At least for the 3,000 software engineers whose tasks are about to be replaced by an artificial intelligence (AI) tool at Wipro. Mint's Varun Sood reports that Wipro is all set to use "Holmes," its artificial intelligence wizard to automate certain projects and this, in turn, will free up 3,000 engineers from "mundane" software maintenance jobs. This step is expected to save the company about 46.5 million as it tries to strengthen profitability in what is becoming an increasingly uncertain environment for outsourcing companies. Wipro also plans to sell this artificial intelligence tool to new and existing clients this year and earn anywhere between 60 million to 70 million, according to the report. The AI platform will be deployed at the company's'fixed-price' projects, which employ about 30,000 people.

The stage is set for the coming battle between the big five tech giants: Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon (wait, make that four tech giants and one really tech savvy retailer). All are now heavily investing in AI. All now offer personal AI assistants poised to make your life easier. One of the most recent announcements is from Google. The company launched Google Assistant, which is an integral part of the new Google Home device and Allo (its new messaging app).

It took the technology world by storm when it was announced at CES in Las Vegas. Now a Chinese firm that has build a self flying'passenger drone' says it could soon begin testing in Nevada. The Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems, a state nonprofit group sponsored by the Governor's Office of Economic Development, will work to help EHang test and develop its system, officials said Monday. EHang and Lung Biotechnology hope to use 1,000 drones to deliver artificial human organs to hospitals around the US. The all-electric vehicle has four arms with a total of eight propellers at the end.

Pepper is about four feet tall, looks like a person (except for the wheels where its legs should be), and has more emotional intelligence than your average toddler. It uses facial recognition to pick up on sadness or hostility, voice recognition to hear concern…and it's actually pretty good at all that. Over 7,000 Peppers greet guests, answer questions, and play with kids in Japanese homes. And by the end of the year it'll be on sale in the US--but not before software engineers here get a crack at remaking its soul. Softbank Robotics, Pepper's maker, knows that emotional interactions in the US won't look the same as they do in Japan.

On the eve of its Tech World conference in San Francisco, Lenovo has signed a deal that will allow it to bring virtual reality to more of its products in the future. The deal allows Lenovo to use Movidius's Myriad 2 vision-processing chip in upcoming devices, bringing capabilities like head tracking, motion sensing, and image and gesture recognition to Lenovo products. Tech World takes place Thursday, and among other announcements Lenovo is expected to provide more details about its Project Tango smartphone, a product co-developed with Google that includes augmented reality features. Google uses Movidius technology in its own Project Tango development kit, which sells for US 512 including a tablet. It seems likely that Lenovo is using a Movidius chip in its own Project Tango smartphone, too.

With companies like Amazon and Google pushing for commercial use of drones, the U.S. government is under tremendous pressure to develop a control system that keeps order when hordes of drones flock to the skies. Professional drone-maker PrecisionHawk is one of the companies working on this problem. At the drone Data X Conference in San Francisco last week, the company showed off LATAS (Low Altitude Traffic and Airspace Safety), a system which uses cell networks and satellites to map the flying area around a drone and ensure that is has a clear airspace. Such systems are vital if commercial drone services such as package delivery, photography and surveying are to get off the ground. Current regulations restrict drone use to line-of-sight and impose restrictions on flight that could be eased if safety is assured. "We are taking lots of satellite data that we collect via satellites and we are processing that data into a very high resolution, 3D map of the Earth.

Nissan's luxury Infiniti brand has its sights set on self-driving. Speaking at an automotive conference in China this week, Infiniti president Roland Kreuger announced plans to integrate highway self-driving in newer models, Reuters reports. At this point, only the Q50 sedan has the necessary steering technology to enable the feature, but Kreuger says the company plans to bring it to new cars on an individual basis. "Whenever we are launching the next cars with such a steering system or the next generation of these systems, then of course we would offer those features to our customers," he said.

CrowdFlower, the essential human-in-the-loop platform for data science teams, today announced its recent 10M venture funding. The investment round was led by Canvas Ventures, Trinity Ventures, and Microsoft. The capital will be used to fuel the adoption of CrowdFlower AI which combines training data, machine learning and human-in-the-loop in a single platform. "We've seen companies like Tesla and Uber build large data science teams and adopt AI and machine learning to solve billion dollar problems like driverless cars," said Lukas Biewald, founder and chief executive officer at CrowdFlower. "But we wanted to bring AI and machine learning within the reach of every business to attack million dollar problems such as classifying customer support tickets or generating customer insights from social data. With CrowdFlower AI, companies can now easily deploy machine learning models that are commercially viable at a much lower price point."

Microsoft is releasing a new Xbox One update for its preview members today, and it includes access to Cortana for the first time. While Microsoft had originally planned to introduce Cortana for Xbox One last year, the company delayed the digital assistant integration to include it with the Anniversary Update to the console. Cortana will appear in the Xbox One dashboard, and you'll be able to access the voice assistant through the Kinect sensor or a headset. As a result, Microsoft is altering the way you activate Xbox voice commands to just "Hey Cortana." Cortana integration will be available in the US, UK, Italy, Germany, and Spain initially, and you'll be able to use the digital assistant to launch parties, see what friends are playing, and do basic tasks.

Facebook is known for a variety of mantras embedded in its culture, often spelled out on signs at its offices or recited by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives: "Code wins arguments," "Move fast and break things," or "Done is better than perfect." A sign on the wall at the company's New York office perfectly sums up the approach Yann LeCun brings to his leadership of Facebook's nascent efforts in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning: "Always be Open." Artificial intelligence has become a vital part of scaling Facebook. It's already being used to recognize the faces of your friends in photographs, and curate your newsfeed. DeepText, an engine for reading text that was unveiled last week, can understand "with near-human accuracy" the content in thousands of posts per second, in more than 20 different languages. Soon, the text will be translated into a dozen different languages, automatically. Facebook is working on recognizing your voice and identifying people inside of videos so that you can fast forward to the moment when your friend walks into view. Facebook wants to dominate in AI and machine learning, just as it already does in social networking and instant messaging.