China and the US are becoming the world's biggest rivals in artificial intelligence: it's Luke vs Darth Vader, Alien vs Predator, Rocky vs Ivan Drago. The Chinese government's pivot to become the leader in this technology has created plenty of hype, but how are China's ambitious AI aspirations playing out on the ground? Research by startup database IT Juzi and Tencent News offers a new view of China's AI industry's strengths and weaknesses. The US is currently the definite champion in AI development, according to the data. There are 1.82 times more American AI companies than Chinese.

Seeing Machines (AIM: SEE), an industry leader in computer vision technologies which enable machines to see, understand and assist people, announces the automotive production debut of its FOVIO driver monitoring technology in the 2018 Cadillac CT6. The FOVIO based driver monitoring system (DMS) forms an integral part of General Motors' industry leading Super Cruise hands-free driving system for the highway, ensuring safe and confident vehicle operation. Overcoming the challenges of reliable driver monitoring is critical in hands-free driving systems to address the need for keeping drivers engaged and prepared to re-take control of the vehicle when required. The Cadillac Super Cruise system uses FOVIO vision technology, developed by Seeing Machines, to enable a gumdrop-sized infrared camera on the steering wheel column to accurately determine the driver's attention state. Determining driver attention state is accomplished through a precise measure of head orientation and eyelid movements under a full range of daytime and night-time driving conditions including the use of sunglasses.

Two artificial virtual assistants called Rosie and Maggie are set to become more ubiquitous after artificial intelligence start-up Flamingo raised $5.1 million last month to fund their rollout. Chief executive Catriona Wallace, who founded Flamingo in 2014, says she is "super pleased" with the raise after it was opened and closed within 12 minutes with $10 million bid on the book. "We were well oversubscribed," she says. "It was one of the fastest capital raises that [lead investment partner] Bell Potter had ever conducted, which I believe is testament to Australia's growing interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning." Flamingo is headquartered in Sydney but also has offices in the US with 30 staff across the two countries. The start-up's flagship technology is its artificial virtual assistants Rosie and Maggie.

Operators in the travel industry in the Asia-Pacific region should prepare themselves to maximise business from voice searches online, one of Australia's leading tourism strategists has cautioned. Simply optimise your digital online presence by building reputation, trust, authority and relevance and the voice recognition algorithms of Google, Apple, Amazon and others will do the rest for you – mostly. That was the recommendation by Bronwyn White, co-founder of MyTravelResearch.com, when she was addressing an audience of tourism marketers at the Tourism Marketing Rockstar Convention in Sydney last month. Ms White explained that voice search and chatbots were the latest digital marketing outcomes of the artificial intelligence revolution currently transforming the travel industry by stealth. Apple Siri, Google Now, Windows Cortana and Amazon Alexa are the leading voice activated chatbots helping consumers search without typing," she said. "They all use artificial intelligence algorithms to drive voice search.

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Hold onto your job - artificial intelligence (AI) is driving us through a fourth industrial revolution. Up to half our existing jobs will be replaced by robots, nanotechnology and AI within 10 to 15 years and many are warning New Zealand business is woefully unprepared. Sophie is Air New Zealand's face of digital disruption. Soon she may be booking your flight. Sophie was made by New Zealand-based company Soul Machines, which is about to roll out digital employees to some major companies.

Read the full ABC article and watch the video interview to learn more about Tanmay and his work in the field of AI. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) recently profiled 13-year-old Canadian tech prodigy Tanmay Bakshi who started using computers at age five, launched his first app at age nine, and has been working with IBM's AI and cognitive APIs for a couple of years now. Tanmay is in a different league from the average pre-teen. In 2013, at age nine, he built "tTables," an app to help kids learn multiplication which Apple's App Store accepted after rejecting it three times. An incredible achievement for a child who loves to code but is largely self-taught.

Telstra has used open source machine learning technology to answer the age-old question that plagues every marketer: how effective is my ad spend? The telco wields one of the biggest marketing budgets in Australia, but that doesn't stop Telstra from wanting to track the performance of every dollar spent. The company previously faced a six-month lag to get visibility into the effectiveness of its marketing spend; that is now down to five weeks using new marketing mix modelling developed in partnership with Accenture, Deakin University and Servian. The telco previously used a traditional econometric model to assess the performance of its marketing spend, pulling together 800 variables – which took two-and-a-half months to assemble – and then modelling this using regression techniques. "Six months after the marketing period had ended I could tell the CMO [chief marketing officer] and the marketers how effective their marketing was... six months ago," Telstra's director of research, insights & analytics Liz Moore told the recent Big Data & Analytics Innovation Summit in Sydney.

In the hope of making drone deliveries even more accurate, Project Wing has started making deliveries directly to people's houses in southeastern Australia. The firm announced that it will deliver food from Mexican food chain, Guzman y Gomez, and medicines from Chemist Warehouse pharmacies to customers in rural areas on the border of the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales. Project Wing, which is run by Google parent Alphabet, hopes the trials will help to fine-tune how its drones move goods from where they're located to where they're needed. In the hope of making drone deliveries even more accurate, Alphabet's Project Wing has started making deliveries directly to people's houses in southeastern Australia Project Wing's aircraft has a wingspan of approximately 1.5m (4.9ft) and have four electrically-driven propellers. The total weight, including the package to be delivered, is approximately 10kg (22lb). The aircraft itself accounts for the bulk of that at 8.5kg (18.7lb).

Apparently, Project Wing brought airborne burritos to Virginia Tech last year as preparation for something bigger. Alphabet X's experimental project is now dropping burritos (and medicine) from the skies of Australia as part of a series of tests to figure out how to run a drone delivery service efficiently. Project Wing Co-Lead James Ryan Burgess said they've teamed up with Australia Mexican food chain Guzman y Gomez and pharmacy chain Chemist Warehouse to drop off orders to testers living in a rural area. These testers usually have to take a 40-minute round trip by car to get to the nearest grocery or restaurant, making them the perfect subjects for Wing's experiments. Project Wing has to conduct these tests, because while it has a system that can pre-configure routes, its drones rely on on-board sensors to avoid obstacles.