Larry Page's dream of using technology to fix cities may come to Canada first. Sidewalk Labs LLC, the urban innovation unit of Page's Alphabet Inc., has applied to develop a 12-acre strip in downtown Toronto, responding to a recent city agency request for proposals, according to two people familiar with the plans. Details of the proposal are private, but these people said the bid fits with the company's ambition to create a connected, high-tech city or district from scratch. Last year, the company began talking openly about building a theoretical urban zone "from the internet up," with some of the same tools and principles that have fueled success at many tech companies. Before applying in Toronto, Sidewalk Labs discussed creating a district in Denver and Detroit with Alphabet executives, according to the people. They asked not to be identified discussing private plans.

Paris, France, 2 May, 2017 – We are on the threshold of an extraordinary development that makes the automation heart beat faster. Recent announcements by both Facebook and tech pioneer Elon Musk to build brain interfaces are great examples. But together with the expanding possibilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI), emotions run higher and higher. A new report from SogetiLabs'The Frankenstein Factor: the Anatomy of Fear of AI' recommends taking these emotions seriously and pleads for a therapeutic approach. A focus on IT efficiency and effectiveness should be accompanied by a focus on human existence.

Samsung subsidiary Harman Kardon quietly announced its Amazon Echo competitor, called Invoke Monday. The speaker, powered by Microsoft's voice assistant Cortana, is expected to have features such as integration with Microsoft productivity tools, such as MS-Word and artificial intelligence (AI) more focused on human-machine interactions. "We are excited to partner with Harman Kardon to create a speaker that combines premium audio and stylish design with the intelligence of Cortana. This is our next step in bringing Cortana to even more devices to help users be more productive wherever they are," Jordi Ribas, corporate vice president, AI Products at Microsoft, said in the press release. The Invoke speaker looks similar to Amazon Echo and Google Home -- it has a cylindrical design and a top with LED lighting, which glows when the speaker is listening to the user's voice commands.

Global Autonomous Driving Market Outlook, 2017, recent research from Frost & Sullivan's Automotive & Transportation Growth Partnership Service program, finds that the global autonomous driving market will be worth $83 billion by 2025. The study examines the top trends in the automated driving market, including developments like growing usage of driver assistance, new solutions, robot taxis, cognitive cloud computing, and adoption of mechanical light detection and ranging (LiDAR) for perception improvement. Click here for more information on the Autonomous Driving market and to speak to us: https://goo.gl/1izEYn. "Concerns surrounding legislation, system reliability issues, and incompatible infrastructure limit the opportunities for OEMs looking at automated driving," noted Venkitaraman. "Nevertheless, the journey from human-operated to completely autonomous cars is a progression, and pioneering semi-automated vehicles will be an important milestone toward achieving level 5 automated vehicles."

Nvidia stock is soaring, up more than 14% in after-hours trading, beating Wall Street's expectations for its first quarter. The graphics processing unit (GPU) company announced its first quarter earnings today with revenue of $1.94 billion, a 48% gain year over year. While gaming drives most of the company's sales, its largest area of growth over the past year was selling GPUs that power the artificial intelligence and graphics processing in datacenters. That sector of business saw 186% growth year over year, just a dip below last quarter's 205% growth. Nvidia has built itself into a leader in this space, selling enterprise GPUs to Google, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Tencent, and Baidu.

BootstrapLabs, a leading Venture Capital firm focused on Applied AI, announces its annual Applied Artificial Intelligence Conference on May 11th in San Francisco. The Applied AI Conference 2016 was a great success, and this year, the BootstrapLabs community will gather again for one day of discovery, exchanging ideas, and networking with over 600 AI thought leaders, corporate executives, founders and investors. "The conference is a great opportunity to learn about practical applications and the commercialization of AI technologies across industries such as Transportation & Logistics, Internet of Things (IoT), Future of Work (FoW), Financial Technologies (FinTech), CyberSecurity, and Healthcare Technologies (HealthTech)," said Benjamin Levy, Co-Founder, BootstrapLabs. The world's leading AI investors and companies will be at this year's conference, including Intel, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Salesforce, Cylance, Ford, Visa, GE, Brighterion, Bloomberg, Capgemini, Intuit, Unity, Open.AI, UC Berkeley, Stanford, D-Wave Systems and many others. "We are at the epicenter of a new revolution, and for BootstrapLabs, working with the incredible community of Artificial Intelligence thought leaders and experts gives our portfolio companies an unfair advantage. The Venture Capital industry is evolving, with some of the most exciting opportunities emerging in the early stages. We created a way to effectively bring the value add of larger Venture Capital funds to early stage companies," said Nicolai Wadstrom, CEO and Founder of BootstrapLabs.

H2O.ai, the company bringing AI to enterprises, today announced it has partnered with Nimbix to offer its next-generation AI platform, GPU-powered machine learning and best-of-breed Deep Learning on the Nimbix Cloud. With this partnership, Nimbix customers can launch H2O clusters and provision the entire stack in a matter of minutes using the latest GPUs in the Nimbix cloud. Enterprises can use this end-to-end solution to operate on large datasets, iterate faster, deploy quickly and gain real-time insights. H2O--s AI solutions enable customers to train machine learning and deep learning models up to 35x faster compared to conventional CPU-based solutions. The entire H2O platform can be easily provisioned and scaled on Nimbix--s state of the art infrastructure with JARVICE--, the cloud platform for deep learning and big compute.

The Watson win was a major win for IBM IBM, -0.31% at the time, underscoring its transition to a new-age technology company with artificially-intelligent computers. On Friday, shares of IBM fell 3% to $154.45 after billionaire investor Warren Buffett announced that his company Berkshire Hathaway Inc. BRK.A, -1.07% It has unloaded 30 million shares so far in 2017, from the 81 million shares it held at the end of 2016. Buffett bought more than $10 billion in IBM shares the year Watson won "Jeopardy," and increased his stake a few more times in the years proceeding. IBM reported profit and revenue declines, even as its newer software-as-a-service business saw revenue gains of 60%.

Researchers from the Byers Eye Institute at Stanford University have found a way to use artificial intelligence to fight a complication of diabetes that affects the eyes. This advance has the potential to reduce the worldwide rate of vision loss due to diabetes. In a study published online in Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the researchers describe how they used deep-learning methods to create an automated algorithm to detect diabetic retinopathy. Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a condition that damages the blood vessels at the back of the eye, potentially causing blindness. "What we showed is that an artificial intelligence-based grading algorithm can be used to identify, with high reliability, which patients should be referred to an ophthalmologist for further evaluation and treatment," said Theodore Leng, M.D., lead author.

This article originally appeared on the Motley Fool. Stocks inched back into record territory last week thanks to a mix of strong corporate earnings reports and economic data showing a healthy U.S. job market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: DJI) passed 21,000 points while the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: GSPC) notched a 7% gain so far for the year. Earnings season rolls on over the coming week, with a few of the most anticipated reports set to be released coming from Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS), NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), and Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ:WFM). Here are a few trends for investors to watch in the announcements.