As Apple plays catch up in many ways, the Mountain View company is doubling down on machine learning efforts that will play an important role in future products. Earlier this week, Google launched a dedicated Machine Learning research group in Europe. Google Research, Europe is based out of the company's Zurich office -- which is already home to the company's largest engineering presence outside of the US. Googlers there were responsible for developing the engine that drives Knowledge Graph and are currently working on the conversation engine that powers the upcoming Google Assistant in Allo. Engineers will specifically focus on natural language processing & understanding, machine intelligence, and machine perception.

After more than a century of building some of the most exclusive cars ever driven by chauffeurs, Rolls-Royce has found a new valet. Though the artificial intelligence system known as "Eleanor" is still just a concept, she offers a peek into how the world's most refined name in automobiles sees the ultra-wealthy getting around in the future. The technology is featured in the brand's 103EX Vision 100 concept car, an autonomous vehicle, which was unveiled in London on Thursday. "She [Eleanor] will look after you," said Ian Robertson, a BMW board member who once ran the Rolls-Royce division, and who remains close to the brand. "She will determine what your mood is like today, and then change the way the car drives, change the ambiance inside of it, maybe change the music."

Google announced today that it is expanding its largest non-U.S. The new Machine Learning Research Group will be based in Zurich, Switzerland, which is already home to Google's largest research center outside the U.S. The company did not say specifically how many positions will be added. But in a blog post, Google executives said machine learning has become critical to the company's development efforts across a wide range of services. "Google's ongoing research in Machine Intelligence is what powers many of the products being used by hundreds of millions of people a day -- from Translate to Photo Search to SmartReply for Inbox," wrote Emmanuel Mogenet, head of Google Research in Europe. Indeed, the Zurich research center has already had a sizable impact on Google.

"Wand Labs' technology and talent will strengthen our position in the emerging era of conversational intelligence, where we bring together the power of human language with advanced machine intelligence -- connecting people to knowledge, information, services and other people in more relevant and natural ways," David Ku, corporate vice president of the Information Platform Group at Microsoft, said in statement. "It builds on and extends the power of the Bing, Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Windows platforms to empower developers everywhere." "The acquisition of Wand Labs will support Microsoft's chatbots strategy, which the company refers to as "conversations as a platform," Raul Castanon-Martinez, senior Analyst, enterprise mobility, 451 Research told us today. "This is CEO Satya Nadella's first big initiative." Castanon-Martinez said although there are redundancies in the technology developed by Wand Labs and Microsoft's own assets, the acquisition will also provide Microsoft with a talented group of individuals with expertise in conversational interfaces. This will help Microsoft significantly expand the team of experts that are currently working on its conversation-as-a-platform strategy, he said. "This will be critical moving forward; Microsoft has ambitious goals to become the leader in this space [and] the industry is moving at a fast pace.

Enfield Council in north London is trialling a virtual assistant called Amelia to improve the online digital service experience for users and also to reduce the workload of staff within the organisation. The council's head of digital delivery, Tim Kidd, believes this kind of AI-led approach will, in time, be rolled out for services in local government across the country. Speaking with Computerworld UK, Kidd says he "absolutely" expects AI to take off in the public sector and local government. "How quickly is a separate matter, but absolutely in the long run these sorts of technologies will become mainstream in our services," he asserts. The council worked closely with Amelia's engineers at IPSoft so that the organisation can feed information about its processes directly into the AI.

A report from KPMG suggests that insurers will need to take "drastic measures" in order to reinvent themselves. In Empowered for the Future: Insurance Reinvented, which was released earlier this week, KPMG argues that insurers need to make fundamental changes to their business and operating models. "Success in the insurance industry of the future will not come from simply tweaking the status quo, insurers will need to change virtually every part of their business if they hope to not just survive, but thrive," reads the report. KPMG surveyed more than 70 insurance executives and asked them about the difficulties they see ahead and how they plan to meet them. Asked about the greatest threats they face (respondents could give more than one answer), executives said they were most concerned by the prospect of regulatory changes (37%), the effect of organisations outside the insurance industry (37%), and disruptive technologies (36%).

Google is extending its push into artificial intelligence with a new European research centre dedicated to advancing the technology. Based in Zurich, the team will focus on three areas – machine learning, natural language understanding and computer perception. Emmanuel Mogenet, who will head the unit, said much of the research would be on teaching machines common sense. There was, he said, "no limit on how big I grow the team". "We are very ambitious in terms of growth. The only limiting factor will be talent," he told journalists gathered in Zurich to hear more about Google's AI plans.

You'll find the Future of Humanity Institute down a medieval backstreet in the centre of Oxford. It is beside St Ebbe's church, which has stood on this site since 1005, and above a Pure Gym, which opened in April. The institute, a research faculty of Oxford University, was established a decade ago to ask the very biggest questions on our behalf. Notably: what exactly are the "existential risks" that threaten the future of our species; how do we measure them; and what can we do to prevent them? Or to put it another way: in a world of multiple fears, what precisely should we be most terrified of? When I arrive to meet the director of the institute, Professor Nick Bostrom, a bed is being delivered to the second-floor office. Existential risk is a round-the-clock kind of operation; it sleeps fitfully, if at all. Bostrom, a 43-year-old Swedish-born philosopher, has lately acquired something of the status of prophet of doom among those currently doing most to shape our civilisation: the tech billionaires of Silicon Valley.

GE unveiled a machine data system for power plants it claims can increase a facility's efficiency of operation by 1.5%, reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 3%, and reduce coal consumption by 67,000 tons for each megawatt of electricity produced. GE's Digital Power Plant for Steam suite was introduced at the Minds Machines conference in Paris June 14, where GE executives also revealed the results of a hardware and software upgrade using the technology at the Chivasso power plant in Northern Italy. The plant, run by A2A Group, was restarted in November 2015 after a three-year shutdown. Digital Power Plant for Steam is one of the first application suites to sit atop GE's Predix machine data analytics platform and yield practical, industrial results. The reference to "steam" in the product's name reflects the fact that gas and coal-fired power plants produce steam to drive the turbines that generate electricity used in households and industry in most societies.

SAN FRANCISCO - SEPTEMBER 08: Google Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer speaks during an announcement September 8, 2010 in San Francisco, California. Google announced the launch of Google Instant, a faster version of Google search that streams results live as you type your query. Google is consistently exploring all facets of virtual learning with the success of online applications, with a new artificial intelligence lab. Focusing on machines learning for the advancement of its products, Google Research Europe would be based in Switzerland. Following Google's recently launched Assistant, the company's European research team on artificial intelligence would be under the expertise of Emmanuel Mogenet plus up to a few hundred colleagues.