Researchers at MIT have built an artificial intelligence system that is designed to evolve into ultimate cyber defense. AI2, a joint effort between machine learning startup PatternEx and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, merges AI with analyst intuition to predict future attacks. It builds predictive models of what might happen in the near future, allowing business to come up with ways to bolster security. The system employs three different machine-learning algorithms to catch shady events. Like any artificial intelligence system, it requires some feedback from a human to correctly identify if those events are actually mistrustful or not.

Nicola Mendelsohn: "[Brands should be] starting to test [virtual reality] but it's very early days and not many people have these devices yet. It depends what your objective is. If your objective is testing innovation and being seen as an innovative company then try it because that would fulfil the objective. We only started shifting [the Samsung VR] in November, the Rift is only going out now, so is it actually in the hands of consumers? Matt Brittin: "I encourage people in the UK, which is one of the most creatively advanced countries globally, to be experimenting with new stuff all the time. People will want more immersive experiences… try to experiment with new technology, how does it help people to tell stories in new ways?

When I'm usually speaking about Artificial Intelligence, I'm involved in ethical conversations ranging from self-driving cars programmed to kill you in a crash for the bigger benefit of others – like school kids running front of your vehicle – to a robot world domination and human slavery. But today I wanted to write about chat bots. Yes, those little bots that will be appearing on your messenger apps in no time. Chat bot is an artificially intelligent bot, which allows you to have a pre-programmed conversation with a company or a media in your messenger app. It works just like you'd have a chat with your friends – except that you're speaking with a machine. Quite handy if you want to order for example a burger or a taxi via messenger app instead of browsing through different apps and sites.

VC Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz thinks it's a lot harder to predict financial cycles than it is to see a new computing platform coming down the pike. As he noted in a recent post, new cycles tend to begin every 10 to 15 years; assuming the 2007 introduction of the iPhone kicked off the last wave, we're fast heading toward the Next New Thing. Or things, technically, according to Dixon, who we caught up with yesterday. Among the trends that Dixon is watching closely, he says, are virtual reality, augmented reality, IoT, wearables, drones and cars. Not that it'll be easy to make money off these newer technologies. In fact, Dixon suggests it could be ridiculously challenging, given how quickly Facebook, Google, and Amazon are bringing aboard related talent.

A self-driving car built by Chongqing Changan Automobile Co, Ford's Chinese partner, has successfully driven 1,200 miles (nearly 2,000 kilometres) across China, Bloomberg reports. In a statement to the Shenzen stock exchange, the company revealed that the car had travelled from Chongqing in the southwest to Beijing in the northeast, using camera sensors and radar to test a variety of functions. These included lane-changing, automatic cruising, assisted driving in high traffic, traffic sign recognition, speed reduction and voice control. It made the journey in six days, which averages out at 200 miles per day. This is consistent with Google's 54 self-driving cars on public roads, which average between 185 and 275 miles per day.

When Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie found out she carried a faulty variant of the BRCA1 gene, her doctors told her she had an 87% chance of developing breast cancer. Armed with this knowledge, she chose to undergo a double mastectomy in 2013 to reduce the risk to around 5%. This kind of genetic testing can now be done much faster and at lower cost, giving clinicians the ability to target treatments more effectively. And combining this technological breakthrough with cloud computing and artificial intelligence is giving pharmaceutical companies the tools to develop drugs faster and with greater chance of success. One beneficiary of this new approach is Eric Dishman, founder of tech giant Intel's first health research and innovation laboratory in 1999 and a founding member of its digital health group in 2005.

Over the course of five seasons, Game of Thrones has killed off over 61 characters, including fan favorites such as Ned Stark, Oberyn Martell and (supposedly) Jon Snow. Now, a computer science class at Germany's Technical University of Munich has created a website dubbed "A Song of Ice and Data" to determine the fate of the HBO drama's remaining key players in the upcoming sixth season. Using a series of machine learning algorithms, the students have figured out the likelihood of each character meeting their end in the next 10 episodes. According to the site, Tommen Baratheon has the worst odds of survival--with a 97 percent chance of death--while Sansa Stark is the most likely to make it to next year at 3 percent. The group also applied the formula to both the show's previous seasons and George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, and found it accurately predicted 74 percent of deaths.

Legislation passed by the U.S. Senate could pave the way for the commercial deployment of drones in the national airspace, besides addressing safety issues by, for example, providing for a pilot that would find ways to lock down errant drones if they are close to airports. The new rules in the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act of 2016, passed Tuesday by a vote of 95-3, reflect the opportunities seen in the country for the use of drones both for commercial and other applications such as in emergencies. They also highlight privacy and safety concerns about the reckless use of consumer drones by hobbyists. Referring to an object, believed to be a drone, hitting a British Airways plane landing in Heathrow airport on Sunday, Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat from Florida, said that if a drone is sucked into a jet engine, it could certainly render the engine inoperable and might start an explosion. The current bill proposes a pilot program to develop and test technologies to intercept or shut down drones when they are near airports.

Imagine yourself one hundred years from now. Yes, you're still alive, breathing through genetically engineered pig lungs, and having dinner at your favorite restaurant. A robot waiter rolls up to refill your glass of wine, which is equipped with a sensor that allows the restaurant to automatically deduct 10 from your Bitcoin account. Your companion, who doesn't actually speak the same language as you, is saying how much she loves her salad, which comes from a farm that uses precision agriculture techniques to boost productivity by effectively dividing fields into one-inch square plots that each receive customized fertilizer mixes based on their specific conditions. You understand her perfectly thanks to a small device in your ear that instantly translates her words and perfectly mimics her voice.

Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) claim they have created an AI that can detect 85% of cyber attacks -- albeit with the help of humans. The "AI2" algorithm, developed by MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and machine learning startup PatternEx, can reportedly detect cyber attacks three times more effectively than today's current systems. AI2 has been tested on 3.6 billion pieces of data, known as "log lines," which were created over a three month period by millions of people. In order to predict attacks, AI2 scans sets of data and identifies suspicious activity. It does this by clustering the data into meaningful patterns using unsupervised machine-learning, according to MIT.