The AI Economy is coming faster then most people realize. AI will be a game-changer for business, government and society. I have published this in my last book Future Smart. This AI Economy has already started and is in full swing. There are many that would dismiss AI as science fiction.

It is midnight on January 18, 2017, and the Outbrain Click Prediction machine learning competition has just finished. It has been three and a half months of working late. As I scroll through the leaderboard page, I found my name in the 19th position, which was the top 2% from nearly 1,000 competitors. Not bad for the first Kaggle competition I had decided to put a real effort in! One of the reasons why I managed to score well was the fact that Google Cloud Platform (GCP) made my life easier and I could focus on the data.

USA Today reporter Rachel Sandler asked people in San Francisco if apps are as popular as Apple says. Do people even care about apps anymore? Let's step back in time for a moment and imagine going back to using foldable maps or Web printouts for directions, hailing cabs (or even taking a bus!), and no social tools to share those daily self-portraits. Shazam is the most recent. Apple kicked off its big Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose this week with a humorous video showing what that app-less world might be like.

Artificial intelligence could increase South America's gross domestic product (GDP) growth by at least one percentage point annually by 2035, according to Accenture Research's report How artificial intelligence can accelerate South America's growth. The report calls attention to this technology's potential to transform the region's labor market and create a new relationship between humans and computers. In Brazil, for example, the study noted that the so-called gross value added (GVA) could increase by a total of $432 billion in this 17.5 year period. In terms of banks, the study reports that seven in ten bank users trust the financial guidance provided by automated systems. Some 39% of users consider the use of robo advisor platforms an agile tool and 31% see it as a way to lower costs for both banks and their customers.

Hackers are using a cunning new attack method to neutralise activists' Twitter accounts. It involves the hacker taking over an account, cloning it and completely changing the original. What's more, thanks to their knowledge of how Twitter's account recovery and recycling processes work, the hackers are managing to lock the victims out of their accounts and keep them out. 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.

The adoption and application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to accelerate at an exponential rate in modern businesses. As referenced in the 2017 Tech Trend Report, AI is nearing completion of the next layer in technological advancement, integrated into everything individuals and organizations do. This trajectory is predicted to drive cumulative worldwide spending of $40.6 billion on AI projects by 2024 – according to Raconteur. This is expected to create mass opportunity for the pioneering businesses currently investing in AI development. Moving beyond the hype in existing media coverage, this post will uncover the reality behind what AI means for businesses today, in the near future, and beyond 2017.

People are more likely to consider a thesis that's written by a student at a top-ranked University as better than a thesis produced by a student at a University with low (or no) status. But in what way are the works different? What can the students from non-famous Universities do to produce better work and become more well-known? I was curious to answer these questions, so I decided to explore two things only: the themes of the works and their nature. Measuring the quality of a university is something very complex, and is not my goal here.

The security of peoples' finances is as important as the protection of their personal data (87%) by their bank A lack of understanding and trust in technology is stalling mainstream adoption of innovative new services which could make millions of people's daily lives simpler and more secure, new HSBC research reveals. The HSBC research report, Trust in Technology, shows that technologies such as fingerprint recognition, voice recognition and robo-advice hold enormous potential for uses from bank security to mobile payments and investment advice, yet millions of people who could benefit do not trust them because they do not understand them well enough. HSBC has commissioned a study of more than 12,000 people in 11 countries and territories looking at their perceptions and use of technology. The study of more than 12,000 people in 11 countries reveals four in every five people (80%) believe that technology makes their lives easier but less than half (46%) trust fingerprint recognition to replace their password, despite it being recognised to be at least five1 times more secure and significantly more convenient than traditional passwords. Eighty-four per cent of respondents say they would share their personal data with their bank if it meant getting a better service, underlining the need to educate consumers about the specific benefits of new technologies.

Everybody speaks about the digital economy and the transformation effect it produces in business as well as in our daily lives. By now, most of us understand what digital transformation entails and why it is important for businesses to embrace it in full scale. However, the road to transformation becomes more challenging when we try to navigate how to get from where we are today to realizing digitization at its maximum expression. It is easy to get lost amid new technologies and fashionable terms. You can quickly get confused with the role that new artificial intelligence and machine learning tools play in this new world, the significance of the Internet of Things at the point of data capture, the potential of analytics and finally, the ubiquitous role of the cloud.

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.