Artificial intelligence will take over the world! "There's very smart people, whether it's Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates or Stephen Hawking, who have said, 'Oh my gosh, this is really dangerous,'" Hawkins said. Hawkins stressed that Numenta is specifically trying to reverse engineer only part of the human brain: The neocortex, which is what lets us learn and create a model of the world based on our environments and experiences. You can listen to Recode Decode in the audio player above, or subscribe on iTunes, Google Play Music, TuneIn and Stitcher.

"It's like a videogame, but more fun because you're outside," says Isaac Kantor, my 10-year old neighbor, as he buzzes a Parrot Airborne Cargo drone past my head. Kids can use ROXs to play pre-programmed video games outdoors. Geocaching uses a GPS device to search for and locate hidden items in public places. Geocaching, which is really nothing more than using any GPS device to search for and locate hidden items in public places, is a hobby that has been growing for decades.

The same app that Van used to reduce her native Vietnamese accent could help an American moving to Vietnam learn a local Vietnamese accent. "Growing up in Vietnam, speaking English is a big advantage. Elsa users are primarily from the non-English speaking world but there are also users from say, Atlanta, as well as other native English speakers, Van said. Elsa Speak users are primarily professionals and students, but love is also a chief motivator.

Researchers have taught a computer to do a better-than-expected job of predicting what characters on TV shows will do, just by forcing the machine to study 600 hours' worth of YouTube videos. The researchers developed predictive-vision software that uses machine learning to anticipate what actions should follow a given set of video frames. They grabbed thousands of videos showing humans greeting each other, and fed those videos into the algorithm. To test how much the machine was learning about human behavior, the researchers presented the computer with single frames that showed meet-ups between characters on TV sitcoms it had never seen, including "The Big Bang Theory," "Desperate Housewives" and "The Office."

Does the self-driving car protect its passengers at all costs with no regard for the lives of others, or should the car instead put its passengers in harm's way to avoid a higher number of casualties that could result from a collision with pedestrians or other motorists? So if there is just one passenger aboard a car, and the lives of 10 pedestrians are at stake, the survey participants were perfectly fine with a self-driving car "killing" its passenger to save many more lives in return. MIT Media Lab has developed a complimentary online "Moral Machine" game that allows you to walk through a number of scenarios of who lives and who dies when a self-driving vehicle has to make a tough call. With this all being said, we can't help but recall a rather poignant scene from the movie I, Robot, in which Detective Spooner (played by Will Smith) recalls a story of how a robot saved his life in a car crash.

The takeaway here is the machine learning allows companies to build better applications that interact with things people create: pictures, speech, text, and other messy things. Interfaces powered by machine learning will make computing omnipresent. Like their other products, both Google Search and Facebook Photos demonstrate how RDAs generate significant network effects. Or, you could have a giant install base which only occasionally codes data (Facebook, whose users tag photos usually when they're uploaded).

The tough part here is designing the algorithms that will control these self-driving rides, and how to teach the artificial intelligence deal with unavoidable harm. It's tricky and raises the question of which lives are more important, those outside the vehicle or its passengers? When humans make split-second decisions, it's out of instinct and self-preservation -- not programming. But if someone knowingly bought an autonomous vehicle that favored passengers over pedestrians, would they be held liable if a loss of public life occurred?

With the news that Magic Pony has been acquired by Twitter, we are witnessing a crucial turning point - five of the world's biggest technology companies have now purchased UK-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) companies. It is no coincidence that at the same time (1972) we saw the birth of venture capital with both Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital raising their first small venture funds – which had similar characteristics to today's emerging European VC funds: small funds, thematic focused and highly supportive of entrepreneurs. At the same time, much has been said about the flow of capital into European venture capital funds and skills these venture team now have. The Magic Pony acquisition is an important part of the story in building Europe's emerging technology industry.

A host of leading industry experts gathered to discuss the launch of The Drum's Cannes Lions special edition guest edited by IBM's artificial intelligence (AI) technology Watson, which used machine learning to channel the creativity of David Ogilvy, arguably the godfather of advertising. The panel session, held in association with Quantcast, saw assembled marketers listen in on the thoughts of Amber Case, a cyborg anthropologist who examines the interaction between humans and technology; Oliver Cox, solutions architect, IBM Watson ecosystem; Konrad Feldman, CEO of Quantcast; David Shing, digital prophet for AOL; plus Todd Krugmann, president of O&M Japan. IBM's Cox added that the latest issue of The Drum bore testament to this potential union of data-led machine learning, and the creative process. Meanwhile, IBM's Cox further explained how such an offering could aid brands' communication strategies: "Watson would not create a personality - it will help you create the personality that's best for your brand [with elements of human moderation]."

Vehicles with assisted driving features are already available on the mass market, and connected car technology is quickly reaching a tipping point. Fully driverless vehicles are not far behind, as car manufacturers and tech giants -- including Google, Uber, Tesla and GM -- push prototypes through thousands of miles of testing with the promise to enter production. Businesses and consumers aren't the only ones trying to make sense of a future without human drivers; insurance firms must also find pricing and coverage models that can accommodate the reality of autonomous vehicles.