An earlier version of this paper was presented on Oct. 21, 1984 as The Thoughts of Armchairs and Children at Middle Atlantic States Philosophy of Education Society Fall Conference, Rutgers University "Thinking" Like Computers Do 2004 Edward G. Rozycki, Ed. But what is then the difference between the internal speech of this armchair and that of another standing by it? How is it then with a human being? Where does she talk to herself? Why is it that this question seems senseless -- no specification of place is necessary except to say that the human is talking to herself? On the other hand the question as to where the armchair is talking to itself seems to demand such an answer. The reason is this: we want to know how the armchair is supposed to be like a human being, whether, for example, its head is the upper back of the chair, etc. What process is occurring when one talks to oneself inwardly?