WASHINGTON – After years of struggling to write rules that will both protect public safety and free the benefits of a new technology, the Obama administration is on the verge of approving routine commercial use of small drones. The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to announce as early as Tuesday the creation of a new category of rules for drones weighing less than 55 pounds (25 kg). The long-anticipated rules will mean drone operators would be able to fly without special permission. Currently, they have to apply for a waiver from rules that govern manned aircraft, a process that can be time-consuming and expensive. Since 2014 the FAA has granted more than 6,100 waivers and another 7,600 are waiting for approval. Many more small companies have been using drones without FAA permission, say industry officials.

The deal will give Tencent two of the best-selling video games in the world as it bought out League of Legends producer Riot Games last year. That title is the top-selling PC game in the world with 1.63 billion in revenue last year. Those games make a large chunk of revenue via controversial in-app purchases, rather than regular sales. The company also owns stakes in Activision Blizzard, the maker of World of Warcraft, and Gears of War developer Epic Games. Japan's Softbank is carrying over 80 billion in debt thanks in part to its 22 billion purchase of US carrier Sprint, which has been losing money for years.

We are all familiar with the doomsday scenario depicted by many modern films, when artificial intelligence goes bad and takes over the world. But this is not going to happen, according to Google chairman, Eric Schmidt, who claims that super-intelligent robots will someday help use solve problems such as population growth and climate change. During a talk in Cannes, he said AI will be developed for the benefit of humanity and there will be systems in place in case anything goes awry. Artificial intelligence will let scientists solve some of the world's'hard problems.' During a talk in Cannes, Eric Schmidt said AI will be developed for the benefit of humanity and there will be systems in place in case anything goes awry. 'We've all seen those movies,' he said.

CANNES - Many a CMO is excited about the prospect of having machine-learning algorithms or artificial intelligence (AI) do the heavy lifting when it comes to harvesting actionable insights from the data onslaught. But Kevin Akeroyd, GM and SVP of Oracle Marketing Cloud, does his best to let them down easy, pointing out that there's still plenty to be done today. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves," he told Campaign Asia-Pacific on the sidelines of the Cannes Lions Festival in France. You know what, let's get you really, really good at listening and responding to data before you get yourself all hot and bothered about machine learning. In his view, many brands are not even listening to all the available data, tying it together and making an activation decision up into a consistent channel experience.

It's been just about six months since IBM closed its acquisition of The Weather Company, but it's not resting on its laurels. This week Big Blue moved to leverage The Weather Company's go-to-market strength to launch Deep Thunder, a machine learning-driven weather model developed by IBM Research to help industries ranging from aviation and agriculture to retail better predict the business impact of weather. "One of the greatest things about being part of IBM is having a relationship with IBM's Research arm," says Mary Glackin, head of Science & Forecast Operations for The Weather Company. The Weather Company is actually merging its existing Rapid Precision Mesoscale (RPM) model -- a numerical weather prediction system based on the Advanced Research Weather Research and Forecast System (WRF-ARW) -- with Deep Thunder. RPM generates forecasts up to 24 hours ahead, with updates every three hours in the U.S. and every six hours outside the U.S. Precipitation forecasts are calculated from half-hourly instantaneous precipitation forecasts provided by RPM.

Amazon Web Services is increasingly gaining industry attention, and the company's recent hire of Alex Smola to lead the artificial intelligence initiative for AWS is expanding even more its infrastructure as a service cloud offerings. While Amazon Web Services has been around since 2006 its customer base varies widely from that of large cloud leaders Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and IBM (NYSE:IBM). Additionally, a large part of the Amazon Web Services business includes its own web business Amazon.com In the first quarter, Amazon reported sales of 29.13 billion with sales from Amazon Web Services accounting for 2.57 billion. The majority of AWS customers are startups seeking low-cost solutions without the burden of a full suite of enterprise infrastructure.

A hexacopter drone is flown during a drone demonstration at a farm and winery on potential use for board members of the National Corn Growers, Thursday, June 11, 2015 in Cordova, Md. Routine commercial use of small drones got a green light from the Obama administration June 21, 2016, after years of struggling to write regulations that would both protect public safety and unleash the economic potential and societal benefits of the new technology.

Holidaymakers will be guaranteed a room with an incredible view at these futuristic hotels, which would put guests in the sea, famous parks or even outer space. The stunning concepts are vying for top prize in an annual design competition that aims to flip the hospitality industry on its head. This year's finalists have proposed bean-shaped pods which can be flown to hard-to-reach locations using drone technology, and guest rooms on stilts in major cities such as New York or London. The hotel is made up of several modular units including bars, kitchens and courtyard pods. Designed by HOK's Toronto office, the hotel has modular units which use drone technology to fly (top right) to hard-to-reach locations Driftscape, one of two professional concepts up for the Radical Innovation Award, is a mobile, self-sustaining hotel that allows guests to roam or touch down in diverse locations such as the sea, desert or rice paddy fields.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will announce its first rules permitting businesses to fly drones for limited purposes Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported. The move is likely to spark further demands for easing restrictions on unmanned aircraft. The announcement, which will allow drones weighing roughly 50 pounds to fly at low altitudes only in daylight and within sight of operators, is imminent, agency officials reportedly said. The Journal reported that the rules are unlikely to please some proposed commercial operations of drones, which would like the aircraft to be allowed to operate at nights and outside the operator's line of sight. Millions of new users have been attracted annually by commercial drone operations in the U.S. alone.

From TechCrunch: "NEW YORK, NY - MAY 09: CEO and co-founder of Viv Dag Kittlaus speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2016 at Brooklyn Cruise Terminal on May 9, 2016 in New York City." Dag Kittlaus co-created Apple's Siri, and now he's looking to disrupt the personal assistant market again--this time with Viv. While Siri may only respond to certain commands and doesn't remember the last thing you ask, you can make extremely specific requests of Viv, like "Will it be hotter than 70 degrees after 5PM tomorrow in San Francisco" or "pay David 20 dollars," and Viv can answer follow up questions. We caught up with Kittlaus to ask a few questions about how he's disrupting the virtual personal assistant market. Popular Science: You helped start Siri and you've got a deep understanding of how most assistants work.