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.

I visited my local health-insurance office a few months ago. After entering the building, I was welcomed into a long and dark corridor, full of nervous people carrying bloated folders. The atmosphere was gloomy, and it was obvious that no one wanted to be there. After about 30 minutes I realized why: During that time, the line had barely moved, and it took me the better part of the day to reach a clerk. As a result, I was late for two other errands I had planned.

Life for everyone inevitably will change considerably in the next century, just as it has over the last 100 years. For the rich and famous in particular, technology will enable new ways for them to pamper themselves while conveying their lofty societal positions to the serfs. Rolls-Royce provides a glimpse into what such peoples' motive lives might be like in, say, 20 to 25 years in the form of the spectacular and fully autonomous 103EX, a.k.a. the Vision Next 100 concept. The Rolls-Royce 103EX is gigantic--it's 19.4 feet long--and to say there's nothing understated about it is an understatement bordering on criminal. Everything about it is extreme in scale, from the unfathomably long front end, to the vast expanses of glass and the massive, half-concealed wheels.

Following on from my recent article, Artificial Intelligence and Real Estate: Can We Automate the Industry?, I've been talking to Angela Meadows, Senior VP of Client Development at Humley. They are one of the fastest-growing tech companies in the UK, concerned with harnessing cognitive computing to empower companies to access and implement an artificial intelligence platform within their business, whether this is to transform their customer service tools or business processes, or simply to enable the end-user to find and action solutions for themselves without the need or cost of human intervention. Historically, Humley began by creating experiences for network operators and handset manufacturers that allowed them to have on-device, ongoing, long term relationships with their customers via real-time communication personalised to the customer's context. The experience would help the customer easily set up their device (reducing customer service calls, thus reducing costs for the brand), as well as discover new exciting features about their device and/or network. They have now combined their contextual targeting with elements of artificial intelligence (powered by IBM Watson), that enables the end-user to ask questions in natural language and receive relevant answers, based on their individual context.

Everywhere you look at E3 -- the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo gaming conference -- there seems to be something pitching virtual reality. At the Nintendo booth, there's only calm, traditional video game playing. In fact, there is only Zelda, and it is totally wrapped in fantasy. I asked Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, why Nintendo isn't pursuing the big trend of the moment. He said Nintendo still isn't convinced of the full mainstream potential of virtual reality. The company has experimented with the technology before -- namely in the form of the much-maligned and yet still well-remembered Virtual Boy.

Intelligent computers that can make decisions like humans may someday be on Hewlett Packard Enterprise's product roadmap. The company has been showing off a prototype computer designed to emulate the way the brain makes calculations. It's based on a new architecture that could define how future computers work. The brain can be seen as an extremely power-efficient biological computer. Brains take in a lot of data related to sights, sounds and smell, which they have to process in parallel without lagging, in terms of computation speed.

But in the digital age, sometimes humor has a way of capturing national attention more easily than pulling on the public's heartstrings. That was certainly the case recently when the comedy website Funny or Die released a video to promote a new bill that had been introduced in the Senate called The Sexual Assault Survivors' Rights Act. The goal of the video was to shed light on the truly backwards laws that dictate states' treatment of assault survivors. And by all accounts, it worked. But the real measure of success came last month, when the Senate passed the bill unanimously. Soon it will reach the House of Representatives, where, Brad Jenkins, a former White House staffer and executive producer of Funny or Die DC, expects it to pass, as well.

General Motors is still a car company, at least for now. "Our core business will be the core for a very very long time," CEO Mary Barra said today at the WIRED Business Conference in New York. That business is making personal vehicles that people drive and own, with a focus on trucks, SUVs, and middle America. But it's hardly exclusive, and in the past six months General Motors has made a series of bold, future-facing moves to cash in on what Barra calls "an accretive opportunity"--a chance to add some apple flesh around the steady core. The Detroit giant invested half-a-billion dollars in Lyft, with plans to build a fleet of self-driving cars.

Whenever you upload a photo of yourself or your friends to Facebook, the social network uses a facial-recognition algorithm to identify who's in the picture -- and then suggests that you tag them. This might strike some as a little creepy, but at least it's relatively transparent. The same may not be true of a massive facial-recognition setup used by the FBI, which not only combs through pictures of criminals but also allows law enforcement to search the faces of millions of other law-abiding citizens without their knowledge. And now a top federal watchdog says the program risks putting countless Americans under needless suspicion because of the system's lack of safeguards. The FBI has access to more than 410 million photographs of people's faces.

Everyone seemingly is complaining about the spread of ransomware, and now somebody is trying to do something about it using machine learning-based behavioral analytics techniques to track suspicious behavior on company networks. As the scale of the ransomware threat grows, including ransom payments by hospitals and universities and growing fears that it will soon spread to other sectors, a Silicon Valley security intelligence firm has rolled out an approach for detecting ransomware via machine learning. Exabeam, a specialist in user and "entity" behavior analytics based in San Mateo, Calif., unveiled its analytics approach to detecting ransomware attacks during a security conference this week. See the full story at sister publication Datanami. George Leopold has written about science and technology for more than 25 years, focusing on electronics and aerospace technology.