Between the Terminator movies, Ava from'Ex Machina', Google's AlphaGo beating the world's best human Go players, machines mimicking Rembrandt's style to paint portraits, debates about morality and privacy, and Stephen Hawking's warnings about the consequences of intelligent machines manned by idiot humans; it's no wonder that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already made people a little uncomfortable. In the marketing world, it's caused the customary outbreak of confusion. Thus resulting in a series of obtuse declarations like "AI will change everything. EVERYTHING!" that are typical of the industry. Any time anything new threatens to upset business as usual, comrades in the marketing and advertising industry especially lunge headlong into an existential crisis.

In 2012, Dennis Mortensen had 1,019 meetings, each of which required an average of roughly eight back-and-forth emails to schedule. Every time Mortensen comes across a contact interested in meeting with him, the CEO and founder of New York City-based artificial intelligence firm x.ai simply sends them a return email copying Amy, who takes care of the rest. "In raw numbers, I've saved about an hour every day -- an hour which I would otherwise have to use in really rudimentary work where I add not much value," Mortensen said of Amy's help scheduling meetings. Virtual assistants like Amy are becoming more common. Just as household technology platforms like Apple's "Siri" and Microsoft's "Cortana" has helped consumers navigate their lives more easily, other forms of rudimentary artificial intelligence platforms are starting to proliferate the market, many of them upending traditional business roles.

Will Artificial Intelligence disrupt business? The once-futuristic predictions about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will impact the world are becoming reality. Legendary futurist Ray Kurzweil has imagined advanced technology delivering everything from computerised brain chips to near-total automation of industries, and we already see the signs that AI will ultimately change the way we live and work. AI, where computers behave like humans, is no longer the stuff of science fiction. In many respects, AI is like a freight train racing down the tracks.

Sam Altman, the president of top startup mentorship and investment program Y Combinator, thinks venture capitalists like himself have gotten off too easily, tax-wise -- so he's putting the difference into improving the world. "I donate up to the tax amount I think I should pay," Altman told BuzzFeed News' Nitasha Tiku. The fiscal issue Altman is rebelling against is the "carried interest" tax for hedge fund managers and VCs. It's one of Wall Street's favorite loopholes, and one that President Barack Obama has long railed against. Basically, it allows these fund managers to take the incentive portion of their fees -- which they earn based on the gain in value of the investments they made for clients -- and classify that income as capital gains rather than ordinary income, thereby paying a much lower tax rate.

When the Raspberry Pi computer was first launched in 2012 to promote the teaching of computer science, its creators probably didn't imagine the 35 device would one day take on a professional fighter pilot in a dogfight--and win. But that is exactly what a doctoral graduate at the University of Cincinnati set out to do when he built a Pi-powered artificial intelligence pilot. The AI, dubbed ALPHA, went up against retired United States Air Force Colonel Gene Lee in a series of simulated battles, beating Lee in every single engagement. Lee described ALPHA as "the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible AI I've seen to date." ALPHA has gone on to defeat other expert fighter pilots in what is being hailed as a significant breakthrough in unmanned flight.

For more than 40 years, no single director has more defined what we think of when we think of the movies than Steven Spielberg. To date, his feature films have grossed 4.3 billion in North America and 9.2 billion worldwide, more than any other filmmaker in history by a comfortable margin. His movies have been nominated for 128 Academy Awards and won 32, and Spielberg personally has been nominated for 16 Oscars, winning three (Best Director for Saving Private Ryan, and Best Director and Best Picture for Schindler's List). And if that's not enough, Spielberg has also presided over at least two of the most transformative changes of the last 50 years in the movie industry: the creation of the summer blockbuster (with Jaws) and the proliferation of computer-generated imagery in visual effects (with Jurassic Park). To be sure, Spielberg has not done any of this alone. With George Lucas and Harrison Ford, he helped create Indiana Jones. With Tom Hanks, he established an ongoing creative partnership (and lifelong friendship). His longtime producer Kathleen Kennedy -- the woman currently shepherding the revival of Star Wars -- got her start as Spielberg's secretary. Just about every one of his films have been tightly edited by Michael Kahn and majestically scored by John Williams. And he's collaborated with a small stable of top-flight screenwriters, including David Koepp, Richard Curtis, Eric Roth, Lawrence Kasdan, Steven Zaillian, Tom Stoppard, Tony Kushner, Joel and Ethan Coen, and, on his newest film The BFG, Melissa Mathison. When we go to a Spielberg movie, we know we will see a film made with consummate craft and exhilarating visual style -- few directors know better how to harness the tools of pure cinema. But I would argue the artistic constant that has informed Spielberg's career and success more than any other has been his seemingly limitless capacity for empathy. "Movies are like a machine that generates empathy," the late Roger Ebert once said. "It lets you understand a bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us." Ebert might as well have been describing Spielberg's entire career, and I know that because, like a crazy person, I screened all 29 of Spielberg's theatrical feature films in chronological order, and then ranked them from worst to best. I also skipped 1983's Twilight Zone: The Movie, since Spielberg directed just one of five segments in the film.) By my count, only three of Spielberg's movies are irredeemably bad.

FILE - This Oct. 20, 2015, file photo, shows a sign outside Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Authorities have arrested a Northern California man suspected of attacking the headquarters of Internet search giant Google with Molotov cocktails and a gun. Mountain View police arrested Raul Diaz on the company's campus shortly after midnight Thursday, June 30, 2016. The 30-year-old is charged with one count of arson in connection with an attempted firebombing of a Google vehicle used to map streets. Authorities are investigating whether the 30-year-old is connected to two other attacks, including the torching a company self-driving car and the shooting out of office windows.

It could be the ultimate shopping companion, able to pick and pack goods at lightning speed. A German robotic'suckbot' arm has been crowned the winner in a prestigious warehouse robot contest run by Amazon. Sixteen teams competed in Amazon's Picking Challenge this year, where robots selected specific items from containers and placed them in a tote or on a shelf. Team Delft's robotic arm robotic'suckbot' arm has been crowned the winner in a prestigious warehouse robot contest run by Amazon. It uses suction cups to lift and move objects, allowing it to easily shop.

Globalization, an ever-growing corpus of regulations and increasing business complexity all conspire to make it challenging to understand, implement and prove regulatory compliance. With the Compliance Dictionary, Unified Compliance Framework (UCF) is aiming to change that. For instance, 'Personally Identifiable Information' (PII) was defined legally in a 2007 memorandum from the Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and later adopted in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Guide to Protecting the Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information (SP 800-122). But other regulatory and standards bodies frequently refer to PII as'identifying information,' 'personal information' or'private information.' In the European Union, EU directive 95/46/EC refers to it as'personal data.'

In recent times, robotics technology is widely recognized for delivering efficiency, reliability, low spoilage, and higher overall productivity. Owing to the benefits and also to realize its complete potential in the business domain, extensive research and development works are conducted to further improve the quality while obliterating various design and operational constraints in robots. Latest techniques and algorithms are making robots smaller, safer, more practical, and cost-effective to be used by organizations in multiple industries such as manufacturing, construction, and healthcare. Moreover, the convergence of robotics with a wide range of complementary technologies such as machine vision, force sensing, speech recognition, and advanced mechanics is offering increased levels of functionality. Well positioned to fulfill the demand for robots in different industries is the Denmark based firm, Blue Ocean Robotics that identifies the users and their generic challenges to develop robots as the solution.