We've met with hundreds of Fortune 500/ Global 2000 companies, startups, and government agencies asking: "How do I get started with artificial intelligence?" While there are many excellent tutorials out there that show how to use TensorFlow or the beautiful math behind neural network training, we couldn't find a broad overview -- a "Chapter 0", if you will -- for product managers, line of business leaders, strategists, policymakers, non-AI developers to read first before moving on to more technical materials. So building on our popular primer on artificial intelligence, today we've launched a microsite to help newcomers -- both non-technical and technical -- begin exploring what's possible with AI. The site is designed as a resource for anyone asking the two questions above, complete with examples and sample code to help get started; no computer science degree required! Ultimately, it's aimed at people who aren't only studying AI in universities or labs and just want to get their hands and heads around it as they explore options for their own companies. Along those lines, I've also published a new presentation about the promise of AI, beyond the hype.

The market research and insight industry will soon undergo a public test of its potency. In two weeks it will predict what it believes will be the outcome of the general election. Already under fire for failing to predict the outcomes of both the UK referendum and the US presidential election, you'd forgive top polling organisations for being nervous. The general election, however, is not the biggest challenge facing the market research industry. Insiders say market research agencies are slowly waking up to a much greater threat.

In the late 1950s, Sandia Laboratory was looking for a way to handle radioactive materials without putting humans in danger. The answer was the Mobot--short for either "remote robot" or "mobile robot"--a remotely operated system designed by Hughes Aircraft Co. in 1959 that offered a unique and effective combination of strength and dexterity. A Sandia press release announcing the robot called it a "Replacement for Man," but in fact the robot had no autonomy; it was teleoperated by a human sitting in front of a massive control console connected to the robot by a 60-meter cable. The Mark I version of the Mobot had a pair of meter-long hydraulically actuated arms capable of lifting up to 68 kilograms (150 pounds), along with adjustable-strength grippers. The entire system was mounted on a forklift.

The silence was shredded by the rat-tat-tat eruptions of a single gun. More soldiers fired, their volleys coalescing into the grim music of war -- a sustained snare drum roll soon interrupted by the bass thumps of the 50-caliber machine gun. All the barrels pointed at a speck tracing a line in the sky over west Mosul. Their target was yet another drone dispatched by Islamic State. In the seven months of the Iraqi government's drive to recapture Mosul from the jihadists, small drones have become a signature tactic of the group: Their appearance on the horizon, loaded with a camera, signals that punishing mortar barrages will soon be on the way.

Instead of flying cars, get ready for fleets of small "air taxis" zipping from hub to hub within a region, delivering passengers to their destinations. The company wants a world where you take an Uber to one of its flight hubs, hop into a eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) craft and be whisked to another hub on the other side of town. That model would be unsustainable if a city were to add multiple hubs and potentially hundreds of air taxis. "We think it's kind of funny when people call us a flying car -- if Vahana is a flying car then so is a helicopter!"

This weekend marks the unofficial beginning of summer. That means the time has come for taking hikes, playing frisbee, and spending long hours in a pool near you. But for a certain class of folks--the species known as "bookworm"--summer is the ideal time to practice their page-turning. But with so many new tomes hitting shelves, it's hard to know where to start. Below are some of our favorite books of 2017.

It is my pleasure to be invited here to give this keynote speech about a topic I happen to be particularly passionate about. Today's conference is also the two-month anniversary of the formation of the Data Analytics Group, or DAG for short. Hence a timely opportunity for us to share, from the onset, our approach – the direction in which we are heading – and what it means to us, in putting data science and machine learning in practice. We will take a broader perspective on this topic. We are now starting to put in place the necessary tools, infrastructure and skillsets to harness the power of data science to unlock insights, sharpen surveillance of risks, enhance regulatory compliance and transform the way we do work.

It's going to take a lot of humans to create the kind of artificial intelligence that could replace truckers, financial analysts, and customer service representatives with robots. U.S. employers will spend more than $650 million on annual salaries for 10,000 jobs in AI this year, according to a study from career and hiring data firm Paysa. The 2-year-old firm touts itself as the only platform to use AI to deliver personalized job and salary recommendations. It was founded by Chris Bolte, Zachary Poley, Nikhil Raj and Patrick Harrington -- all formerly of Walmart Labs and Walmart's engineering and product teams. The firm uses millions of data points like job openings, resumes, and compensation to determine the market value of individual skills.

The Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) and AI start-up BenevolentAI have announced a potentially major breakthrough in the treatment of motor neuron disease, thanks to artificial intelligence. The groundbreaking development for the disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), came about as scientists from SITraN assessed the efficacy of a drug candidate proposed by BenevolentAI's AI technology. The scientists, led by Dr. Richard Mead and Dr. Laura Ferraiuolo, found there are significant and reproducible indications that the drug prevents the death of motor neurones in patient cell models, and delayed the onset of the disease in the gold standard model of ALS. SITraN is now moving to the next phase of its research, advancing the existing study and assessing the suitability and potential for clinical development. It expects to publish an abstract at the Motor Neurone Disease Association 28th International Symposium in Boston in December.

Clever computers that learn on the job could recast Britain's job market - for better or worse. What are the parties vying for power in the general election saying on the subject? Twenty-nine-year-old Lee Hayhow is the third generation of his family to work as a lorry driver, following his father and grandfather. He is proud of his job. "I've always enjoyed lorries and driving. I trained as a professional driver. I always do it to the best of my ability. He estimates it costs £3,000 to train as a heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) driver. Mr Hayhow's employer, O'Donovan Waste Disposal, paid for this, but not all firms do, he says. And he would be delighted to see the next generation of Hayhows - his two young daughters - follow his career path. But by then, the decision may not be theirs to take. Lorry driving, like many other jobs that help power the British economy, could be facing a huge shake-up. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) - a field of computer science in which machines are taught to carry out tasks that require human traits of thought or intelligence - have led some to predict a knock-on catastrophe for jobs. Nowhere is the exponential growth of AI more apparent than in the race towards self-driving vehicles. There have been stark warnings about its impact on the jobs market as computer programs are honed to perform a number of roles, including call centre work, banking and paralegal responsibilities, retail and catering tasks, and journalism. Up to 46% of jobs in Scotland could be at risk within the next decade, the Institute for Public Policy Research Scotland recently claimed. Accountancy firm PwC predicted 30% of existing jobs in the UK could be "at high risk of automation" by the 2030s. Calum Chace, author of Surviving AI and the Economic Singularity, foresees "quite a lot" of unemployment caused by the takeover of technology "in a decade and a lot in two decades". "The industrial revolution was mechanisation and humans had something else to offer - cognitive skills.