My family and I continue to have more and more conversations with Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant lately. Having three AI based sources within speaking range of each other, we have a tendency to fact check them against one another - especially when someone doesn't quite trust or agree with the answer they get. For example, is Australia considered a continent or is it Oceania? Is a hot dog a sandwich? Who is the best NBA player of all time ever?

The Tianjic chip was developed by a group of researchers from China's Tsinghua University led by Professor Shi Luping. They installed about 40,000 neurons and 10 million synapses in the fingernail-size chip of 3.8x3.8 It's the first-ever chip that integrates computer-science-oriented and neuroscience-oriented approaches, two general ways to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI). Usually, the two approaches, both representing some of the patterns in which the human brain processes information, rely on different platforms, which are incompatible due to their fundamental differences in the formulations and coding schemes. But a combination of the two is generally recognized as the best solution.

Somewhat unceremoniously, Facebook this week provided an update on its brain-computer interface project, preliminary plans for which it unveiled at its F8 developer conference in 2017. In a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, a team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco backed by Facebook Reality Labs -- Facebook's Pittsburgh-based division devoted to augmented reality and virtual reality R&D -- described a prototypical system capable of reading and decoding study subjects' brain activity while they speak. It's impressive no matter how you slice it: The researchers managed to make out full, spoken words and phrases in real time. Study participants (who were prepping for epilepsy surgery) had a patch of electrodes placed on the surface of their brains, which employed a technique called electrocorticography (ECoG) -- the direct recording of electrical potentials associated with activity from the cerebral cortex -- to derive rich insights. A set of machine learning algorithms equipped with phonological speech models learned to decode specific speech sounds from the data and to distinguish between questions and responses.

Babylon Health, the UK-based startup that has developed a number of AI-based health services, including a chatbot used by the UK's National Health Service to help diagnose ailments, has confirmed a massive investment that it plans to use to expand its business to the US and Asia, and expand its R&D to diagnose more serious, chronic conditions. It has closed a $550 million round of funding, valuing Babylon Health at over $2 billion, it announced today. This is the largest-ever fundraise in Europe or US for digital health delivery, Babylon said. "Our mission at Babylon is to put accessible and affordable healthcare into the hands of everyone on earth," said Dr Ali Parsa, founder and CEO of Babylon, in a statement. "This investment will allow us to maximise the number of lives we touch across the world. We have a long way to go and a lot still to deliver. We are grateful to our investors, our partners and 1,500 brilliant Babylonians for allowing us to forge ahead with our mission. Chronic conditions are an increasing burden to affordability of healthcare across the globe. Our technology provides a solid base for a comprehensive solution and our scientists, engineers, and clinicians are excited to work on it. We have seen significant demand from partners across the US and Asia. While the burden of healthcare is global, the solutions have to be localised to meet the specific needs and culture of each country."

WHILE most employees don't engage with human resources (HR) staffers beyond their appointment, onboarding, leave requests and payroll, there's a whole bunch of functions that HR professionals perform. Technically speaking, HR people have their tasks split into three buckets -- administrative, operational, and strategic. Although trained similarly, HR professionals have traditionally branched into one of these areas as part of their career progression, headed the function, and reported to the Chief HR Officer (CHRO). With technology -- that's about to change -- allowing all HR personnel to make a larger contribution to the organization's people strategy. Those currently engaging in administrative tasks, for example, can immediately see technology making an impact on their everyday lives.

Monsters and titans share the stage of mythology across cultures as the necessary realizations of the human imagination. From stone cave to urban dwelling, the theme is unremitting; kept in the imagination, such creatures perform, innocently enough, benign functions. The catch here is the human tendency to realize such creatures. They take the form of social engineering and utopia. Folly bound, such projects and ventures wind up corrupting and degrading.

Genesys, the global leader in omni-channel customer experience and contact centre solutions, recently revealed new research into the state of artificial intelligence (AI) in the UK workplace. According to the research, UK employees are optimistic about the impact that AI could have on their jobs. Around two thirds of the respondents said that they value new tools and technology to help them complete their tasks, and 64% claimed these tools make them more productive at work. Although there are clear benefits in bringing AI into the workforce, there are also steps that companies need to take to drive adoption. Today's team members feel that they need additional support and training to help them make the most of their AI environment.

In April last year, a medical device powered by artificial intelligence (AI) received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), marking a historic moment in healthcare globally. The IDx-DR, a software algorithm that uses AI to analyse images of the eye using a camera, achieved an 87.4% accuracy rate while detecting'more than mild' diabetic retinopathy, a condition where high blood sugar levels damage the blood vessels in the retina. For IT services firms, which are already developing AI and machine language (ML) tools for other uses and industries, extending AI and ML capabilities to healthcare is a fairly non-complex process, and comes with a large upside. Rather than doing it entirely on their own though, these companies are partnering hospital chains and niche players in the field to acquire the required domain expertise. For instance, Japanese technology firm NTT DATA Services tied up with Pune's Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital last year to use an AI-based solution to diagnose emphysema, a chronic condition of the lungs.

An unopened copy of a 1987 cult-classic video game that a Nevada man found in the attic of his childhood home is expected to sell for up to $10,000 at an online auction. The boxed game cartridge of Nintendo's "Kid Icarus" was still in the bag with the receipt for $38.45 from J.C. Penney's catalog department three decades earlier. Scott Amos of Reno told the Reno Gazette Journal he initially thought it might be worth a couple hundred dollars. But Valarie McLeckie, video game consignment director at Heritage Auctions, says it's one of the hardest Nintendo titles to find in sealed condition. She says there are fewer than 10 in the hands of vintage game collectors.

Technology changes so fast that our lives are radically different from even a decade ago, yet slowly enough that sometimes we don't even notice the changes. We live in the future, in other words, and sometimes it takes a moment to realise what an odd, and perhaps unsettling, future it is. So I'm going to try laying it out for you in plain English. Not one, but two, controversial billionaires have created projects aimed at reading minds. Elon Musk, the South African co-founder of PayPal, unveiled the latest step in his plan to build mind-reading implants two weeks ago.