In recent years, the rapid advance of artificial intelligence has evoked cries of alarm from billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and legendary physicist Stephen Hawking. Others, including the eccentric futurist Ray Kurzweil, have embraced the coming of true machine intelligence, suggesting that we might merge with the computers, gaining superintelligence and immortality in the process. As it turns out, we may not have to wait much longer. This morning, a group of research scientists at Google DeepMind announced that they had inadvertently solved the riddle of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Their approach relies upon a beguilingly simple technique called symmetrically toroidal asynchronous bisecting convolutions.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing the world wide web, has given a series of interviews in which he has criticised how the internet has developed, condemned how advertising has evolved and warned of the risks that global connectivity poses to users' privacy. In an interview with The Guardian, Sir Tim said that the Trump administration's decision to allow internet service providers to sign away their customers' privacy and sell users' browsing habits is "disgusting" and "appalling". The problem with the internet, he said, is that it can be "ridiculously revealing". "You have the right to go to a doctor in privacy where it's just between you and the doctor. And similarly, you have to be able to go to the web."

Dr Cédric Villani, director of Pierre and Marie Curie University's Institut Henri Poincaré and recipient of the Fields Medal, gave a talk about Henri Poincaré at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana.

A weathercat." -- Poncho asked me where I was, so it could tell me the local weather forecast. I could have shared my location using Messenger's built-in location-sharing feature, but that would take me through three in-app menu screens, and wasn't the point of chatbots to chat?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the world wide web, was declared recipient of the prestigious Association for Computing Machinery's AM Turing award on Tuesday. In an interview with the Guardian, Berners-Lee discussed the "appalling" attitude of Republican politicians seeking to roll back net neutrality protections, how his own legacy intersects with the great Alan Turing's, and the astonishing progress of the web since he launched the very first website on 1 August 1991. Berners-Lee hasn't rested on his laurels since creating the information space in which this article is being read: the 61-year-old information scientist, now at Boston's Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has spent years fighting to protect an open internet and against privatization of personal data. The 51-year-old prize could scarcely go to a more appropriate recipient. Turing's innovations helped to standardize computing, and Berners-Lee helped to make standardized conversation between computers possible for the layman.

Cloud services offered via web API endpoints are an exploding and apparently relentless trend. The big players are exposing a huge (and increasing) spectrum of state-of-the-art technology, making it possible for developers all over the world to integrate it into their apps. Clearly, the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning is no exception, claiming a huge share of the most high-tech functions exposed by vendors like Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Be it recognizing the content of images (see previous blog posts about the Google Vision API, Amazon Rekognition and a comparison of the two), the words spoken in a piece of recorded speech (Getting Started with Google Cloud Speech API) or crunching data using robust standard algorithm (Amazon Machine Learning: Use Cases and a Real Example in Python), it's nowadays very quick and easy to get started with some ready-to-go solution where all the underlying complexity is conveniently hidden by the cloud. In our recent post we described our encounter with the Google Cloud Natural Language API.

Professor Ajay Agrawal feels like he's back in 1995. That year, the first major commercial Internet service providers like AOL went online and Yahoo's search engine became available to the public. It was an inflection point for the Internet and, Agrawal believes, artificial intelligence or AI may now be nearing that stage. Agrawal, 47, is a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, but he also happens to be the founder of the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL). He has emerged as a prominent figure in the field of machine learning, with CDL's AI stream.

Artificial intelligence is shaping up as the next industrial revolution, poised to rapidly reinvent business, the global economy and how people work and interact with each other. Andrew Ng, chief scientist at Chinese internet giant Baidu Inc. and co-founder of education startup Coursera, and Neil Jacobstein, chair of the artificial intelligence and robotics department at Silicon Valley think tank Singularity University, sat down with The Wall Street Journal's Scott Austin to discuss AI's opportunities and challenges. What is Baidu focused on? NG: For large enterprises like Baidu, AI creates two big pockets of opportunities. One is our core business.

In our fourth installment of the Bytes Chat, we convened a panel of economists to discuss the newly released NBER study on the impact of robots on jobs and wages. Bytes contributors Rob Seamans, associate professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, Bret Swanson, president of Entropy Economics, and Hal Singer, senior fellow at George Washington University's Institute of Public Policy were joined by special guest Marshall Steinbaum, senior economist and fellow of the Roosevelt Institute. The conversation has been edited slightly for readability. First question is at the behest of our president. Are the robots coming over the border? Is this a border problem? Marshall Steinbaum: If you get all the enemies in one place, it's easier to kill them. Singer: Ok, let's get serious.

"Supergirl" stars Chyler Leigh and Floriana Lima revealed that they were pleasantly surprised by how significant Alex and Maggie's relationship has become to viewers who are struggling with their sexuality. "There was no way we would have known the impact that this would have had," Leigh told People at the 28th GLAAD Media Awards ceremony, where "Supergirl" was nominated for best dramatic TV show for its story featuring the lesbian relationship of Alex and Maggie. "We definitely wanted [Alex and Maggie's relationship] to be a strong representation, and that's why we've thought so hard about it and wanted it to be beautifully done," Leigh continued. "So I'm just really happy with the writers of'Supergirl,' who have really brought this to life." READ: Is there a James-centric "Supergirl" episode coming up? "We're just really humbled by it, very proud of it," added Lima who attended the awards night with Leigh.