Taking a look into the future, Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) ConsumerLab presents the sixth edition of its annual trend report The 10 Hot Consumer Trends for 2017 and beyond. AI is an important theme this year and consumers see it playing a much more prominent role than before - both in society and at work. In fact, 35 percent of advanced internet users want an AI advisor at work, and one in four would like an AI as their manager. At the same time, almost half are concerned that AI robots will soon make a lot of people lose their jobs. Two in five believe smartphones will learn their habits and perform activities on their behalf automatically.

Ford CEO Mark Fields holds Velodyne Puck LIDAR sensor at a press conference at CES in Las Vegas in January. Carmakers and tech firms competing to develop automated vehicles seek a combination of sensors and cameras that provide maximum perception and visibility of surroundings at a cost that's manageable for mass production. Velodyne, a leading maker of laser-based LiDAR, or Light, Detection and Ranging, sensors, says it has designed a new solid-state version of its technology that provides 3D imaging for automated vehicle systems that will cost less than $50 per unit when manufactured at high volume. That's a fraction of the $8,000 cost of its current mechanical spinning LIDAR devices used in prototype robotic cars. The new design "creates a true solid-state LiDAR sensor, while significantly raising the bar as to what can be expected from LiDAR sensors as far as cost, size and reliability," company founder and CEO David Hall said in a statement.

Netflix employs an algorithm that helps its users discover movie options, and now it's about to help discover new planetary systems. Researchers at the University of Toronto Scarborough have developed a new approach to identifying stable planetary systems based on the machine learning artificial intelligence Netflix uses. "Machine learning offers a powerful way to tackle a problem in astrophysics, and that's predicting whether planetary systems are stable," Dan Tamayo, lead author of the research and a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Planetary Science at the University of Toronto Scarborough, said in a press release. Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence that allows computers to learn new functions without being programmed. This is how Netflix can make scarily accurate predictions of what you're interested in watching without you telling it.

Increased investor interest in AI startups – from around 10 deals in Q1'11 to over 120 in Q2'16 – can be attributed to recent advances in machine learning algorithms, particularly "deep learning" technology, a souped up version of AI. Just this week, Google integrated deep learning into its Google Translate tool; Baidu announced the launch of DeepBench, an "open source benchmarking tool for evaluating deep learning performance across different hardware platforms"; and NVIDIA introduced Xavier, a deep learning-based supercomputer for driverless cars. In the private market, Google put deep learning in the spotlight back in 2014 when it acquired 4 startups focused on this AI tech in quick succession: DeepMind, Vision Factory, Dark Blue Labs, and DNNresearch. Apple, which joined the race in 2015, most recently acquired Turi, which has developed a deep learning toolkit, among other AI-based solutions. Not to be outdone, Intel has acquired around 5 AI startups since January 2015, including deep learning startup Nervana Systems and, more recently, Movidius.

SYS-CON Events announced today that Fusion, a leading provider of cloud services, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 20th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Fusion, a leading provider of integrated cloud solutions to small, medium and large businesses, is the industry's single source for the cloud. Fusion's advanced, proprietary cloud service platform enables the integration of leading edge solutions in the cloud, including cloud communications, cloud connectivity, and cloud computing. Fusion's innovative, yet proven cloud solutions lower our customers' cost of ownership, and deliver new levels of security, flexibility, scalability, and speed of deployment. For more information, please visit http://www.fusionconnect.com.

An artificial intelligence program has written a Christmas carol. Researchers at the University of Toronto used their "" program to write a Christmas carol based off of a "Christmassy photograph," The Guardian reports. The scientists simply uploaded the photograph into a computer hosting the program and then "let it do its thing." The artificial intelligence program then wrote several lines of lyrics and sang them to music it Read More ... Tags: Computer systems Computer Software Artificial intelligence Google's DeepMind'Lab' opens up source code, joins race to develop artificial general intelligence Following right on its heels came Google's that, its machine learning platform, has created a "lab." The DeepMind Lab offers a 3D training environment, and its entire code library is now available on the open source hosting service GitHub. With Universe, OpenAI aimed to address a primary challenge for AI research, which is a lack of "a large variety of realistic environments [for AI agents to] learn progressively more Read More ... Tags: Computer systems Artificial intelligence Artificial general intelligence Places: Americas North America United States Microsoft's digital assistant, Cortana, could be getting an upgrade--and Intel may be helping.

Gigaom, the leader in emerging technology research, today announced that it will host its annual conference Gigaom AI Now in San Francisco, CA, February 15-16th. The one-and-a-half day conference, held at the Golden Gate Club, will share how companies are using AI today to drive significant ROI across every aspect of business, from administration to product development, sales and marketing, and customer experience. Attendees at this event will learn from world-leading practitioners how today's progressive businesses are applying the most innovative AI tools, platforms, and technologies in-house to drive revenue and improve operations across the enterprise. "In the last couple of years, AI has become the technology no enterprise can afford to ignore. It will change every department in almost every business. We have designed this event to focus entirely on how enterprises can use AI right now to improve their business in substantial ways," shared Gigaom Publisher, Byron Reese.

Earlier this week we warned that as the trend to robotization accelerates, millions of (mostly) low-skilled American jobs will be lost in the next five years, replaced by robots as companies seek to maintain high profit margins in a time of rising wages and growing inflation. One company, however, can not wait that long. British outsourcing giant Capita, a company whose contracts include collecting the BBC license fee, is preparing to fire thousands and replace them with robots after clients cut spending following Brexit vote in a move some fear will be repeated across the country, leading to more than 1 million job losses according to the Guardian. Capita, a FTSE 100-listed firm that also runs the London congestion charge, said it needed to axe 2,000 jobs as part of a cost-cutting drive in response to poor trading. The company said it would use the money it saved to fund investment into robotic workers across the whole company.

In recent years, advanced machine learning techniques have enabled computers to recognize objects in images, understand commands from spoken sentences, and translate written language. But while consumer products like Apple's Siri and Google Translate might operate in real time, actually building the complex mathematical models these tools rely on can take traditional computers large amounts of time, energy, and processing power. As a result, chipmakers like Intel, graphics powerhouse Nvidia, mobile computing kingpin Qualcomm, and a number of startups are racing to develop specialized hardware to make modern deep learning significantly cheaper and faster. The importance of such chips for developing and training new AI algorithms quickly cannot be understated, according to some AI researchers. "Instead of months, it could be days," Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said in a November earnings call, discussing the time required to train a computer to do a new task.

Chances are you either love or hate your car -- and soon the feeling could be mutual. Japanese automaker Honda will showcase a concept car at the Consumer Electronics Show next month that is capable of understanding the driver's emotions and developing emotions of its own, the company announced this week. The company provided few details as to how the technology will work or alter the driving experience. But we do know that the concept car, called the NeuV, is being touted as an automated electric vehicle that includes an "emotion engine." That's the name for artificial intelligence that Honda says will "enable machines to artificially generate their own emotions."