Instead of going to school, school will come to you. That's the prize-winning idea behind RISE High, a proposed Los Angeles charter high school designed to serve homeless and foster children whose educations are frequently disrupted. Los Angeles educators Kari Croft, 29, and Erin Whalen, 26, who came up with the idea, won 10 million in XQ: The Super School Project, a high school redesign competition funded by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs. RISE is one of 10 10-million winning school projects nationwide. Winners receive the prize money over five years.

Useful quantum computers are closer to becoming a reality as some of the world's biggest corporations try to bring the technology from the lab into the practical world. A quantum computer utilizes subatomic particles called qubits to speed up the solving of complex computations. Near-term expectations for quantum computers range from solving optimization problems to quantum-encrypted communications, and more. With the help of CB Insights' investment, acquisition, and partnership data, we identified 18 corporate groups involved in the development of commercialized quantum computing hardware and software. They are a diverse group of players, ranging from tech industry behemoths to defense contractors to national telecommunications companies.

ARLINGTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) today announced additional programming for Innovate! Jointly produced by CTA and Tech.Co, the event's combined programming will feature event offerings from both organizers for an audience of industry influencers and innovative tech startups. "We are thrilled to bring Innovate! "Hosting our conference in Silicon Valley's backyard enables us to provide even more opportunities for startup founders from across the world to meet nationally recognized accelerators and investors, gain valuable knowledge and connect with resources that will help amplify their efforts to build a high-growth company," said Frank Gruber, CEO and Co-Founder Tech.Co. Registration is open for Innovate!

"Inbenta was founded in 2005 with a vision of leveraging artificial intelligence in an entirely new manner to transform how companies and customers interact," said Jordi Torras, founder and CEO, Inbenta. "That vision has been realized, and now Inbenta is in a period of dramatic and profitable growth including global expansion into 23 countries and support for over 20 languages. This Series B financing will help bring our technology to a much larger group of demanding customers who need enterprise-grade solutions, and to further drive the innovation that underpins our technology." The funding will be used to expand sales and marketing, and to further drive product development for Inbenta's industry-leading natural language processing (NLP) technology that powers search, chatbots, and self-service solutions for customer support and e-commerce. Inbenta's products are now used by over 200 customers around the world, including Ticketmaster, B&H, CA Technologies and 8x8 to enhance customer engagement, increase retention, and drive sales.

When we're born, do some words come factory-installed? A new study, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that many human languages use similar words to describe the same concepts. These commonalities, which exist between languages that are apparently unrelated and separated by thousands of miles, may challenge existing theories about linguistic evolution. "These sound symbolic patterns show up again and again across the world, independent of the geographical dispersal of humans and independent of language lineage," Morten Christiansen, co-author and director of Cornell's Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, said in a statement. "There does seem to be something about the human condition that leads to these patterns. We don't know what it is, but we know it's there."

Few trends in technology have caused the level of panic and uncertainty in the job market as artificial intelligence (AI). The impending "robot revolution" has brought questions about what jobs, if any, will be replaced by bots, and when it will happen. While some have posited that robots will replace nearly all jobs, and free up humans to work on more creative endeavors, others have been more reserved in their predictions. A new report for Forrester Research claims that, by 2021, "intelligent agents and related robots" will only have eliminated 6% of jobs. "By 2021, AI within intelligent agents will evolve significantly beyond today's relatively simple machine learning and natural language processing (NLP)," the report said.

A new study found that physicians have a surprisingly poor knowledge of the benefits and harms of common medical treatments. And, as Aaron Carroll pointed out, it's not just that they were off, but "it's how off they often were." Anyone out there who still don't think artificial intelligence (AI) is needed in health care? The authors noted that previous studies have found that patients often overestimate benefits as well, but tended to minimize potential harms. Not only do physicians overestimate harm, they "underestimate how often most treatments have no effects on patients -- either harmful or beneficial."

Ford Motor Co. F -1.53 % made its latest plea for investors to view the auto maker more like a Silicon Valley company, promising lofty returns on future ventures while warning near-term profit will be pinched by deep investment. The Dearborn, Mich., auto maker told investors on Wednesday that its new business services unit eventually will deliver 20% margins, two-and-a-half-times its core auto-making operation. It updated its plans for venturing into robo-taxis, electric car and other transportation services like bike sharing and shuttle vans. Ford's share price has declined while Chief Executive Mark Fields has been at the helm, despite delivering record operating profit. The focus under Mr. Fields--who took over in 2014 after Alan Mulally spent nearly a decade on initiatives that had Ford getting back to basics--has been on winning a technology race with rivals including General Motors Co. GM -0.71 % and Toyota Motor Corp. TM -1.04 % The new strategy will be costly and risky.

By 2021, robots will have eliminated 6% of all jobs in the US, starting with customer service representatives and eventually truck and taxi drivers. That's just one cheery takeaway from a report released by market research company Forrester this week. These robots, or intelligent agents, represent a set of AI-powered systems that can understand human behavior and make decisions on our behalf. Current technologies in this field include virtual assistants like Alexa, Cortana, Siri and Google Now as well as chatbots and automated robotic systems. For now, they are quite simple, but over the next five years they will become much better at making decisions on our behalf in more complex scenarios, which will enable mass adoption of breakthroughs like self-driving cars.

Amazon Echo and Echo Dot are voice-controlled speakers designed entirely around your voice--they're always ready, hands-free, and fast. Alexa is the brain behind Echo and Echo Dot--just ask and she'll answer questions, play music, read the news, set timers and alarms, recite your calendar, check sports scores, control lights around your home, and much more. With Echo and Echo Dot's far-field voice control, you can do all this from across the room just by asking. Since Alexa runs in the cloud, she is always getting smarter--plus, third party developers are building new skills for Alexa every day. There will be thousands of Alexa skills available for UK customers at launch including skills from Spotify, Uber, Philips Hue, Hive, Just Eat, National Rail Enquiries, and more.