We live in an increasingly data-driven society, in which information is becoming as much of a currency as money. Many consumers use free services from internet giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple, for example, and in return allow these corporations to track and monetise their online behaviour. One of the biggest questions of the day is the openness of such transactions, and the level of control that individuals have over the fate of the personal information they -- sometimes unwittingly -- divulge to organisations with which they interact online. Recent votes on both sides of the Atlantic have highlighted the capacity for data-savvy organisations to hoover up and profile large amounts of user data -- including demographics, consumer behaviour and internet activity -- in order to micro-target adverts, news stories and services in support of particular goals or causes. Clearly, the data floodgates are now opening for businesses of all sizes and descriptions, bringing myriad opportunities for timely analysis in pursuit of competitive advantage.

In response to Vladimir Putin's claims last week that whoever cracks artificial intelligence with'rule the world', Elon Musk has said that he thinks the technology will be the most likely cause of World War 3. Musk took to Twitter this morning to make the chilling warning, claiming that'competition for AI superiority at national level' could spark a war. The Tesla and SpaceX founder suggests that a war is likely to be started by one of the AIs itself, rather than a country leader. In response to Vladimir Putin's claims last week that whoever cracks artificial intelligence with'rule the world', Elon Musk has said that he thinks the technology will be the most likely cause of World War 3 During a question-and-answer session at the summer conference of the National Governors Association in Rhode Island., Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned that regulation of artificial intelligence is needed because it's a'fundamental risk to the existence of human civilisation.' The billionaire said regulations will stop humanity from being outsmarted by computers, or'deep intelligence in the network', that can start wars by manipulating information. Governments must have a better understanding of artificial intelligence technology's rapid evolution in order to fully comprehend the risks, he said.

Several weeks ago I wrote a post on Bayesian statistics. I was very interested in the implementation of Bayesian statistics, especially for complex problems which are more easily solved with simulation rather than mathematical manipulation. I wrote the article with a specific audience in mind: namely those that knew the basics of Bayesian statistics, but had no idea how to implement it. As an astute commenter pointed out, in my excitement to implement my Bayesian program, I skimmed over several key points of Bayesian statistics and woefully mis-represented others. Let's fix that now, shall we! Let's talk about the basics of Bayesian statistics, and then move up to simulating them.

Since its messaging app debuted in June 2011, Line Corp. has shaken up the online communications landscape in Japan and morphed into a player in smartphone communications infrastructure. So Line is planting the seeds of success for what it thinks will be the next big thing: voice-based "AI agents." While this artificial-intelligence quest will pit the smaller Line against IT powerhouses Google, Apple and Amazon, among others, Line CEO Takeshi Idezawa likes his chances. "We are taking on a new challenge because we believe we have the assets to win the battle," Idezawa told The Japan Times in a recent interview. This is quite a change for a firm that owes its success to a prescient bet on smartphones less than a decade ago.

Almost every word has more than one meaning. Modern search engines solve this problem using knowledge bases. Yago was one of the first knowledge bases, developed by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken and the Télécom ParisTech in Paris. Last week, the researchers received an award for their work on Yago from the most important scientific journal in the field of artificial intelligence. Today, they are releasing Yago's source code.

The HireVue app uses a mixture of video interviewing and artificial intelligence to make recruiting more efficient and match the right candidates with the right jobs. Job recruitment has always been a hassle. Sometimes recruiters are swarmed with 300 applicants for a single position,. Once they've narrowed down the options, the 50 prime candidates still need to be screened and interviewed. It would be more efficient to hire the ideal candidate as soon as possible, rather than dragging them through the job search process longer than necessary.

Engineers and product managers at Apple's headquarters at Cupertino these days are obsessed with the idea of embedding artificial intelligence (AI) into every aspect of consumer's digital touch points. That's because Apple chief Tim Cook wants AI to be like air, all pervasive yet invisible. "The beauty of AI is that the user does not have to think about launching an application or think like'okay, I am going to do some AI now'. This is embedded in things which you don't even get to know. If you talk to our various teams -- the software team, Apple TV team, the mail team, the home pod team -- all of them have AI projects going on. AI is sought of like air. It's invisible yet all permeating," Cook told BusinessLine in a recent interview.

A world renowned pioneer in social robotics, Cynthia Breazeal splits her time as an Associate Professor at MIT, where she received her PhD and founded the Personal Robots Group, and Founder and Chief Scientist of Jibo, a personal robotics company with over $85 million in funding. While Breazeal's work has won numerous academic awards, industry accolades, and media attention, she had to fight early skepticism in the 1990s from other experts in robotics and AI. At the time, robots were seen as physical and industrial tools, not social or emotional companions. Her first social robot, Kismet, was unfairly called out in popular press as "useless". Breazeal bucked the trend with a very different vision: "I wanted to create robots with social and emotional intelligence that could work in collaborative partnership with people. In 2-5 years, I see social robots helping families with things that really matter, like education, health, eldercare, entertainment, and companionship." She hopes her work and influence will inspire others to create robots "not only with smarts, but with heart, too."

Forty years ago this coming Tuesday, a car-sized piece of equipment launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Thirty five years later, it became the first and only man-made object to enter interstellar space. Along the way, the Voyager probes (there were two) made headlines for flybys of Jupiter, Saturn and Titan. Fran Bagenal was a student when the Voyager probes launched, and wrote her doctoral thesis on data the probes collected around Jupiter. The professor of astrophysical and planetary science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and former chair of NASA's Outer Planet Assessment Group, has also worked on the Galileo, Deep Space 1, New Horizons and Juno missions. Nautilus caught up with Bagenal to discuss the legacy of Voyager and the future of manned and unmanned exploration of space.

Richard Anderson, the tall, handsome actor best known for costarring simultaneously in the popular 1970s television shows "The Six Million Dollar Man" and "The Bionic Woman," has died at age 91. Anderson died of natural causes on Thursday, family spokesman Jonathan Taylor said. "The Six Million Dollar Man" brought a new wave of supernatural heroes to television. Based on the novel "Cyborg" by Martin Caidin, it starred Lee Majors as U.S. astronaut Steve Austin, who is severely injured in a crash. The government saves his life by rebuilding his body with atomic-powered artificial limbs and other parts, giving him superhuman strength, speed and other powers.