Things are about to get interesting. You've likely heard that Google's DeepMind recently beat the world's best Go player. But in far more practical and pervasive ways, artificial intelligence (AI) is creeping into every aspect of life--every screen you view, every search, every purchase, and every customer service contact. It's the confluence of several technologies--Moore's law made storage, computing, and access devices almost free. This Venn diagram illustrates how deep learning is a subset of AI and how, when combined with big data, can inform enabling technologies in many sectors.

Consider, for a moment, the Class of 2035. Their future is just showing up all over the place -- but differently than expected. In fact, 117 years ago, roughly 72 million people were living in the United States. There were also roughly 21 million horses at the time. If the rate of growth in the horse population had kept up with that of the human population, there would be approximately 63 million horses in the United States today -- or as many horses as people in the states of California and Texas combined. Instead, the current horse population looks a lot more like the population of the fine state of Utah, which boasts a population of approximately 3 million horses.

The role of the chief information officer will change significantly in the next few years, driven by the growing adoption of artificial intelligence and by demands from cybersecurity. IT leaders are rapidly scaling their digital businesses, making the remainder of this year and 2018 a defining moment for CIOs that don't want to be left behind, according to research firm Gartner Inc.

The Singularity is a term you'll find in science and in science fiction. It was coined by mathematician John von Neumann to define a theoretical moment when the artificial intelligence of computers surpasses the capacity of the human brain. The term is borrowed from physics and quantum mechanics, where the term gravitational singularity is used in the study of black holes. These events are all considered singular because we are unable to predict what happens next; the disruptive degree of change associated with the event is simply too great for our current body of knowledge. While we are far from attaining the goal of artificial intelligence, there was a brief flurry of excitement recently when a computer passed the Turing Test, to mixed reviews.

The National Weather Service has released its first winter weather predictions for the approaching season in the United States. But if the wildcard La Niña develops, it might shake some things up. The chances that it will develop are strong too, observations as well as computer models suggest that La Niña is likely to develop. If it does develop, Mike Halpert, the deputy director of the Climate prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts that it will be "weak and potentially short-lived." Colder than normal conditions in the Pacific Ocean near the equator is what is commonly referred to as La Niña.

Astronauts went spacewalking Friday to provide some necessary focus to the International Space Station's robot arm. The main job for commander Randy Bresnik and teacher-turned-astronaut Joe Acaba was to replace a blurry camera on the new robotic hand that was installed during a spacewalk two weeks ago. The two men were supposed to go spacewalking earlier this week, but NASA needed extra time to rustle up the repair plan. Astronauts went spacewalking Friday to provide some necessary focus to the International Space Station's robot arm. The Deep Space Gateway will orbit Earth and the moon and will open up opportunities for future exploration of deep space, as well as a return to the moon and missions to Mars.

The Union ministry of electronics and information technology has set up an internal committee to advise the government on a policy on artificial intelligence (AI). Top sources said that the expert committee will advise the IT ministry on the most apt technologies for India. The government's main focus is to reduce cyber attacks with AI. The main policy will be drawn up once the committee gives its report. Sources said that the committee is expected to give its report soon.

Amidst the robocar hype, it's easy to forget that for all their powers, computers are still lousy drivers compared to humans. This week, Eric Adams introduced us to the people working to interpret hominid behavior for driving robots. Turns out perception is a remarkable, variegated thing, and cars need to learn how to do all the cool stuff we the fleshy can before performing seamlessly on the road. The same goes for companies. Google parent company Alphabet announced this week it will construct a techified neighborhood in Toronto.

The Confederation of British Industry is calling on the Government to establish a joint commission tasked with examining the impact of Artificial Intelligence on people and jobs across all sectors of the UK economy. Based on research it conducted into the way that technology is changing the way we live and work, the CBI said on Friday that it had identified three technologies -- AI, Blockchain and the Internet of Things – that are set to move from the fringes to the mainstream within the next five years. It also found, however, that only a third of businesses currently have the skills and capabilities needed to adopt AI technologies, and that more therefore needs to be done to help prepare those companies for the future. The aim of the commission, the CBI said, would be to examine the impact of AI on people and jobs, and to subsequently set out plans for action that will "raise productivity, spread prosperity and open up new paths to economic growth". "The UK must lead the way in adopting these technologies but we must also prepare for their impacts," said Josh Hardie, deputy director-general of the CBI.

On May 18th, 2012, attorneys for Oracle and Google were battling over nine lines of code in a hearing before Judge William H. Alsup of the northern district of California. The first jury trial in Oracle v. Google, the fight over whether Google had hijacked code from Oracle for its Android system, was wrapping up. The argument centered on a function called rangeCheck. Of all the lines of code that Oracle had tested -- 15 million in total -- these were the only ones that were "literally" copied. Every keystroke, a perfect duplicate. It was in Oracle's interest to play up the significance of rangeCheck as much as possible, and David Boies, Oracle's lawyer, began to argue that Google had copied rangeCheck so that it could take Android to market more quickly. Judge Alsup was not buying it. "I couldn't have told you the first thing about Java before this trial," said the judge. "But, I have done and still do a lot of programming myself in other languages. I have written blocks of code like ...