In February MIT Technology Review highlighted 10 breakthrough technologies poised to significantly change the world over the next few years. Here's how they have progressed since then. We predicted that 2016 would bring major progress on high-tech cancer cures enabled by using gene editing to tune the human immune system, and it did. First, American scientists got a green light to start using the gene-editing technique called CRISPR to customize T cells and turn them into cancer killers. That study turned out to have the backing of Internet billionaire Sean Parker, who in April had announced he'd give away $250 million toward "hacking" the immune system. By November, a Chinese company announced it had raced ahead and dosed a patient with the first T cells edited with CRISPR.

Gigaom, the leader in emerging technology research, today announced that it is holding its first annual competition for the AI start-up that delivers the highest ROI to corporate customers. The GAIN competition coincides with the annual conference Gigaom AI Now held in San Francisco, CA, February 15-16th 2017. AI startups are leading the way for bringing positive impacts of AI to many of the world's long-term challenges. "Record number of investments are being made in early stage AI start-ups. The competition will identify which new ventures can deliver the highest ROI to businesses today," explained David Hehman, Gigaom's Start-up & VC editor.

CES 2017, is expected to feature the latest auto technology, including self-driving and concept cars. The show will run from Jan. 5-8 in Las Vegas with Jan. 3 and Jan. 4 being press days. Here's what you can expect to see from automakers at one of technology's biggest events: Ford will reveal its next generation Fusion Hybrid autonomous development car at CES 2017, after giving the public a glimpse of the car in a video before the show. The new vehicle comes with new electrical controls and two 360-degree view LiDAR sensors. The car's updates are focused on its virtual driver system, with the vehicle's brain located in the trunk, the company says.

Salt Lake City-based company Recursion Pharmaceuticals was recognized Tuesday for its drug discovery platform, which combines both the innovation of artificial intelligence and the mystery of experimental biology. Recursion Pharmaceuticals received two Fierce Innovation awards from the biotech and pharmaceutical industries as recognition for their platform, which is said to increase the rate at which drugs can be discovered. "Traditional drug discovery can take more than a decade and billions of dollars per approved compound," Recursion's co-founder and CEO, Chris Gibson, said in a news release. "Recursion's platform can radically increase the scale at which drugs are discovered, saving years of development time and the associated costs." The platform uses tons of microscopic pictures of human cells, including diseased cells and cells that have been treated with different chemicals and drugs, and utilizes image recognition to identify which parts of the cell change when afflicted with a disease or treated with a drug.

Remark Media's image and video recognition technologies are based on Deep Learning, a type of algorithm-based machine learning that is used to model high-level abstractions in data. In developing its technologies, Remark Media leveraged its extensive KanKan data platform to train its AI with tens of millions of supervised and unsupervised samples, developing models that extract facial features and recognize objects in images or videos such as branded logos, animals, airplanes, license plates, etc., with high precision. The KanKan Data Intelligence Platform is a growing global platform of over 1.3 billion socially active user profiles, over 15 billion posts, more than 10 billion images, and over 50 billion comments and reviews. In addition to providing its technology to Alibaba Cloud, Remark Media will provide its turnkey AI platform as a service to companies or individuals requiring assistance with integrating the technology into their own models. Additional information on this partnership can be found on Alibaba Cloud's website.

Machine learning and other variations of artificial intelligence (AI) are expected to proliferate in the enterprise in 2017. The majority of IT players, including today's leading technology companies, have invested in the space and plan to increase efforts for the foreseeable future, according to analysts who cover the market. However, while machine learning has generated tremendous interest throughout the enterprise, a wide gap still exists between research and beneficial use cases in the real world. And only a small number of companies have the resources to actually drive AI innovation and deliver it to the masses, sources say. During last month's Code Enterprise conference, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said AI was one of leading factors in the company's decision to be acquired by Microsoft.

Many people depend on Skype to chat with family, colleagues and clients throughout their working day. To help them stay connected while they're outside the office, Volvo has announced plans to integrate Skype for Business into its high-end 90 Series cars. Accessible through a large touchscreen dashboard, drivers will see a list of scheduled meetings and a shortcut to their complete contact list. Tapping once will reveal a meeting summary, including the organiser, participants and the ways in which they can join the call. A "Join Meeting" shortcut will reside at the bottom so users can quickly dial in -- no pesky pin codes required (hopefully).

SYS-CON Events announced today that Technologic Systems Inc., an embedded systems solutions company, will exhibit at SYS-CON's @ThingsExpo, which will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Technologic Systems is an embedded systems company with headquarters in Fountain Hills, Arizona. They have been in business for 32 years, helping more than 8,000 OEM customers and building over a hundred COTS products that have never been discontinued. Technologic Systems' product base consists of a wide variety of off-the-shelf PC/104 single board computers, computer-on-modules, touch panel computers, peripherals and industrial controllers. They also offer custom configurations and design services.

Ford has shown the first images of its new self-driving Fusion Hybrid with a more powerful computer and improved, better-integrated sensors. It uses an upgraded version of the Fusion Hybrid platform, bolstered by self-driving hardware, a large new computer and electrical controls that "are close to production-ready," the company said in a press release. It also packs lower-profile LIDAR units that appear to be the "Puck" models from Velodyne, a company in which it recently invested $150 million. Cameras and other bits are smoothly built into the roof, making the hybrid less "hey, look at me, I'm a self-driving car" than other models. By contrast, the last autonomous Fusion model used since 2013 featured no less than four bulky LIDAR units.

Today, big data, that is generated exponentially every hour, becomes a treasurable asset to many organizations. To be competitive in a dynamic data-driven and Web-centric market, most of the high-tech companies such as Google, Apple, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, etc. employ big data analytics (BDA) to mine insights within their big data to drive productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency. On the other hand, artificial intelligence (AI) has grown rapidly from a nascent stage to intermediate one in the last decade. AI is a youthful field in Computer Science in building an autonomous machine that intends to replace humans with daily activities. Robots mimic human behavior and frequently perform dangerous tasks.