Cyberspace is an increasingly hostile environment. In 2015, a PwC study of U.S. organizations found that 79 percent of respondents had detected a security incident during the year. Today, malicious hackers continue to wage on business networks and systems. Their aim - to extract data to sell on the black market. Making use of the latest technology, these criminals exert huge pressure on businesses to defend its assets.

Earlier today, in San Francisco, we provided an update on how Microsoft is helping to democratize Artificial Intelligence (AI) by making it accessible to everyone and every organization. Today's focus was on conversational computing, which combines the power of natural language with advanced machine intelligence to help people engage with technology in more natural and personal ways. As we talk to businesses and governments who are looking to take advantage of these new capabilities, we see significant value being created when leading organizations start using intelligent bots to transform business processes such as customer services, helpdesks, and even factory floor operations. One example is at Rockwell Automation, which provides industrial automation and information solutions to customers in more than 80 countries. Their customers wanted access to information in their production lines in faster and more innovative ways, and so, with that objective in mind, Rockwell Automation used the Bot Framework and Cognitive Services in Cortana Intelligence to build Shelby, a bot that monitors production more efficiently and lets managers know the status of their operations through more natural forms of interaction.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp Says Going Public Is'A Possibility' When we examine and value companies, we use a lens that is more than five hundred years old. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), which dates back to a Venetian Friar who lived in 1500 AD, has long been the determinant of what we how society measures value. According to this now global standard, things and money are valuable assets. People and ideas, and their development, are expenses. This means that investments such as education, healthcare, training, and research actually eat away at value creation.

CEO Mary Barra also announced Thursday that GM will build an unspecified number of fully autonomous Bolts on the assembly line where regular Bolts are made, in order to gain expertise in building autonomous vehicles. The Bolt, which went on sale in California and Oregon this week, can go 238 miles on a single charge and costs about $30,000 when a $7,500 federal tax credit is factored in. Autonomous Bolts, which have distinctive spinning laser towers on their roofs, will come off the assembly line in Orion Township north of Detroit starting next year.

Amazon announced their latest innovation, Go. Think of Go as a futuristic grocery store. Using sensors, artificial intelligence and computer vision, Amazon is reinventing the shopping experience that we've all grown accustomed to for the last seventy years. If you want to buy an item, just grab it from the shelf, and then Amazon will automatically add the item to your virtual shopping cart. When you walk out of the store, Amazon will magically charge you for that item.

The year of AI: Major developments in 2016 could pave the way for a future where'intelligent machines are omnipresent in our daily lives' Artificial intelligence or AI is getting a foothold in people's homes, starting with the Amazon devices like its Echo speaker (pictured) which links to a personal assistant'Alexa' to answer questions and control connected devices such as appliances or light bulbs Donald Trump claims torture ¿works¿ ¿ but what does the... South Korea comes a step closer to LIMITLESS energy:... Facebook Messenger launches an in-app camera and... The shoes that will tell you if you're too tired to run:... Donald Trump claims torture ¿works¿ ¿ but what does the... South Korea comes a step closer to LIMITLESS energy:... Facebook Messenger launches an in-app camera and... The shoes that will tell you if you're too tired to run:... Analyst Carolina Milanesi of the research firm Creative Strategies said that '2016 was the year about raising awareness, and exposing ...

Last year's outlook for 2016 suggested that you keep your eye on the growing consumer control, the questions around AI and the excitement of virtual reality applications. The landscape has changed -- a lot. For the coming year, trends show a growing emphasis on a shifting local and global identity, the impact of intersectionality, and the real threat of cyber spying. As we enter 2017 are we more connected globally or not? A few years ago (or maybe just a month or two back?) globalism seemed like an inevitability.

What will a future driven by technological change look like? Will it be like Star Wars, dominated by greed and economic gain? A world where we've advanced technologically, but not as a society? Or will our future look more like Star Trek? Where material problems have been solved, and society guides its citizens towards reaching their full potential? In Star Trek, technology is used primarily for learning and discovering.

While the US Navy's new state-of-the-art USS Zumwalt destroyer struggles to remain functional, the service branch's R&D department has been busy investigating cutting-edge tech at a much smaller scale. Back in October, the Office of Naval Research (OCR) demonstrated the harbor defense capabilities of a group of prototype small autonomous boats, aka "swarmbots," in Chesapeake Bay. The ONR used four rigid hull inflatable boats (RHIB) -- think of the larger soldier-ferrying Zodiacs -- to show off the drone squad's ability to patrol, investigate approaching unknown crafts and relay that information back to a human supervisor. Using autonomous vehicles for dull yet important tasks such as harbor defense is cheaper than using human crews, especially since some of the drone tech used in the demo is off-the-shelf. The ONR's autonomous system, Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing (CARACaS), was first demonstrated in RHIBs back in 2014, according to the department's press release.

Though artificial intelligence experts may cringe at the portrayals of humanlike AI in science fiction, some researchers are nudging us closer to those visions. "I think it's useful that your user interface not only understand your emotions, your personality, your tone, your motivations, but that it also have a set of emotions, personality, motivations," says Rob High, the CTO of IBM Watson. "I think that makes it more natural for us." Last month, High's company unveiled Project Intu, an experimental platform that allows developers the ability to build internet of things devices using its artificial intelligence services, like Conversation, Language and Visual Recognition. Someday, the system promises to let programmers create a staple character of sci-fi: the gregarious, hyper-connected AI like J.A.R.V.I.S. of Iron Man, KITT of Knight Rider, or Star Wars' C3PO.