March 21, 2016– AliveCor, Inc., the leader in FDA-cleared ECG technology for mobile devices, announced today the appointment of two former Google leads, Frank Petterson and Simon Prakash. Petterson joins AliveCor as the company's Vice President of Engineering and Prakash as Vice President of Products and Design. Together they will drive the development of products that will continue to enable people and doctors worldwide to proactively manage heart conditions, anywhere anytime. They will lead engineers and data scientists to disrupt the standard of cardiac care and support the company's expansion into the new Wearable MedTech space, pioneered by AliveCor. "I am inspired by AliveCor's mission and vision of bringing together healthcare, wearable technology, and machine learning to create the'Wearable MedTech' category and I look forward to contributing to the goal of creating technology that will make a difference in millions of lives around the world," said Frank Petterson, vice president of engineering of AliveCor.

At first, it sounded like a disaster. Walter Sun, whose job was to make sure Bing gave users the most up-to-the-minute information about current events, was seeing a big spike in the number of people searching for facts about some type of plane incident on the Hudson River. People who saw the jetliner come down began tweeting details almost immediately. Others who'd been aboard a passing ferry started sharing online photos of a rescue effort. It quickly became clear that instead of tragedy, a heroic pilot's emergency landing had saved the lives of everyone on board.

Will a robot steal your job or help make you a better one? The evidence points to the increased role of automation in the workplace: as many as 70 per cent of executives plan to significantly increase their investments in AI-related technologies, according to consultant Accenture. What's the best way to take advantage of robotics, automation, and AI? And how can CIOs help the business to evaluate these opportunities and create a boost in productivity and performance? How can executives best understand the role of the robots?

Some of the most promising work is already taking place in healthcare, where cognitive computing is identifying insights that can be used by doctors in their fight against deadly and chronic diseases. Cancer centers in New York, North Carolina, India and Thailand are using these systems to help their doctors in their efforts to provide personalized, evidence-based cancer care tailored to each patient's unique needs. Hospitals in Colorado are helping patients with heart disease adopt--and stick with--heart–healthy behaviors, aiming to help prevent future costly hospital stays. And a new study in California is using technology to determine whether it is possible to predict veterans at risk for long-term PTSD and then customize treatment recommendations to help address the devastating condition.

The technology industry has a problem with diversity. True to form, it thinks the solution is technological. Founders of the Future is a new venture that hopes to uncover the Mark Zuckerbergs of the future, using algorithms. "An AI doesn't know anything about your background - which school or university you went to," Tom Bowles told me. Mr Bowles, a machine learning expert, developed the software, which models the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs like Niklas Zennstrom, who set up Skype, and Natalie Massenet, who started Net-a-Porter.

As far as locales go, the bottom of the ocean is a particularly exasperating place to explore. Anyone or anything you send down there has to contend with the dark, with thousands of pounds of pressure on every square inch, with the inability to replenish fuel supplies without returning to the mother ship. In recent years, unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) have improved the situation, eliminating the need to send a human down below, or to attach an unmanned vessel to a surface ship with a long umbilical cord. Those include Boeing's Echo Ranger and Echo Seeker underwater robots, which can spend a few days at at time below the surface, with ranges measured in the tens or hundreds of miles. Those UUV's are "nothing more than an extension, or an application of the surface ship," says Lance Towers, who carries the impressively potent title of director of sea and land at Phantom Works, Boeing's R&D arm.

Despite the various, and staggering, leaps made by computer scientists, critics argue that machines will never truly match humans until they gain consciousness. Considered a uniquely human trait, consciousness includes being sentient and self-aware, as well as aware of your surroundings. However, many scientists argue animals are as conscious as humans, and the theory of Phi could one day be used to determine if droids are capable of showing such behaviour. Matthew Davidson, PhD Candidate in the neuroscience of consciousness at Monash University has explained what the Phi theory is, and why it is significant, in an article for The Conversation. How and why circumstances may give rise to consciousness remain some of the most puzzling questions in science. Do you think that the machine you are reading this story on, right now, has a feeling of'what it is like' to be in its state?

Go 8 Bit is based on a live show in Edinburgh that shares the same name. These will range from nostalgic arcade classics (think Pong, Pac-Man and Street Fighter II) to modern masterpieces like Grand Theft Auto V. In addition, Dave is teasing "larger-than-life game-inspired physical challenges," no doubt imitating other game shows like A Question of Sport in the UK. The team captains will be Steve McNeil and Sam Pamphilon, a pair of comedians with a genuine passion for video games. They created and performed the original concept in Scotland, and will be partnered with a celebrity guest in each of the new episodes.

I used to teach the calculus in a private high school where I was headmaster and would occasionally play a game called "WFF'N Proof" with my students. They had to roll a set of six dice that had sides marked with the following: p, q, r, C, A, K, E or N. After a throw they had to see if they could construct a WFF, a well-formed-formula, by arranging the outcomes in various combinations. A WFF was defined as any of the following: p, q or r. (Addendum 1, 2/7/16: Note that there is no indication of p, q, or r having common features.) Also WFF's were combinations of the letters C, A, K or E followed by two WFF's. Or N followed by a single WFF. So beginning with p, q, or r, one could possibly construct the new WFF's, Np or Nq or Nr. Continuing in this vein, one might construct Apq, or ANpp, or CAqKqrr, … (Addendum 2, 2/7/16: Note also that no two complex WFF's need have common features, e.g.

Despite predictions of a tech slowdown, big-name businesses like Facebook, Apple, and IBM are pouring resources into artificial intelligence (AI), changing the field and gaining the interest of venture capitalists everywhere. As investors actively seek innovative players in the AI space, more entrepreneurs are gravitating toward the technology as they build and grow their own companies. Businesses such as Sentient, Context Relevant, and Scaled Inference all continue to work on their own multifunction AI platforms for computation and analysis, but this is only a small segment of the AI market. Multiple businesses now invest time and effort into purpose-built AI products. Here are a few of the businesses that are capturing attention in their respective industries for their AI work. With total capital of 58 million, AI specialist Kensho is already showing just how serious investors are about the technology.