For anyone who cares about Internet security and encryption, the advent of practical quantum computing looms like the Y2K bug in the 1990s, a countdown to an unpredictable event that might just break everything. The concern: hackers and intelligence agencies could use advanced quantum attacks to crack current encryption techniques and learn, well, anything they want. Now Google is starting the slow, hard work of preparing for that future, beginning with a web browser designed to keep your secrets even when they're attacked by a quantum computer more powerful than any the world has seen. The search giant today revealed that it's been rolling out a new form of encryption in its Chrome browser that's designed to resist not just existing crypto-cracking methods, but also attacks that might take advantage of a future quantum computer that accelerates codebreaking techniques untold gajillions of times over. For now, it's only testing that new so-called "post-quantum" crypto in some single digit percentage of Chrome desktop installations, which will be updated so that they use the new encryption protocol when they connect to some Google services.

The traditional definition of artificial intelligence is the ability of machines to execute tasks and solve problems in ways normally attributed to humans. Some tasks that we consider simple--recognizing an object in a photo, driving a car--are incredibly complex for AI. Machines can surpass us when it comes to things like playing chess, but those machines are limited by the manual nature of their programming; a 30 gadget can beat us at a board game, but it can't do--or learn to do--anything else. This is where machine learning comes in. Show millions of cat photos to a machine, and it will hone its algorithms to improve at recognizing pictures of cats.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is really big right now. Big news and big possibilities, but some big questions too, not least about how to get the best out of it. Could it really eliminate whole categories of jobs, as research by Oxford University suggests?[1] Or could it help make all of us smarter, more efficient, and more fulfilled in our work by doing the essential but repetitive tasks, and mundane activities that human beings do not excel at? Transformation is an overused word in the business world, but this is one case where it's justified.

Future historians of technology may look back at one week this March as a tipping point of a new era, and it all started with smooth black-and-white stones on a simple wooden board. It was a five-game match of Go, the ancient Chinese board game, pitting top-ranked world champion Lee Se-dol against an artificial intelligence system called AlphaGo from Google's DeepMind. Although Lee confidently predicted a shutout victory over AlphaGo, the system beat him a resounding 4-1. Games were live-streamed around the world, with a monumental ending reminiscent of Garry Kasparov's 1997 defeat against Deep Blue. But this AI victory goes far beyond the basic mathematical win that Deep Blue achieved. Among other factors, chess has fewer possible legal moves and a well-defined end state: checkmate.

"As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know," famously explained former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns--the ones we don't know we don't know." Thanks to a technology innovation known as swarm AI the unknown unknown variables in politics and business may be evaporating.

DeNA Co., best known as a mobile video game maker, said on Thursday it will launch a driverless bus service at a park in Chiba Prefecture from next month. The Tokyo-based firm said it has partnered with EasyMile S.A., a French startup that manufactures self-driving buses. There are not many firms that can provide "completely driverless vehicles that can be used for actual services," said Hiroshi Nakajima, who heads DeNA's automotive business, explaining why his company chose to partner with EasyMile. DeNA's new service will employ the company's EZ10 bus, an electric vehicle that can accommodate 12 people. The limited-time service, dubbed Robot Shuttle, will begin on a yet-to-be-determined date in August inside the 21,000 sq.-meter Toyosuna Park in Chiba's Makuhari district, adjacent to vast Aeon shopping complex.

Having herself held senior roles in IT at Wall Street companies including Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Oksana Sokolovsky is quite familiar with the challenge of Data Management and data discovery. As co-founder and CEO of ROKITT, her goal was "to build a product that solves that challenge," she says. The challenge exists across large enterprises in multiple industries, but is often especially acute in those dealing with regulatory pressures and compliance requirements – healthcare, for instance, and of course, the financial sector. Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) 239 compliance for effective risk data aggregation and reporting, for example, is a big driver of improved Data Management for global systemically important banks. In fact, a McKinsey & Company and Institute of International Finance survey showed that more than half of the world's biggest banks faced significant challenges meeting the January 1, 2016 deadline for compliance, with the Global Association of Risk Professionals commenting that "many institutions continue to struggle to fully implement the requirements across the business under the most demanding interpretation of those requirements."

Machine Learning is a subfield within Artificial Intelligence that builds algorithms that allow computers to learn to perform tasks from data instead of being explicitly programmed. We can make machines learn to do things! The first time I heard that, it blew my mind. That means that we can program computers to learn things by themselves! The ability of learning is one of the most important aspects of intelligence. Translating that power to machines, sounds like a huge step towards making them more intelligent. And in fact, Machine Learning is the area that is making most of the progress in Artificial Intelligence today; being a trendy topic right now and pushing the possibility to have more intelligent machines.

Google has acquired Moodstocks, a company that develops machine-learning based object recognition tech for mobile phones. The Paris-based startup will shut down its object recognition Application Programming Interface (API) after its staff joins Mountain View's Parisan R&D team, reports PC World. The purchase was made for an unknown sum, and appears like an acquihire deal. The French technology startup builds photo and object recognition software by employing deep learning techniques. The company produced a visual search API and an Android app that could identify certain kinds of objects.

If you've been following the news recently, you've probably heard a few of the breaking stories about robots beating humans in fairly complex tasks. It started with game show contestants, evolved into outperforming human instinct, and now computers are even outperforming fighter pilots in tactical simulations. What does this all mean for you? Although Hollywood loves to depict artificial intelligence as robots out to destroy humans, that's far from the case in the real world. Chances are you've been using artificial intelligence for awhile and haven't even noticed.