However, it won't be shocking if the group turns up at the NHTSA's second public hearing on self-driving car regulation on April 27th. We've asked some of the companies involved if they can shed light on their plans, and we'll let you know if they have something to add at this early stage. In some ways, this is more of a defensive measure than an attempt to fast-track new technology. The companies are worried that state-level legislation will make it difficult to build self-driving cars that you can legally use in every state. For example, California has proposed rules that would require controls and a licensed driver at the helm in case of an emergency -- Google doesn't like that this would render the cars useless for disabled people.

It came from an internal project called Garage designed to allow small startup-like projects to flourish within the firm. 'Garage projects are crafted and cared for by small teams across the company who are hoping you'll find the next thing you can't live without,' it says, and Garage has already produced dozens of apps for different platforms. Apple at first banned keyboards other than their own, but this all changed with the release of iOS 8, which gave developers the green light to create outside versions and added more features into its original keyboard – including next-word predicting technology. With Word Flow Microsoft really has broken the mould for keyboards, at at first, the strange arc mode is incredibly disorienting. However, after a few minutes, it suddenly begins to make sense, and although iPhone users may be intimated at first, it quickly becomes second nature.

Google and ride-sharing rivals Uber and Lyft have formed an unlikely alliance to attempt to influence politicians and steer forthcoming self-driving car regulations in their favor. Together with automakers Ford and Volvo, the five have formed the "Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets" -- a lobby group that will try to convince lawmakers that self-driving car technology has safety and societal benefits and needs less regulation to thrive, according to Reuters. Like most lobby groups, the coalition draws from the very agency it's trying to influence -- David Strickland, former head of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), will be its counsel. Strickland left the government in 2014 for a job in a lobbying firm. The NHTSA has been largely welcoming of self-driving car technology and is currently writing federal regulations that should pave the way for greater use of driverless cars on public streets.

Our latest releases for the Retina API (2.3) and Retina Spark (2.1) see improvements to the algorithm converting texts to semantic fingerprints. As a result, the quality of semantic operations on text - keyword extraction, slicing or creation of a category filter - has improved and the comparison of text similarity delivers even more accurate results: try it out with our sandbox API! By the way, did you hear that Cortical.io's Semantic Folding approach helps improve the prediction of stock return correlations? This is the conclusion of an independent academic study conducted by researchers from Leiden, Ben-Gurion and Toulouse Universities.

Today, YouTube is updating its mobile app to provide a better'Home' experience. You'll now see larger thumbnails for recommended videos, which YouTube says is curated based on a deep neural network technology that looks at your search and watch patterns. YouTube says the update will display fewer recommendations, but show ones that should be more interesting to you based on your viewing history. The deep neural network is designed to detect patterns automatically, so it should keep up with your interests should they change week over week. Some of the biggest names in tech are coming to TNW Conference in Amsterdam this May.

In January, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington DC gave its annual Luddite Award to "a loose coalition of scientists and luminaries who stirred fear and hysteria in 2015 by raising alarms that artificial intelligence (AI) could spell doom for humanity". The winners -- if that is the correct word -- included pioneering inventor Elon Musk and physicist Stephen Hawking. In January last year, both signed an open letter that argued for research and regulatory and ethical frameworks to ensure that AI benefits humanity and to guarantee that "our AI systems must do what we want them to do". As AI converges with progress in robotics, cloud computing and precision manufacturing, tipping points will arise at which significant technological changes are likely to occur very quickly. Crucially, advances in robot vision and hearing, combined with AI, are allowing robots to better perceive their environments.

Whether it's PCs, tablets, smart watches or now, even smartphones, the outlook for most major hardware device categories is not looking good, particularly here in the US. The issue is that both consumers and businesses have already bought a lot of these devices. Plus, they're hanging on to their purchases longer than they used to, and longer than many people originally thought they would. Many companies, including both Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), have been forced to make some painful employee reductions as a result of these challenges, and there are likely more from other vendors still to come. So, does this signal the end of hardware as we know it?

This Best Energy Stocks forecast is designed for investors and analysts who need predictions of the best performing stocks for the whole Energy Industry (See Industry Package). Package Name: Energy Stocks Recommended Positions: Long Forecast Length: 14 Days (04/11/16– 04/25/16) I Know First Average: 27.11% All 10 top stocks for this forecast from the Energy Stocks package increased as predicted by the algorithm. LGCY was the highest-earning stock, more than doubling in share price, with a return of 105.65% for the 14-day time period. DNR also had a strong week with its return of 58.00% and ERF and PES also performed well with returns of 23.33% and 19.83% respectively.

Medical imaging is expected to be one of the early useful applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning in healthcare. And a slew of deals have been built around that premise in the last year or so--IBM Watson Health bought cloud-based imaging company Merge for 1 billion; Philips partnered with Hitachi to incorporate AI into its image management; and GE added deep learning software from startup Arterys to its cardiac imaging. Now, another major cloud-based imaging startup is working to incorporate machine learning, first into X-ray analysis and eventually into other imaging modalities including CT and MRI. The Goldman Sachs-backed startup Imaging Advantage, which reportedly tapped into up to 250 million in debt in January 2015, has partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital to develop an artificial intelligence engine known as Singularity Healthcare. The result is expected to launch this quarter.

SEOUL--Humanity has fallen to artificial intelligence in checkers, chess, and, last month, Go, the complex ancient Chinese board game. But some of the world's biggest nerds are confident that machines will meet their Waterloo on the pixelated battlefields of the computer strategy game StarCraft. A key reason: Unlike machines, humans are good at lying. StarCraft, created in 1998, is one of the world's most popular computer game franchises. It pits three races against one another: the humanlike Terrans, the slimy insectoid Zerg and a mystical race with psionic powers called the Protoss.