On March 12 2016, children in Malawi look on amazed in the community demonstration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs or drones) flying in Lilongwe. The Ministry of Health and UNICEF launched the first six-mile auto programmed flight in a trial to speed up the testing and diagnosis of HIV in infants. It can take hours to travel even short distances along the ramshackle dirt roads of Malawi, an impoverished African country with high rates of HIV, a virus that has taken a particularly acute toll on children. With limited trips from remote towns and villages – where large swaths of the populace live – to one of country's sparsely scattered hospitals in the capital city of Lilongwe, where they get essential medical services, testing for the virus can be an arduous task. But a new experiment conducted this year by United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) shows the potential for drones to help change that scenario amid debates over ethical issues and at a time when developing countries around the world are increasingly turning to the aerial devices to assist with humanitarian efforts.

Natural disasters are out of the reach and influence of human beings. However, a lot can be done to minimize loss of lives. Artificial intelligence is one viable option that can potentially prevent massive loss of lives while at the same time make rescue efforts easy and efficient. To learn more, checkout the infographic below created by Eastern Kentucky University's Online Masters in Safety degree program. In the period between 2005 and 2015, a total of 242 natural disasters occurred in the United States of America.

David Kenny took the helm of IBM's Watson Group ibm in February, after Big Blue acquired The Weather Company, where Kenny had served as CEO. In the months since then, the Watson business has grown dramatically, with well over 100,000 developers worldwide now working with more than three dozen Watson application program interfaces (APIs). Fortune Deputy Editor Clifton Leaf caught up with Kenny in mid-October, when IBM Watson's General Manager was in San Francisco, getting ready to open Watson West--the AI system's newest business outpost--and to launch the company's second World of Watson conference, a gathering of its burgeoning ecosystem of partners and users, in Las Vegas on Oct. 24. FORTUNE: We hear a lot of terms on the AI front these days--"artificial intelligence," "machine learning," "deep learning," "unsupervised learning," and the one IBM uses to describe Watson: "cognitive computing." KENNY: Deep learning is a subset of machine learning, which essentially is a set of algorithms. Deep-learning uses more advanced things like convolutional neural networks, which basically means you can look at things more deeply into more layers. Machine learning could work, for example, when it came to reading text. Deep learning was needed when we wanted to read an X-ray. And all of that has led to this concept of artificial intelligence--though at IBM, we tend to say, in many cases, that it's not artificial as much as it's augmented.

Does it seem like your virtual personal assistant (VPA) knows everything about your life? Microsoft's Cortana can give you reminders, track packages, send emails or texts, keep track of your flights and even remind you to say happy birthday to your cousin next time she calls. According to Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, developers made deliberate design decisions with customers in mind as the company moves into the world of artificial intelligence (AI). "When it comes to AI, the fundamental vision I have is that AI will be infused into everything," Mr. Nadella said in the Mastermind Interview at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2016 in Orlando. "The currency going forward is going to be how to build trust in technology so that people and organizations are comfortable using more technology, and I think that's one of the pressing issues of our time," he said.

WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are the most secure chat platforms, according to Amnesty International. But that decision has already met with scepticism from people in the technology community, some of whom have warned that it might not be safe to use the apps at all. Amnesty gave Facebook and WhatsApp a score of 73 out of 100 – its highest – to the two apps, which it didn't distinguish between. But it particularly picked out WhatsApp, which it said was "the only app where users are explicitly warned when end-to-end encryption is not applied to a particular chat". It did have some criticism for Facebook, which doesn't apply strong encryption by default and doesn't warn users that they're not using the most secure technology.

RTB House, a technology company specializing in retargeting scenarios, has come up with a brand new model that relies on deep learning (currently the most promising subfield of AI-oriented research) to craft digital features that recognize the attitude, intention and intent of internet users. It allows for accurate estimation of the conversion probability, which in turn makes personalized retargeting more efficient than before. The model can even be applied to users who haven't clicked ads, a long-sought after feature of digital marketers. Users take hundreds of small steps when visiting advertiser's website. The model developed by RTB House uses deep learning to identify every one of these footprints, in order to find patterns in decision-making.

Donald Trump refused to guarantee that he would accept the result of the US election if he loses, in a fiery third and final presidential debate in which Hillary Clinton accused her Republican rival of being a "puppet" of Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to a YouGov poll, 49 per cent of respondents said Mrs Clinton won the debate, while 39 per cent thought Mr Trump the victor. Here is what FT readers thought. Airbnb faces fight for survival in NYC Governor Andrew Cuomo is preparing to sign a bill that would in effect end the home-sharing company's business in New York City. The San Francisco-based company has waged a last-minute campaign to thwart the law, which would impose fines of up to 7,500 on any host who advertised short-term accommodation through Airbnb.

Replatforming a business of our size and scale takes time. However, our pace of innovation is accelerating. We're increasingly using structured data and artificial intelligence to transform shopping on eBay, delivering more personalization capabilities, continuing to iterate our mobile experience, and bringing more unique inventory and categories to our customers. We've got more work to do, but I'm confident we're on the right path. Now, let me turn it over to Scott, and he'll provide more details on our Q3 results.

I had a background in financial sales and portfolio strategy, but Fintech was on the rise, the RoboAdvisor was gaining momentum, and Bogleheads were taking over. They were consolidating to the point of monopoly and had determined that fee income and cross-sell ratio were more important than service and fiduciary responsibility to client wealth. "Too big to fail" became the justification for mass abuse in the financial system. We only have to look to Wells Fargo's recent crisis to see the results. The problem is systemic, encouraged, and will get worse before it gets better.

It does not pay to underestimate a monkey with a rock. Scientists studying the stone-smashing habits of bearded capuchin monkeys in Brazil have found that the primates inadvertently produce stone flakes that look very similar to the flakes used as cutting tools by early humans. The findings, published in the journal Nature, could snarl the links that paleoanthropologists make between early Stone Age artifacts and the emergence of primitive human technology. "It does raise interesting questions about the level of cognitive complexity -- how intelligent a hominin has to be in order to produce what we thought was a sophisticated technology," said lead author Tomos Proffitt, a paleoanthropologist at Oxford University. When anthropologists explore early human settlements, they typically search for signs of tool use, whether by looking at the cuts on butchered animal bones or finding the tools themselves.