General Motors Co. GM -0.06 % is enlisting digital smarts from International Business Machines Corp. IBM 0.62 % 's Watson artificial intelligence technology in an effort to leapfrog other tech companies angling for a role inside the car. The auto maker on Wednesday is unveiling a new version of its OnStar system to offer mobile-commerce services beyond navigation and entertainment. The system, dubbed OnStar Go, is designed to learn from users' behavior to deliver personalized offers from partners such as Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM 0.43 % For instance, the system might alert drivers who need fuel to make it to their next destination and point the way to Exxon Mobil stations en route. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty talks about how her company has changed its focus as the world has changed.

The smart energy startup Verdigris announced today that it has raised $6.7 million to scale production of its Einstein smart sensor and frequency detectors. The sensors are used to predict the failure of machines and improve energy efficiency. Factories, manufacturing facilities, and other large buildings using Verdigris technology reduce energy use 8 to 22 percent, CEO Mark Chung told VentureBeat in a phone interview. The Einstein frequency detector from Verdigris made its debut in August. "Rather than take a big data approach where we study thousands of motors and this is the failure pattern, we instead take a physics based model which is looking at a signal through our sensors," Chung said.

General Motors Co. GM -0.27 % is enlisting digital smarts from International Business Machines Corp. IBM 0.84 % 's Watson artificial intelligence technology in an effort to leapfrog other tech companies angling for a role inside the car. The auto maker on Wednesday is unveiling a new version of its OnStar system to offer mobile-commerce services beyond navigation and entertainment. The system, dubbed OnStar Go, is designed to learn from users' behavior to deliver personalized offers from partners such as Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM -0.04 % For instance, the system might alert drivers who need fuel to make it to their next destination and point the way to Exxon Mobil stations en route. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty talks about how her company has changed its focus as the world has changed.

General Motors and IBM have partnered to bring personalized content to drivers. GM's new OnStar system, which is called OnStar Go, will incorporate IBM's Watson artificial intelligence technology in an attempt to optimize the driver's time in the vehicle. But there's a catch – targeted offers and services. Thanks to IBM, OnStar Go will learn from drivers' behaviors and provide customized offers from GM's partners, which of right now include Exxon Mobil, iHeartRadio, Glympse, Parkopedia, and Mastercard. If your GM vehicle needs fuel, for instance, OnStar Go would point you towards an Exxon Mobil gas station.

General Motors said Wednesday it had reached a partnership to integrate tech giant IBM's artificial intelligence platform into its vehicle infotainment system, giving it the ability to make dining recommendations and order prescriptions. The Detroit-based automaker will pair IBM's Watson with its popular safety and connectivity system in more than 2 million 4G LTE-connected vehicles to create OnStar Go. The company said examples of how the pairing could bear fruit include getting dining recommendations, reminders about the need to buy household items and help retrieving prescriptions from the pharmacy. Among the first applications: Drivers will be able to use the "cognitive mobility platform" to locate ExxonMobil gas stations and pay on screen in the vehicle, GM said. They will also be able to use the OnStar Go system to get customized music playlists from mobile app iHeartRadio.

Machine learning (ML) is the motor that drives data science. Each ML method (also called an algorithm) takes in data, turns it over, and spits out an answer. ML algorithms do the part of data science that is the trickiest to explain and the most fun to work with. That's where the mathematical magic happens. ML algorithms can be grouped into families based on the type of question they answer.

Swarms of robo-spiders building 3D-printed spacecraft in orbit could be closer than you think. Aerospace firms have penned a deal which will see them develop and test robots capable of manufacturing components in space. The first steps of the Nasa-backed venture will see a machine launched into orbit to test if it can print and assemble trusses - the wire frame scaffold for supporting solar panels, antennae, sensors and all other parts of a working spacecraft. But the ultimate sci-fi vision of the project is a fleet of robots capable of printing huge structures, essentially knitting them together by 3D-printing them. Aerospace firms have penned a deal which will see them develop and test robots capable of manufacturing components in space.

Hal, the Terminator and Matrix movies, Ex-Machina, and I, Robot all trade on the beloved sci-fi meme of robotized AI and the public's collective psyche when it all goes wrong: fascination and fear. After all, if machines become faster, stronger, and brighter than humanity, why wouldn't they turn on their soft, meaty, and dim creators for either enslavement or a full-on purge? Let's face it – machines are getting smarter. AlphaGo's victory over Lee Sedol at Go came 10 years earlier than predicted, before in fact humanity had worked out the exact number of possible legal Go positions (a number the size of 10170 was completed on January 20, 2016, if you're interested). In 2014, a chatbot glorying in the name of Eugene Goodstead passed the Turing Test by fooling 33 percent of judges into believing it was a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy.

With long flowing hair and rosy red cheeks, you might do a double take when you see Jia Jia, a humanoid robot. Dubbed the'robot goddess', Jia Jia is being taught deep learning abilities, including understanding human language, and detecting facial expressions. The life-like cyborg was displayed at the 2016 World Robot Conference, where she pulled in huge crowds eager to see her abilities. Dubbed the'robot goddess', Jia Jia is being taught deep learning abilities, including understanding human language, and detecting facial expressions. It took a team three years to complete the robot, which can speak, show micro-expressions, move its lips and body, yet seems to hold its head in a submissive manner. The humanoid is programmed to recognize human/machine interaction, has autonomous position and navigation and offers services based on cloud technology.

A software platform that mines data and uses machine learning to boost household energy efficiency has taken out top honours at Energy Hack 2016 – a two-day energy and technology brainstorm held in Melbourne over the weekend. The event, hosted by the University of Melbourne's Energy Institute and upstart online electricity retailer Powershop, brought together 80 participants to form 20 teams to unlock ideas and stimulate entrepreneurship in the energy industry. Eight judges saw pitches for 13 creative technology ideas, ranging from an energy management chatbot, to a matchmaking service for renewable energy project owners and investors, to an app to educate primary school children, and an energy load matching algorithm. The winners, a team of PhD students called Planet Lovers, were chosen for their design of a platform that uses data mining techniques and machine learning to help consumers use energy more efficiently. "We believe that existing energy services don't use the full potential of big data to provide deep insights for consumers," said Planet Lovers co-founder Zahra Ghafoori.