OpenAI has come up with a new robot capable of solving a Rubik's Cube with a single hand. The AI-based company trained neural networks in simulation using reinforcement learning to make this achievement possible. The company has been working on this project since May 2017 and has now achieved its goal marking this as a milestone towards its progress in the field of AI. The time taken by the robotic hand varies depending on how the cube is shuffled but on average, it takes about four minutes to solve the puzzle. However, it is worth noting that this is not the first-ever robot that managed to solve the Rubik's cube.

Alphabet (Google) subsidiary Wing has become the first company in the United States to deliver packages by drone. In Christiansburg, the small Virginia town chosen as Wing's test location, the 22,000 residents can order products normally shipped by FedEx, medicine from Walgreens and a selection of candy from a local business -- all of which will arrive via drone. Wing, which already operates in two Australian cities as well as Helsinki, announced in a statement that the first drone-powered deliveries had taken place Friday afternoon in Christiansburg, "paving the way for the most advanced drone delivery service in the nation". One family used the Wing app to order Tylenol, cough drops, Vitamin C tablets, bottled water and tissues, the statement said. An older resident ordered a birthday present for his wife.

Economists have been studying the relationship between technological change, productivity and employment since the beginning of the discipline with Adam Smith's pin factory. It should therefore not come as a surprise that AI systems able to behave appropriately in a growing number of situations - from driving cars to detecting tumours in medical scans - have caught their attention. In September 2017, a group of distinguished economists gathered in Toronto to set out a research agenda for the Economics of Artificial Intelligence (AI). They covered questions such as what is economically unique about AI, what will be its impacts, and what are the right policies to enhance its benefits. I recently had the privilege of attending the third edition of this conference in Toronto, and to witness first-hand how this agenda has evolved in the last two years.

On Monday 8th April 2019, the European Commission's High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI HLEG) revealed ethics guidelines aimed at forming best practices for creating "trustworthy AI." In fact, many argue this issue of trust in the AI system is one of the main hurdles the technology must overcome for more widespread implementation. A Forbes survey found that nearly 42% of respondents "could not cite a single example of AI that they trust"; in another survey, when respondents were asked what emotion best described their feeling towards AI, "Interested" was the most common response (45%), but it was closely followed by "concerned" (40.5%), "skeptical" (40.1%), "unsure" (39.1%), and "suspicious" (29.8%). The Commission's guidelines are a new roadmap for businesses to align their AI systems. While these guidelines are not policy, it is easy to imagine that they will serve as the building blocks for such regulations.

A big challenge in collecting and analyzing intelligence has always been scalability. Good, actionable intelligence takes expertise to develop. Let's say you're a government trying to gather information on a foreign power. You'll need experts who speak the language, know the culture well enough to blend in, have the right skill sets, and are sympathetic to your goals. Finding enough experts who meet those criteria will be difficult -- and even then, it still might not be enough to get regular, actionable intelligence.

The field of learning has evolved drastically over the years. With the advent of e-learning and learning management systems, the process of learning has gone beyond the traditional model of classroom training. Now it is possible for instructors and teachers to reach a wider, international audience through online courses hosted on cloud based LMS platforms. Students can access these courses from any place in the world at any time, by simply logging into their account using their login credentials. Although e-learning is a complete and self-sustainable medium for imparting knowledge, it also works well in conjunction with traditional classroom training.

AI has been talked about since the very early days of computing and has attained mainstream use in recent years with the likes of Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri. "Just as in the last 40 years, computation has enabled us to change the way we do business and create new products, AI will help us to make better decisions," Carlos Kuchovsky, chief of technology and R&D at BBVA, tells Finextra. "We are now looking at the ways in which it can help us change the way we operate and bring value." The Bank of England has recently reported that machine learning tools are in use at two thirds of UK financial firms, with the average company using it two business areas, which is expected to double in the next three years. It may be through interoperation with cloud and blockchain technology that AI's capabilities will be fully harnessed. AI Utilisation of machine learning and artificial intelligence has become commonplace in everyday life, whether it be in search engines, music streaming services or internet shopping.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here. And AI is fast becoming an integral part of how businesses operate across the world. Many are apprehensive of the change however and are fearful that AI will replace jobs. Although, research has shown us otherwise. John David Lovelock, Gartner VP for Research, shared with Information Week that starting in 2020, "automation and AI will cause the industry to add more jobs than it causes the industry to take away."

The product, which leverages ByteDance's artificial intelligence capabilities, will be a "robotic learning companion" for K-12 students to use at home.

I would like a large cheese pizza with an ominous side of surveillance, please. Earlier this year, Domino's, the worldwide purveyor of mediocre pizza, introduced a snazzy tool called the Dom Pizza Checker to its Australia and New Zealand locations. According to its website, in-store cameras "use advanced machine learning, artificial intelligence and sensor technology to identify pizza type, even topping distribution and correct toppings". If your food doesn't match your order, or internal quality standards, workers are ordered to make it again. Basically, Big Brother is watching your pizza.