One of the technology terms I have encountered most on my travels of the past couple of years has been artificial intelligence. AI has been around as a concept for a long time, but until recently it seemed always a little out of reach. Today AI is a reality. It is present in our smartphones in the shape of intelligent assistants like Siri, and powers chatbots that deliver real-time customer service. It is my belief that AI will grow to become a mainstream element of digital transformation sooner rather than later.

A new study has found that Facebook users could be better off letting strangers choose their profile pictures for them. Researchers at the University of New South Wales Sydney, in Australia, conducted an experiment in which 102 social media users were asked to select 12 pictures of themselves from Facebook and choose the two they'd be most likely to use as a profile picture across a number of different sites. The participants' 12-picture selections were then shown to complete strangers, who were told to choose what they thought would make the best profile pictures. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

From selfie authentication to finance tools that respond to emojis to computer-generated avatars that look and act like real people, new technological tools are giving digital banking a makeover. The April PYMNTS Digital Banking Tracker looks at the various ways technology is changing the digital banking landscape. Banks and FinTechs are rolling out several new technological banking solutions aimed at enticing a new generation of banking customers. With more millennial consumers joining the banking systems, companies are turning to the technologies this generation uses on a daily basis to help them deliver more modern banking solutions. From selfie authentication tools to emoji-based transactions to virtual assistants, the past few weeks saw several companies make new additions to the banking toolbox.

Inmates for years have thought of ingenious -- and sometimes very compromising ways -- to sneak contraband inside prison walls. They've bribed guards, used carrier pigeons, had relatives put the goods in body cavities and, of course, who can forget a classic routine: baking a file into a cake. But modern technology is quickly making life easier for inmates -- and less uncomfortable for family and friends -- looking to smuggle illicit goods onto prison grounds. Corrections officials across the U.S. have reported an uptick in the last few years of drones flying over penitentiary walls to deliver everything from cigarettes and pornography to drugs and weapons to inmates. Prison officials in Michigan last spring found a small toy drone on the grounds of the Charles Egeler Reception and Guidance Center.

Equipped with a state-of-the-art thermal camera, the drone crisscrossed the field, scanning it for cool, soggy patches where a gopher may have chewed through the buried drip irrigation line and caused a leak. In the drought-prone West, where every drop of water counts, California farmers are in a constant search for ways to efficiently use the increasingly scarce resource. Cannon Michael is putting drone technology to work on his fields at Bowles Farming near Los Banos, 120 miles southeast of San Francisco. About 2,100 companies and individuals have federal permission to fly drones for farming, according to the drone industry's Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. Federal regulators planned to relax the rules Monday on commercial drones, a move that could spur even greater use of such aircraft on farms. Michael is descended from Henry Miller, a renowned cattle rancher, farmer and Western landowner who helped transform semi-arid central California into fertile farmland 150 years ago by building irrigation canals, some still flowing today.

The Labor MP Jim Chalmers was at a town hall meeting in Eagleby, Queensland this week when an older couple approached him. They were part of a crowd that turned up to see Bill Shorten's "Bill Bus", Labor's resurrected campaign bus from last year's election, on its way from Queensland to New South Wales as part of a two-week tour. Eagleby had been devastated by recent flooding, a painful hit for a suburb that only five years ago had twice the rate of unemployment than the state average. Chalmers said the couple wanted to talk about "the kids" – not their own necessarily, just young people. In a suburb where, according to the 2011 census, close to 50% of the workforce comprised labourers, tradesmen, technicians, machinery operators and drivers, where were the jobs going to come from when everything was getting automated?

Progress in artificial intelligence has long been measured by its mastery of board games like chess, backgammon, and Go. Researchers are now working on poker and computer games such as Starcraft. Iyad Rahwan, a professor at MIT, respects those milestones but says the focus on beating humans in direct competition has led us to neglect other ways of measuring and advancing AI. He argues that as smart machines look set to become pervasive, more effort should be devoted to creating software that learns to coöperate with humans. "This is the next important problem, because AIs don't always have to replace us, they have to live with us," says Rahwan.

In late February, the UN-Secretary General held a press conference, highlighting the risk of starvation in East Africa and the necessity to raise funds to address the emergency situations in Somalia and South Sudan. Drought has been back in these countries and their neighbours since 2016, leading to a huge current food crisis. While governments are trying to handle the situation, how could technology innovations help prevent starvation and improve agriculture management in the future? We met with Laurent Rivière, a French 30 years-old entrepreneur, who shared with us his view on the subject with a combination of engineer pragmatism and changemaker idealism . Founder and CEO at Sunbirds for two years, he explained to us how his "bird of the sun," his solar drone, is addressing the agriculture challenges of the 21st century.

As a computer science student many years ago, I learned a bit about artificial intelligence and its applications. At first, I was quite excited by the idea of computers thinking like humans. Then, I quickly realized: computers couldn't really "think"-- at least not the way that a human brain could. What if--I thought--we gave a computer large amounts of data and compute power. Could it do something that resembled thinking?

When it comes to your profile picture, a total stranger knows what's best for you, according to new research. Images selected by strangers convey a much more favourable first impression than images people select for themselves, according to the study. The findings contradict evidence which suggests that we portray ourselves in a good light in our profile pictures - instead it seems we're doing it all wrong. This participant selected the top, second from left photo for her professional profile picture but strangers thought she looked better in the bottom, second from left one. Researchers took 102 students and asked them to select two out of 12 photos of their face that they were most likely to use as profile pictures in three contexts - on social networks, dating sites and professional networks.