It seems like every week there are reports about another tech company working on autonomous cars or hinting they might be doing so, which is why it is so refreshing to hear Microsoft categorically ruling itself out of the race. While companies like Ford, Toyota and General Motors are all working hard to build their own driverless car technology, they are facing competition not only from the traditional car industry but from the tech industry too. Google, Tesla and Faraday Future are all looking to disrupt the car industry with Apple widely expected to join them in the coming years. Microsoft, however, won't be competing on this level. "We won't be building our own autonomous vehicle," Peggy Johnson, who heads business development for Microsoft, said at the Wall Street Journal's Convergence conference in Hong Kong on Friday -- though she added "we would like to enable autonomous vehicles and assisted driving as well." Johnson spoke about the ability to use Cortana, Microsoft's voice-activated personal assistant, which is available on its desktop and mobile software, in the car, besides leveraging products like the company's Azure cloud computing network, Office 365 suite of apps as well as Windows to improve passengers' experiences.

Ribbons of tickets trade hands for a drone raffle. It's DC Drone Day on a field in the part of western Maryland where suburbs give way to parks, rolling hills and farmland. The field is a weekend hangout spot for a group called DC/RC, one of several local clubs for people who are into flying things; specifically, pilots of radio-controlled things; even more specifically, aeromodelers. Aircraft modeling is a decades-old hobby that counts tens of thousands of followers in the country and has seen its share of changes in technology. Drones arrive as the latest revolution, and aeromodelers are sizing it up with a sense of both intrigue and apprehension -- like staring down the new guy at school who's got the cool kicks and somehow, keys to all the secret parts of the building, but sometimes does incredibly stupid things that ire the gym teacher into making everyone run laps.

For as long as computers have been part of our lives, we have interacted with them through touch. We're used to pecking keys, swiping trackpads, and tapping touchscreens to tell a computer we want to open a certain app or visit a specific website. But it is quickly becoming clear we are entering a new phase of digital interaction as technology giants Amazon, Apple, and Google bet on voice-based systems. Mary Meeker, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, dedicated an important portion of her annual presentation on the state of the Web to the rise of voice search. To be sure, the technology has existed for decades and been prevalent for several years.

Ecommerce companies have seen a slower quarter. According to Business Today, investors in India have turned cautious about placing big bets on ecommerce start-ups and the party is clearly over. The total VC money invested and the numbers of deals have dropped from a peak of 43 deals worth 831 million in March 2015 to just 24 transactions worth 112 million (Rs 730 crore) in less than a year according to Economic Times. In a similar state, brands from leading ecommerce markets like SEA and the Middle-East are looking at tighter marketing budgets and greater value for their mobile ad spends (the focus is on metrics like In-App user engagement and conversions).

Our love affair with domestic robots that can service our needs started more than five decades ago with Rosie, the maid in The Jetsons. The concept of condensing meals into pills may not yet be a staple of our diets, but robots like Rosie could have – and already are having – a significant impact on how we produce and consume food. Giuseppe is the invention of a group of Santiago-based graduates with engineering and chemistry knowledge, who refer to it as the smartest food scientist on earth. The group recently launched the The Not Company, a brand that's producing vegan dairy and meat products from mainly plant-based ingredients. This is nothing new of course, but Giuseppe's role is to use deep machine learning – a form of training – to understand the molecular structure of food and then copy it. It's like milk, but it doesn't come from a weird bit of a cow (Photo: thenotcompany.com)

Artificial intelligence is on the verge of changing our life, tech entrepreneurs say. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant "neural laces" in their brains to keep up, Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told a crowd of tech leaders this week. While Musk's description of an injectable human-computer link may sound like science fiction, top tech executives repeatedly said that artificial intelligence (AI) was on the verge of changing everyday life during a discussion at a tech industry conference in California this week. It is no secret that tech companies are diving into AI analytics research, an industry that is forecast to grow to US70 billion ( 96.9 billion) by 2020 from just US8.2 billion in 2013, according to a Bank of America report. Big launch: "The future of electric cars is looking bright", says Elon Musk. AI, which combs through large troves of raw data to predict outcomes and recognise patterns, is already used in web search systems, marketing recommendation functions and security and financial trading programs.

As far back as I can remember, artificial intelligence (AI) was always going to be the next big thing to revolutionize the way we live and work. Funny thing is, that's still true. And yet, at this week's Code Conference, AI was the hot subject for CEOs of Amazon, Google and IBM. Which begs the question, is AI finally real, or is it destined to remain the perpetual technology of the future? I'll never forget how cool it was to watch the crew of Discovery One engage in witty dialog with the Hal 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has partnered with five South African universities to launch the Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research (CAIR) on 24 May 2016. Based at the CSIR and chaired at the University of Cape Town, the centre aims to build research capacity in the field of artificial intelligence, and to ensure work reaches commercialisation. CAIR will also ensure artificial intelligence research is spread beyond the traditional institutions of the field. The five partner universities, or collaboration nodes, are the University of Cape Town (UCT), the University of Pretoria (UP), Stellenbosch University (SU), the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and North-West University (NWU). The centre is funded by the CSIR, the Department of Science and Technology (DST), and the participating universities, and the wide research scope of the programme is evident by the variety of university departments involved.

A Liquid Big Data Platform uses cloud technology and agile ways of working to enable organisations to share and analyse large volumes of data together for their mutual benefit. If this model is scaled to a global level where any organisation (both large and small) anywhere in the world could use it collaboratively, what new business models could potentially emerge? Many organisations are already exploiting Big Data driven Machine Learning to improve their services in real time (such as search engine optimisation, medical diagnosis and fraud detection). In the so-called "arms race", big name tech, automotive and pharmaceutical companies are reportedly spending billions of dollars annually to realise their own IP in this area of Artificial Intelligence. A potential strategic implication is that these first movers will create barriers of entry that prevent other competitors (including small or medium sized enterprises) using AI as a disruptive source of rapid, responsive service design and organisational agility.

Bing is all about data and using it to deliver the highest quality search experience -- our mission is to empower people with knowledge. Fostered by the unprecedented availability of web data and accelerated by the recent advances in deep learning, we are now at a pivotal moment in which huge amounts of both structured and unstructured data can be mined from the web to allow search engines to connect users directly with the information they need. Our ultimate goal is to fulfill any information need on the spot, whether on a desktop or mobile device. We see the web as the most comprehensive database for powering a multitude of services across all Microsoft products, from Bing to Excel to Skype, not to mention Cortana -- all of them need data. Join our team and help us to build the next generation of applications.