Could you invent an autonomous hacking system that could find and fix vulnerabilities in computer systems before criminals could exploit them, and without any human being involved? That's the challenge faced by seven teams competing in Darpa's Cyber Grand Challenge in August. Each of the teams has already won 750,000 for qualifying and must now put their hacking systems up against six others in a game of "capture the flag". The software must be able to attack the other team's vulnerabilities as well as find and fix weaknesses in their own software – all while protecting its performance and functionality. The winning team will walk away with 2m.

A little-known lab in Menlo Park, California is responsible for many of the most exciting technologies we've seen over the last half-century. Initially founded in 1946 by Stanford University as The Stanford Research Institute, it's now separate from the university and goes by SRI International. But it's always been a non-profit dedicated to research and development. With 4,000 patents to its credit, SRI is fairly well-known in Silicon Valley, but most consumers have no idea it's been behind the scenes helping with everything from the computer mouse to the Siri voice assistant in your iPhone.

Apple's purchase of Emotient last month, a California-based firm that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to interpret emotions from facial expressions, signals that big changes are coming to mobile devices. The move means that another tech giant has entered the AI arms race alongside Google and Facebook. This fact alone should have brands learning about the new technologies and integrations available to better engage with consumers on an emotional level. AI's capacity to respond to mood, gesture, natural language, and other complex human behaviors solves many issues facing consumers and brands, including, discovery, attention, and ease of product/service use. The big three" tech companies – Google, Apple and Facebook -- are leveraging AI in different ways to gain a competitive advantage in an economy where attention is a scarce resource.

Chip Somodevilla / GettyRobot parrots aren't the only reason to look over your shoulder. Artificial intelligence is going bananas right now. Google made headlines with it huge victory in the ancient game of Go a few weeks ago. And AI is entering into the marketplace at a historic rate, changing industries as complex as Wall Street in the process. If you get the feeling that we're at the start of a tidal wave, you might be right -- take it from Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.

On Wednesday, Microsoft unveiled a few new teen-oriented social media accounts that will chat all day. But users won't be speaking to a person, they'll be talking to "Tay," Microsoft's new bot that's powered by artificial intelligence. The easiest way to converse with Tay is on Twitter. All users have to do is tweet at it as if it were a real person and it'll tweet back in a kind of internet patois that doesn't sound like it's coming from a computer. Tay is also chatting on apps like Snapchat, Kik, and Groupme. Tay speaks like a teen because that's how Microsoft's research division built it.

Are we looking for an algorithm that "If we all die, it would keep trading"? Should we be worried that electronic trading is mushrooming like airplane traffic, while we are not paying that much attention? Today, I'll look for AI pigments of incremental changes in algorithmic trading, first on Wall Street and then outside, in the Fintech startup world. I am not including the HFT space because it is a particular space driven by speed and merits a separate post because of its politically sensitive angle (Michael Lewis's babe). Renaissance Tech and Two Sigma, are probably the most recognizable names in old fashioned quant trading space.

It's a weird feeling, cruising around Silicon Valley in a car driven by no one. I am in the back seat of one of Google's self-driving cars – a converted Lexus SUV with lasers, radar and low-res cameras strapped to the roof and fenders – as it maneuvers the streets of Mountain View, California, not far from Google's headquarters. I grew up about five miles from here and remember riding around on these same streets on a Schwinn Sting-Ray. Now, I am riding an algorithm, you might say – a mathematical equation, which, written as computer code, controls the Lexus. The car does not feel dangerous, nor does it feel like it is being driven by a human. It rolls to a full stop at stop signs (something no Californian ever does), veers too far away from a delivery van, taps the brakes for no apparent reason as we pass a line of parked cars. I wonder if the flaw is in me, not the car: Is it reacting to something I can't see? The car is capable of detecting the motion of a cat, or a car crossing the street hundreds of yards away in any direction, day or night (snow and fog can be another matter). "It sees much better than a human being," Dmitri Dolgov, the lead software engineer for Google's self-driving-car project, says proudly. He is sitting behind the wheel, his hands on his lap. As we stop at the intersection, waiting for a left turn, I glance over at a laptop in the passenger seat that provides a real-time look at how the car interprets its surroundings. On it, I see a gridlike world of colorful objects – cars, trucks, bicyclists, pedestrians – drifting by in a video-game-like tableau. Each sensor offers a different view – the lasers provide three-dimensional depth, the cameras identify road signs, turn signals, colors and lights. The computer in the back processes all this information in real time, gauging the speed of oncoming traffic, making a judgment about when it is OK to make a left turn.

But users won't be speaking to a person, they'll be talking to "Tay," Microsoft's new bot that's powered by artificial intelligence. The easiest way to converse with Tay is on Twitter. All users have to do is tweet at it as if it were a real person and it'll tweet back in a kind of internet patois that doesn't sound like it's coming from a computer. Tay is also chatting on apps like Snapchat, Kik, and Groupme. Tay speaks like a teen because that's how Microsoft's research division built it. According to Microsoft, Tay is "targeted at 18 to 24 year olds in the US." "Tay is an artificial intelligence chat bot designed to engage and entertain through casual and playful conversation," Microsoft explains.

In March 2001, futurist Ray Kurzweil published an essay arguing that humans found it hard to comprehend their own future. It was clear from history, he argued, that technological change is exponential -- even though most of us are unable to see it -- and that in a few decades, the world would be unrecognizably different. "We won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century -- it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate)," he wrote, in'The Law of Accelerating Returns'. Fifteen years on, Kurzweil is a director of engineering at Google and his essay has acquired a cult following among futurists. Some of its predictions are outlandish or over-hyped -- but technology experts say that its basic tenets often hold.

Decades of research and billions of dollars have poured into developing artificial intelligence, which has crossed over from science fiction to gameshow novelty to the cusp of widespread business applications. Artificial intelligence is an area of computer science where computers are designed to think and operate much like a human brain, supported by advanced forms of computing and software. But it's only as smart as the amount of information fed into its memory banks. The more information, the smarter it gets. The greatest advancements have been demonstrated in the area of game playing, but AI is now showing its mettle in the business world. "People are starting to kick the tires, looking to see how it can help their business and the bottom line," said David Schubmehl, who follows the AI field for research firm IDC.