Apple is stepping up its artificial intelligence efforts in a bid to keep pace with rivals who have been driving full-throttle down a machine learning-powered AI superhighway, thanks to their liberal attitude to mining user data. Not so Apple, which pitches itself as the lone defender of user privacy in a sea of data-hungry companies. While other data vampires slurp up location information, keyboard behavior and search queries, Apple has turned up its nose at users' information. The company consistently rolls out hardware solutions that make it more difficult for Apple (and hackers, governments and identity thieves) to access your data and has traditionally limited data analysis so it all occurs on the device instead of on Apple's servers. But there are a few sticking points in iOS where Apple needs to know what its users are doing in order to finesse its features, and that presents a problem for a company that puts privacy first.

Anirudh Koul's grandfather was slowly losing his ability to see. By 2014, he was having a hard time recognizing Koul's face in their weekly Skype calls bridging the vast distance between the Silicon Valley, where Koul is a data scientist at Microsoft, and the elderly man's home in New Delhi. So Koul started reading up on the challenges of vision loss and thinking about how the recent advances in deep learning, a potential-packed area of machine learning, could help give people a new way to recognize what's around them without actually seeing it. That was the modest beginning of Seeing AI. Two years later, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella introduced the budding technology to thundering applause at this year's Build conference.

Wanna know more about machine learning and predictive analytics? We're thrilled to welcome Rob Craft - Group Product Manager at Google Cloud Platform during lunch break! Coming from San-Francisco, Rob Craft is the lead Product Manager for the Cloud Intelligence team in Google Cloud Platform. He is responsible for Cloud Machine Learning, Cloud Search, Internet of Things, and Cloud Pub/Sub. Rob will discuss how you can leverage the power of ML whether you have a machine learning team of your own or if you just want to use ML as a service.

Microsoft and Google have announced plans to expand their machine learning capabilities, through acquisition and new research offices respectively, reports Telecoms.com.

ZUMATA, a Singapore-based hotel distribution and technology company, along with DHISCO, the world's leading hospitality distribution company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, today announced a reciprocal agreement aimed to increase each other's hotel inventory while accelerating their mutual geographic expansion of distribution. ZUMATA, through its extensive network of wholesale partners and channel managers will supplement DHISCO's inventory by providing over 500,000 instantly bookable hotel properties. For ZUMATA, DHISCO will facilitate distribution of this hotel inventory to its large customer base largely based in North America and other Western markets. "DHISCO has been an industry powerhouse for years, and yet their management is keenly focused on innovation," said ZUMATA CEO Josh Ziegler. "This partnership underscores their commitment to staying at ahead of their competition by embracing the latest technological advancements. For us, this partnership represents a significant opportunity for our partners to gain access to DHISCO's amazing distribution. Complementing inventory and distribution, our artificial intelligence, or AI, powered technology will add exciting new capabilities that can increase customer satisfaction while increasing performance and conversions for all of us."

Most new cars offer some sort of voice-recognition feature, and generally speaking, they're all terrible. The majority of them rely on pre-programmed phrases and prompts, and even these simple inputs are often misunderstood. Consumers usually ignore them altogether, and until cars get smarter, that isn't going to change. IBM and Arizona-based automaker Local Motors have just debuted a vehicle that redefines the term "smart car." Named Olli, the self-driving EV is powered by IBM's Watson technology platform, meaning it's powerful enough to engage in authentic dialog with all 12 of its riders.

I think we can all agree that The Onion is one of America's greatest treasures. And I'm not just saying that because they're headquartered in my adopted hometown of Chicago; I'm saying it because it's absolutely true. Its ability to consistently capture our malaise -- whatever our malaise of the day may be -- and translate it into meaningful, sharply funny satire is almost overwhelming, particularly during weeks like this. But I'm not here to heap generic praise on America's Finest News Source, there's been plenty of that. I'm here to question whether its writers and editors are, in fact, shapeshifting time-travelers from an alternate dimension who do a better job of predicting the future than actual, non-satirical pundits do.

Google's week consisted of bringing its TensorFlow machine learning software to iOS, seeing its Tango software added into the first consumer smartphones, and receiving a proposal by its DeepMind division to add a kill switch to artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The firm's AlphaGo AI is also scheduled to face the best Go player the world can offer in a match later this year. Google updated its TensorFlow machine learning software to run on iOS devices. The technology that powers AlphaGo was released to the open source community in November, but has now reached the hands of Apple developers who can build a neural network right into apps. Google's Tango software was revealed to be a key feature of Lenovo's new smartphones.

This piece was originally published on Medium in Imaginary Papers, an online publication of Arizona State University's Center for Science and the Imagination. Matt Scherer runs the Law and AI blog. Artificial intelligence (A.I.) systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in our economy and society, and are being designed with an ever-increasing ability to operate free of direct human supervision. Algorithmic trading systems account for a huge and still-growing share of stock market transactions, and autonomous vehicles with A.I. "drivers" are already being tested on the roads. Because they operate with less human supervision and control than earlier technologies, the rising prevalence of autonomous A.I. raises the question of how legal systems can ensure that victims receive compensation if (read: when) an A.I. system causes physical or economic harm during the course of its operations.

For eBay (EBAY), artificial intelligence could prove to be its salvation. The San Jose, Calif.-based e-commerce giant, which has been working to transform itself after spinning off PayPal Holdings (PYPL) last year, could reap some huge benefits if it can find out a way to effectively use AI, according to analysts. At the Code Conference earlier this month, eBay CEO Devin Wenig revealed that the company started getting very serious about using artificial intelligence last year, noting that e-commerce is essentially a data business and that AI may be more important for eBay than its peers due to the "breadth of [its] inventory." Wenig further explained that eBay plans to formulate a strategy focused on using data to predict what consumers might want and offering a wide selection of products. In fact, eBay aims to use algorithms over the next three to four years to better understand consumer intent and create an ecosystem involving social networks and messaging applications to allow for better targeting, R.W. Baird analyst Colin Sebastian wrote in a note earlier this month.