Sure, Amazon made its first drone delivery last week, but 7-Eleven already has it beat. Today, the convenience store company announced that it has already made a total of 77 deliveries by drone in the state of Nevada. Of course the caveat here is that 7-Eleven relied on Flirtey, a drone delivery service company that's already made a name for itself by delivering Domino's in New Zealand and textbooks in Australia. It also made the first FAA-approved urban drone delivery earlier this year. Though the deliveries kicked off in July, it was in November when the company started making regular weekend deliveries from a 7-Eleven store to about a dozen customers.

Data science, advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence will be centre stage technologies shaping business in 2017 and beyond. That's according to analyst firm, Gartner, which predicts that enterprise will see "intelligence everywhere" as new software-based systems, which are programmed to learn and adapt, permeate businesses within the next three to five years. As outlined by Gartner vice president and fellow, David Cearley, these intelligent trends will intertwine to form a'digital mesh', blurring physical and digital workspaces. Artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced machine learning (ML) are intelligent machines that can understand, learn and operate autonomously. "Applied AI and ML give rise to a spectrum of intelligent implementations, including physical devices such as robots, autonomous vehicles and apps and services such as virtual personal assistants and smart advisors," Cearley said.

India is home to the world's largest population of blind people and not nearly enough optometrists to provide the care the country needs. But recently, some doctors there have been receiving help in the fight against eye disease from an unexpected source. As Mashable reports, machine learning is being used to better understand the spread of blindness and predict the success rates of eye surgeries. The initiative is part of a collaboration between Microsoft and the Indian not-for-profit LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI). At the center of the project are their Azure machine learning and Power BI services: After analyzing the anonymous records of 1.1 million people, the AI system can trace patterns of eye disease.

In 2016, the White House recognized the importance of AI at its Frontiers Conference. The concept of driverless cars became a reality, with Uber's self-driving fleet in Pittsburgh and Tesla's new models equipped with the hardware for full autonomy. Google's DeepMind platform, AlphaGo, beat the world champion of the game--10 years ahead of predictions. "Increasing use of machine learning and knowledge-based modeling methods" are major trends to watch in 2017, said Marie desJardins, associate dean and professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. How will this play out?

Yoo Kwang-yeol, commissioner of the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit, said his agency is currently working to upgrade the main system that stores and analyzes information regarding hundreds of millions of financial transactions in order to increase accuracy of capturing suspicious transactions out of normal ones. "We are considering an uptake of the artificial intelligence technology to improve the current intelligence system by benchmarking advanced systems in countries like Australia and Canada," Yoo said in an interview with The Korea Herald. Yoo Kwang-yeol, commissioner of Korea Financial Intelligence Unit speaks during an interview at his office in Gwanghwamun, central Seoul, Dec. 6. Ahn Hoon/The Korea Herald For this, a group of KOFIU experts paid a trip to Australia earlier this month to learn from the Australian financial intelligence system. "AI can help improve efficiency of sorting out suspicious financial transactions and accuracy of analyzing related account information," Yoo said.

With its controversial seizure and return of a U.S. underwater drone, Beijing may have inadvertently thrust into the spotlight one of the main motivations behind its ramped-up moves in the South China Sea: the quest to create a safe-haven for its sea-based nuclear deterrent. Submarines, in particular ballistic missile subs, have long figured prominently in China's desire to match the capabilities and prestige of other major nuclear powers. Slowly but surely, experts say, Beijing has made progress on this front, building a formidable program that began very early in the ruling Communist Party's history. But securing the credibility of its overall nuclear deterrent has been a challenge. "In particular, experts worry that growing U.S. missile defense, conventional precision strike, and space-based surveillance capability together allow for sophisticated preemptive attacks that pose a significant threat to China's land-based nuclear forces," Tong Zhao, a fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, wrote in a June report on China's sea-based nuclear deterrent.

Microsoft's plan to use machine learning to improve eyecare in India Competition that results in better care for people suffering from visual impairments is the right kind of competition. Following a path similar to that of Google's DeepMind, Microsoft India announced this morning that it's launching a new research group, the Microsoft Intelligent Network for Eyecare, to bring data-driven eyecare services to India. Whereas DeepMind's swing at ophthalmology targeted the UK, Microsoft's ambitions are a considerably more global. The tech company is working alongside researchers from the United States, Brazil, Australia and, of course, India to train machine learning models that can identify conditions that can lead to blindness. Microsoft's key strategic partnership is with the L V Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, India, one of the most prestigious hospitals in the country.

Competition that results in better care for people suffering from visual impairments is the right kind of competition. Following a path similar to that of Google's DeepMind, Microsoft India announced this morning that it's launching a new research group, the Microsoft Intelligent Network for Eyecare, to bring data-driven eyecare services to India. Whereas DeepMind's swing at ophthalmology targeted the UK, Microsoft's ambitions are a considerably more global. The tech company is working alongside researchers from the United States, Brazil, Australia and, of course, India to train machine learning models that can identify conditions that can lead to blindness. Microsoft's key strategic partnership is with the L V Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, India, one of the most prestigious hospitals in the country.

To ramp up its contribution to global fights against money laundering and terrorism financing, South Korea will introduce an artificial intelligence-based system to better filter out financial crimes, said the country's financial intelligence chief. Yoo Kwang-yeol, commissioner of the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit, said his agency is currently working to upgrade the main system that stores and analyzes information regarding hundreds of millions of financial transactions in order to increase accuracy of capturing suspicious transactions out of normal ones. Yoo Kwang-yeol, commissioner of Korea Financial Intelligence Unit speaks during an interview at his office in Gwanghwamun, central Seoul, Dec. 6. For this, a group of KOFIU experts paid a trip to Australia earlier this month to learn from the Australian financial intelligence system. "AI can help improve efficiency of sorting out suspicious financial transactions and accuracy of analyzing related account information," Yoo said.

Hundreds of millions of people around the world suffer from visual impairment. A new program from Microsoft utilizes machine learning techniques and artificial intelligence to help diagnose and treat the condition, according to a report from Mashable. Earlier this year, Microsoft teamed with the not-for-profit LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) in India, which provided the computing giant with access to more than one million anonymized medical records. Those records were tossed into Microsoft's cloud-based machine learning program and processed. The data gave Microsoft the ability to look through and analyze a wide range of procedures, providing a better understanding as to why a certain operation is chosen and the results of different surgeries for the eye patients.