Sounds like a self-help group for frustrated call center employees. Rather, it's a catch-all term for how companies manage customer interactions and data. It covers strategies involving everything from customer service to sales. Each incoming phone call or email may contain an overwhelming amount of data that a mere human in today's hyper-competitive, tech-intensive environment can't handle alone. Time to bring in some help with artificial intelligence.

Research on machine learning and artificial intelligence needs to be done in the open and not by military research labs, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google's parent Alphabet has said. Mr Schmidt was speaking at the RSA Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. Some 40,000 security professionals have been attending the event this week. Security threats discussed at hundreds of sessions include the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee in advance of the US presidential election last year, as well as threats to business, to government and to internet-connected devices. In conversation with journalist Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Mr Schmidt said machine learning capabilities, which allow computers to learn without being programmed, needed to be done in the open and not by military research labs.

Ethan Bloch was in junior high school in Baltimore during the dot-com boom. For his bar mitzvah -- the ceremony that welcomes 13-year-old Jewish boys into adulthood -- Bloch received $7,000 in cash. It was 1998 and, like so many amateur traders at the time, he plunged his wealth into the stock market, mostly software and telecommunication names like Lucent and Nortel. He quickly tripled his money. By age 15, it was all gone.

Ravi is a Senior Managing Consultant at IBM (Analytics Platform, North American Lab Services). Ravi is a Distinguished IT Specialist (Open Group certified) with more than 23 years of I/T experience. He has a Masters degree in Business Administration (MBA) from University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He had contributed to 7 other redbooks in the areas of Database, Analytics Accelerator and Information Management tools. IBM SPSS Modeler is a powerful analytic tool that supports all phases of data analytics process, including data preparation, model building, deployment, and model maintenance.

CBS station KFMB put in calls to the Navy and Air Force Monday night about the striking launch off the coast of Los Angeles, which was easily visible from the coast, but the military has said nothing about the launch. KFMB showed video of the apparent missile to former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Robert Ellsworth, who is also a former Deputy Secretary of Defense, to get his thoughts. It takes people\'s breath away,\" said Ellsworth, calling the projectile, \"a big missile\". Magnificent images were captured by the KCBS news helicopter in L.A. around sunset Monday evening. The location of the missile was about 35 miles out to sea, west of L.A. and north of Catalina Island.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has doubled down on his support of a universal basic income as a possible solution for unemployment caused by the rise of machines equipped with artificial intelligence taking over the workforce. A universal basic income would give a standard amount of money to every citizen to cover basic expenses like food and living costs each month. At the World Government Summit in Dubai on Monday, Musk told a crowd that universal basic income is'going to be necessary' in the future. Tesla CEO Elon Musk told a crowd at the World Government Summit in Dubai on Monday (pictured) that universal basic income is'going to be necessary' in the future Musk first joined the growing list of tech executives supporting the payment system in November when he spoke about the concept in an interview with CNBC. Former President Barack Obama warned Congress in March that by 2030, as many as 50 per cent of jobs could be replaced by robots, leaving millions of people without work.

NASA has launched a new website that will allow anyone to join the search for alien worlds. The site, called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, contains footage from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, which produced the most comprehensive survey of the entire sky at mid-infrared wavelengths to date. This means members of the public can participate in the potential discovery of planets and other objects at the edge of our solar system and in neighbouring interstellar space. NASA has launched a new website that will allow anyone to join the search for alien worlds. To search for undiscovered worlds, visit the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 website.

Vendors at this week's RSA cybersecurity show in San Francisco are pushing artificial intelligence and machine learning as the new way to detect the latest threats, but RSA CTO Zulfikar Ramzan is giving visitors a reality check. "I think it (the technology) moves the needle," he said on Wednesday. "The real open question to me is how much has that needle actually moved in practice?" It's not as much as vendors claim, Ramzan warned, but for customers it won't be easy cutting through the hype and marketing. The reality is that a lot of the technology now being pushed isn't necessarily new.

Phillip Hatch, who is 81 and testified before the panel via video, told lawmakers how he received a phone call one day at his home in Portland, Maine. The caller told him there was a mistake on his tax returns and federal marshals were coming to arrest him unless he paid the money. Worried, Hatch did as instructed and went to the local CVS to purchase iTunes cards. He then read the numbers on the backs of the cards to the caller. After four hours on the phone with the caller, Hatch was out $8,000.

It appears Mars is giving the universe the thumbs up. While investigating images of the Red Planet, astronomers spotted a dune field that resembles the shape of an approving hand gesture. The image was snapped by the Mars Odyssey orbiter, which was originally sent to search for evidence of water and volcanic activity on the Martian planet. While investigating images of the Red Planet, astronomers spotted a dune field that resembles the shape of a thumbs up. The name of the orbiter pays tribute to the science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, who is known for his 2001 book'Space Odyssey'.