Apple is set to hold its biggest software event of the year, WWDC, in the middle of June. It'll use the San Francisco event to show off all of the software that's on its way to your Watch, phone and other computers – as well as potentially new Apple devices. The event comes at a big time for Apple. The company is fresh off the back of its first quarter of decline since the iPhone came out, and is feeling the heat from other companies like Google. It will intend to use WWDC as a way of showcasing the software and potentially other products that it hopes will prove its doubters wrong and get the company to grow again.

Czech writer Karel?apek's 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which famously introduced the word robot to the world, begins with synthetic humans--the robots from the title--toiling in factories to produce low-cost goods. It ends with those same robots killing off the human race. Thus was born an enduring plot line in science fiction: robots spiraling out of control and turning into unstoppable killing machines. Twentieth-century literature and film would go on to bring us many more examples of robots wreaking havoc on the world, with Hollywood notably turning the theme into blockbuster franchises like The Matrix, Transformers, and The Terminator. Lately, fears of fiction turning to fact have been stoked by a confluence of developments, including important advances in artificial intelligence and robotics, along with the widespread use of combat drones and ground robots in Iraq and Afghanistan. The world's most powerful militaries are now developing ever more intelligent weapons, with varying degrees of autonomy and lethality.

A student in Ashok Goel's class last semester had a question: How long could the computer programs, or "agents," they were building take to solve problems? Since it was an online course, the student posted the question to the group discussion board. One teaching assistant replied, pointing to a portion of the assignment that set a 15 minute limit. The student clarified that their agent was running a little slow, and could take a bit longer. "It's fine if your agent takes a few minutes to run," she wrote. "If it's going to take more than 15 minutes to run, please leave notes in the submission about how long we should expect it to take.

It has taken me time to warm to the notion of robotics and Artificial Intelligence. But this year I have been working on a project which has created a need for me to hang out with IBM's NAO Robots, and immerse myself in the world of Artificial Intelligence, on a regular basis. And in doing so, I have collected my favourite use cases for organisations today. Dangerous and Dull Today in industries ranging from manufacturing, to mining, to the the aeronautics industry, there are tasks which, on one extreme are so dull and boring it is almost impossible to recruit resource to support, and on the other extreme, so dangerous that lives are regularly lost. Robots, infused with Artificial Intelligence (AI) are an awesome alternative to dull and dangerous .

Over the years, researchers and companies have invented plenty of devices to help people with visual impairments avoid objects such as a desk or chair. Many of these gadgets used ultrasonic sensors to detect such hazards. Just to name a few, there was the discontinued Pathsounder (which hung around a person's neck), the cumbersome NavBelt (worn around the waist), and the wheeled GuideCane. However, there's another type of obstacle that lurks underfoot--slight depressions in the ground such as steps, curbs, or divots that can cause a person to stumble or a wheelchair to suddenly turn awry. "There's nothing in existence that we know of that detects non-protruding hazards," says Elaine Wong, an electrical engineer at Australia's University of Melbourne.

Three Australian startups have been recognised as some of the most disruptive companies in the world with the potential to "influence, change or create new global markets". Twice a year, leading entrepreneurs, investors and experts from the likes of Microsoft Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, Sky News and IBM curate the Disrupt 100 list, which is published by UK-based Tallt Ventures. Out of more than one million global startups and corporate ventures, Sydney's Eora 3D, Adelaide's Humanihut and Queensland's Go One made the cut. With Asia expected to represent a growing number of listings in the future, Disrupt 100 has highlighted Eora 3D among the many startups in the region leading the way. It's a proud moment for Eora 3D co-founder Rich Boers who says he can't believe his startup has been listed ahead of companies like IBM Watson, a health platform using artificial intelligence to generate insights on unstructured data.

Three years later in 2016, enough time has passed to discern patterns from trends. In that time the industry has experienced seismic shifts and a sweeping wave of consolidation. So let's take another look at the state of the digital nation and why, for the bold, great opportunity lies ahead. There's plenty of additional reading in the links for those who want to go down the rabbit hole, as well as a reference table at the end. Happy to continue the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag #DigitalNation at @ezyjules and @marvelapp. A sweeping wave of acquisitions has decimated the ranks of independent agencies and formed two clashing clans. On the one side are the giants of advertising and marketing and on the other the titans of management consultancy. Meanwhile the market over which they are fighting is in the midst of a multi-faceted existential crisis. Over the last four years the design consultancy industry has experienced an unprecedented period of consolidation, building to a ...

We show that the climate phenomena of El Nino and La Nina arise naturally as states of macro-variables when our recent causal feature learning framework (Chalupka 2015, Chalupka 2016) is applied to micro-level measures of zonal wind (ZW) and sea surface temperatures (SST) taken over the equatorial band of the Pacific Ocean. The method identifies these unusual climate states on the basis of the relation between ZW and SST patterns without any input about past occurrences of El Nino or La Nina. The simpler alternatives of (i) clustering the SST fields while disregarding their relationship with ZW patterns, or (ii) clustering the joint ZW-SST patterns, do not discover El Nino. We discuss the degree to which our method supports a causal interpretation and use a low-dimensional toy example to explain its success over other clustering approaches. Finally, we propose a new robust and scalable alternative to our original algorithm (Chalupka 2016), which circumvents the need for high-dimensional density learning.

Machine learning will have a huge impact on business and society but at present is "still a cottage industry", says Professor Bob Williamson, chief scientist of CSIRO's Data 61 group. There's been a resurgence of interest in machine learning in recent years. Though it's not a new concept, factors like Big Data, the availability of more powerful computational processing and cheaper data storage, means more CIOs are investigating its applications. Speaking at a SAS customer event in Sydney, Williamson outlined the need for those working in the field to better share and standardise their work. There's very little reuse," he explained. "Plenty of my colleagues will do things from scratch.

Apple now has the tech in place to give its digital assistant a big boost thanks to a UK-based company called VocalIQ it bought last year. In fact, it was so impressive that Apple bought VocalIQ before the company could finish and release its smartphone app. After the acquisition, Apple kept most of the VocalIQ team and let them work out of their Cambridge office and integrate the product into Siri. Before Apple bought the company, VocalIQ tested its product against Siri, Google Now, and Cortana, and the results were impressive. Users asked each AI questions using normal language, not the robotic commands you're used to using with digital assistants.