Your parents are watching the Berlin Wall being torn down, but you're upstairs in your room, fresh batteries in your Casio SA-1, prepping for your concert. The built-in beats are hot. You've been listening to the "Wake me up before you go-go" demo song and you think you've been inspired. You select instrument number 02, "HONKY-TONK PIANO." It's time to tickle the plastic ivories and burn this mother down.

Artificial Intelligence is a term the public is increasingly familiar with. After all, in 2003, a computer programme was causing mass mayhem. It was rapidly and successfully overwriting core programmes within a global network and almost achieved complete control – well, in the film The Matrix Reloaded at least! Far-fetched and futuristic as that film seemed all those years ago, and whilst we are not yet seeing'Agent Smith' levels of Artificial Intelligence or a post-apocalyptic future where machines rule humans, robots taking over networks are not a figment of imagination anymore. Last December, 'BlackEnergy' malware targeted power companies in western Ukraine with great speed and precision, causing a blackout that affected more than 225,000 civilians . Before that, 'BlackEnergy' had overwritten file extensions within Ukrainian media companies, rendering their operating systems unbootable.

TechRadar and other tech sites are reporting that Google is thinking up a kill switch for dangerous AI. As TechRadar put it, humans can keep the upper hand, for now. David Nield reported: "Google is working on an AI'kill switch' that allows human operators to turn off super intelligent systems no matter how big their egos get. It's called "safe interruptibility" and it's being developed as part of the DeepMind system." An open letter went out last year that caused as much of a stir as the worrisome statements preceding it over building superintelligent machines.

From the Spinning Jenny, a mechanical weaver that increased worker's output and contributed to the industrial revolution, to the CMS tools replacing archive managers in the early 21st century, technology has replaced difficult and time-consuming labor. But these changes often provoke fear that the new technology will replace jobs. Generally speaking, this isn't the case: time and again, new technology has created new (and niche) side industries and jobs. The latest technology to strike fear is artificial intelligence. Some worry that artificial intelligence will bring about so much change so fast, that it will leave huge swathes of the workforce jobless.

A new app called FindFace, recently released in Russia, gives us a glimpse into what this future might look like. Made by two 20-something entrepreneurs, FindFace allows anybody to snap a photo of a passerby and discover their real name -- already with 70% reliability. The app allows people to upload photos and compare faces to user profiles from the popular social network Vkontakte, returning a result in a matter of seconds. According to an interview in the Guardian, the founders claim to already have 500,000 users and have processed over 3 million searches in the two months since they've launched.

Forget about interactive iPad newspapers, mobile apps and catchy television graphics. The future of news may be far less complicated than anyone could have imagined -- as simple as a conversation with a friend. We're on the cusp of a chatbot revolution, with tech giants Facebook, Google and Microsoft all competing to create the brainiest robotic agent powered by artificial intelligence. "We think you should be able to message a business in the same way you message a friend," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said, announcing the launch of a chatbot store during the social network's annual developers conference. "And you shouldn't have to install a new app."

Just as you were getting used to the power of 4G LTE, the carriers are already looking ahead to a world of 5G cellular connectivity. AT&T announced on Monday that it plans to add Middletown, N.J. to its 5G-based home broadband trials. AT&T previously announced that Austin, Texas would be part of its broadband tests. The trial locations, which could include more cities, will roll out by the end of the summer. AT&T also announced it was partnering with Nokia to expand its 5G lab trial work.

A new self-driving'pod' capable of carrying eight passengers at one time around cities and airports will launch tomorrow. The Pod Zero, which has a range of 60 miles, has been designed transform the way people move around cities by offering transport over the last couple of miles of a journey. However, anyone in a hurry may need to brace themselves – the futuristic vehicles have a top speed of just 15mph. The'next generation' of autonomous vehicles are to be unveiled at an event in Birmingham. The Pod Zero (artist's impression) will carry up to eight passengers and can accommodate wheelchairs.

Proof of this and also because XGBoost has an easy-to-use interface from both R and Python, XGBoost has become a favorite tool in Kaggle competitions. Besides feature engineering, cross-validation and ensembling, XGBoost is a key ingredient for achieving the highest accuracy in many data science competitions and more importantly in practical applications. We were fortunate to recently host Tianqi Chen, the main author of XGBoost in a workshop and a meetup talk in Santa Monica, California. First, we started with an advanced workshop in the afternoon for which anyone could apply to participate but there were only a dozen spots available (which got us some expert users of XGBoost, but unfortunately we had to reject some good people too, sorry). This advanced workshop had 2 sessions.

Those firms that have dipped their toes into artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies remain a significant minority of financial institutions, according to the results of a recent survey commissioned by industry consultancy Synechron. Although a vast majority of the 92 executives polled and who are directly involved in technology decisions at their firms, agreed that both technologies will be "hugely important" for the industry in the next 10 years, only a small portion have examples of technologies in production. Only 12% of the respondents claim to have an instance of a distributed ledger implemented within their organization while 3.5% of them have "actively deployed" artificial intelligence-based technology. However, 25% of those polled stated that they have actively use AI-based systems within their organizations. "I am unsurprised that a low percentage of institutions may have these technologies in active development, but the sheer potential of artificial intelligence and blockchain in the enterprise is tremendously real," said Faisal Husain, CEO of Synechron. Husain advised financial institutions not to delay embracing new technologies, even if the final return on investment is unknown.