Researchers are using artificial intelligence to help airlines price ancillary services such as checked bags and seat reservations in a way that is beneficial to customers' budget and privacy, as well as to the airline industry's bottom line. When airlines began unbundling the costs of flights and ancillary services in 2008, many customers saw it as a tactic to quote a low base fare and then add extras to boost profits, the researchers said. In a new study, the researchers use unbundling to meet customer needs while also maximizing airline revenue with intelligent, individualized pricing models offered in real time as a customer shops. The results of the study will be presented at the 2019 Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining on Aug. 6 in Anchorage, Alaska. Airlines operate on very slim margins, the researchers said.

Government usually isn't the place to look for innovation in IT or new technologies like artificial intelligence. But Ott Velsberg might change your mind. As Estonia's chief data officer, the 28-year-old graduate student is overseeing the tiny Baltic nation's push to insert artificial intelligence and machine learning into services provided to its 1.3 million citizens. "We want the government to be as lean as possible," says the wiry, bespectacled Velsberg, an Estonian who is writing his PhD thesis at Sweden's Umeå University on using the Internet of Things and sensor data in government services. Estonia's government hired Velsberg last August to run a new project to introduce AI into various ministries to streamline services offered to residents.

We already have driverless cars, but scientists have now created a self-cycling bicycle. Perfect for the wobbly rider, the bike keeps itself upright, spots speed bumps and automatically swerves around obstacles. The bicycle is powered by artificial intelligence, so just like voice-operated assistant Alexa, responds to commands to speed up, slow down and turn left or right. It was created by researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing, using a small AI chip mounted on the back wheel. The breakthrough comes three years after a spoof April Fool's video from Google which suggested the firm had created a self-riding bike, but revealed in a'making of' video that it had been faked.

The car industry is reinventing the wheel to prepare for autonomous vehicles. Sumitomo Rubber Industries Ltd., whose roots stretch back to when Henry Ford was building his Model T, is developing a "smart tire" that can monitor its own air pressure and temperature, and eventually respond by itself to changes in road conditions. Yet it's more than just tires that are being changed. Koito Manufacturing Co., AGC Inc. and Lear Corp. are putting semiconductors and sensors inside headlights, glass and seats to make them as intelligent as the self-driving cars. Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo LLC, Intel Corp.'s Mobileye NV and Baidu Inc. dominate the core technology for autonomous driving, yet suppliers still count on finding their own space in the business.

Ever tried to stamp on a pesky insect only to see it scuttle off gleefully once you raise your shoe? You may soon have the same difficulty eradicating tiny robots. A simple machine seems to have the robustness of a common cockroach. "It looks really like a cockroach moving on the ground," says Liwei Lin at the University of California, Berkeley. He and his colleagues describe their prototype robots, comprising a curved rectangle and angled front leg.

If you ever get the creepy feeling you're being monitored when you use your computer, smartphone or smart speaker, our guest Geoffrey Fowler is here to tell you you are. Fowler writes a consumer-oriented technology column for The Washington Post. He's been investigating the ways our browsers and phone apps harvest personal information about us even while we're sleeping. And he discovered that Amazon had kept four years' worth of recorded audio from his home, captured by his Alexa smart speaker, including family conversations about medications and a friend doing a business transaction. Geoffrey Fowler joined the Post in 2017 after 16 years with the Wall Street Journal, writing about consumer technology, Silicon Valley, national affairs and China. He writes his technology column from San Francisco. He spoke with FRESH AIR's Dave Davies. You have a recent column. The headline is "I Found Your Data. It's For Sale." What kind of personal data did you find available for sale on the Internet? GEOFFREY FOWLER: I found all kinds of things that normal people would consider secrets and that corporations spend a lot of money - millions and millions of dollars - to try to keep out of the hands of their competitors and criminals. I found people's flight records. I found people's records from their doctors prescribing them medications. I found people's tax documents that they were - thought they were only sharing with their tax preparer. And they were available with one click. I could have opened them up and downloaded them. And where did this data come from?

However, based on the above-aggregated definitions, an intelligence can be any black box which has a defined goal, the ability to input percepts, process the percepts (perform a calculation), and output an action related to the goal. For instance this can be a reflex agent and be something as simple as a computer function based on condition-action rules such as using if-else. It can even be more simpler and be a function that takes two variables, x and y, which are its percepts, adds them which is its calculation, and outputs the result which is its goal directed action. Though this would be as low level of an intelligence as possible.

The full article also features courses that you could attend to learn the topics listed below, as well as numerous comments. We also added a few topics that we think are important and missing in the original article.

Juan Ortiz, Director of Analytics at Laureate Education, talks about the transformation of the sector, the impact of Data Science, the main challenges and use cases of advanced analytics, as well as the maturity and evolution in the different regions where Laureate has presence.

Episode 163 – Futurist and author Byron Reese discusses his book "The Fourth Age" and how smart robots, conscious computers and artificial intelligence will shape the future of humanity. Byron is the CEO and publisher of Gigaom, an industry-leading technology research company. You've seen him in places like the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and NPR. Listen for three action items you can use today.