Leisure & Entertainment

US actor and businessman Ashton Kutcher came to the defense of insurance tech company Lemonade, founded by Israeli entrepreneurs, after the largest American insurance company, State Farm Insurance, rolled out an ad mocking the use of bots and artificial intelligence for insurance. Lemonade has been reshaping the insurance market ever since it was created in 2015 by entrepreneurs Shai Winninger, a co-founder of Fiverr.com, and Daniel Schreiber, former president of Powermat. The company uses behavioral economics, leveraging artificial intelligence and chatbots to deliver renters and homeowners insurance policies and handle claims for users in 16 states. Kutcher's Sound Ventures is invested in Lemonade, which has raised some $180 million in venture capital since its founding. State Farm published an ad on YouTube last week with the caption: "Nothing compares to an actual human being helping out whenever you need. Plus, humans won't start crying weird AI tears all over your car."

The random-forest technique has emerged in recent years as a powerful way to analyze large data sets while avoiding some of the pitfalls of other data-mining methods. It is based on the idea that some future event can be determined by a decision tree in which an outcome is calculated at each branch by reference to a set of training data. However, decision trees suffer from a well-known problem. In the latter stages of the branching process, decisions can become severely distorted by training data that is sparse and prone to huge variation at this kind of resolution, a problem known as overfitting. The random-forest approach is different.

The major trend observed across industry and the public sector is artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) for automation. This, in turn, plays a major part in any digital transformation journey. The trend grew out of the Bay Area, providing a customer-centric view of data and often involved using data as part of the product or service. This consumer- or customer-centric model assumes data enrichment with data from multiple sources. However, fundamentally, it divides the data into two main areas.

Some of the best known examples of artificial intelligence are Siri and Alexa, which listen to human speech, recognize words, perform searches and translate the text results back into speech. But these and other AI technologies raise important issues like personal privacy rights and whether machines can ever make fair decisions. As Congress considers whether to make laws governing how AI systems function in society, a congressional committee has highlighted concerns around the types of AI algorithms that perform specific – if complex – tasks. Often called "narrow AI," these devices' capabilities are distinct from the still-hypothetical general AI machines, whose behavior would be virtually indistinguishable from human activity – more like the "Star Wars" robots R2-D2, BB-8 and C-3PO. Other examples of narrow AI include AlphaGo, a computer program that recently beat a human at the game of Go, and a medical device called OsteoDetect, which uses AI to help doctors identify wrist fractures.

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a research discipline for over 60 years, it has only recently blossomed and permeated consumer and business technology and applications. The history of AI shows cycles of wild predictions and enthusiasm, followed by disillusionment when predictions about its utility were foiled by the difficult realities. AI has always been the subject of great hope and great hype – recognizing its real potential often requires understanding its weaknesses. After defining AI in practical terms, we cover some of the ways it can be most effectively used in nonprofit organizations. Researchers in AI joke that once an application of AI works, it no longer is considered AI.

When thinking back to the era of ancient civilisations, it's unlikely you'd consider insurance and artificial intelligence staples of the time. Rather, they fit much better into the modern day, where technological innovation goes hand-in-hand with better business practices. Yet, the idea of giving artificial beings a form of mind goes back to antiquity, seen in folklore, myths and stories. As Pamela McCorduck, a writer and novelist on artificial intelligence, wrote, AI stemmed from "an ancient wish to forge the gods" – making it just a bit older than Google, really. Civilisations have long-held beliefs and folklore surrounding bringing inanimate objects to life in Greek, Chinese and Jewish folklore, from Pygmalion's Galatea, an ivory sculpture brought to life to be his wife, to rabbinic golems and a lifelike robot performing to King Mu of Zhou.

Nearly halfway into the NFL season, the Dallas Cowboys are 3–3 and sit 20th out of 32 on ESPN's power ranking index, which gives them a less than 50–50 shot at making the playoffs. So fans of America's Team don't have a whole lot to get excited about. Unless, that is, they like riding in robot cars. Today, startup Drive.ai is launching a self-driving car service in Arlington, Texas, which sits halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth and is home to the Cowboys' AT&T Stadium. The service will run several routes in multiple parts of the city, bustling to and from big venues including that stadium, Globe Life Park (where baseball's Texas Rangers play), and the Arlington Convention Center.

This article was written by a human being who click-clacked on a keyboard until she finished a draft and sent it to an editor. But more and more, computers are taking over. In fact, the Associated Press has used "automation technology" to cover college sports since 2015. The idea isn't new--humans have obsessed over artificial intelligence (AI) since at least the 18th century, when the "Mechanical Turk" hoax led many to believe that a machine could play chess against a person and win. About 250 years later, a machine can play chess against a person and win--every time.

The world's largest plane, Stratolaunch, has a completed a key taxi test ahead of taking to the skies for the first time. The gigantic plane, which is the vision of late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is believed to be close to its first flight after reaching a record-breaking 90mph during medium-speed taxi testing at the Mojave Air & Space Port. Allen died Monday in Seattle from complications of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, aged 65. The massive plane has a wingspan longer than a football field and comes equipped with two cockpits, 28 wheels and six engines normally used to power 747 jumbo jets. Eventually it will be used to transport rockets carrying satellites and even a newly revealed manned space plane into the Earth's upper atmosphere, where they will blast off into space.

At 25, Ms Annabelle Kwok has already made a name for herself. Two years ago, she made waves when she co-founded SmartCow, an artificial intelligence (AI) company that came up with an electronic board that could run various AI software. Last year, Ms Kwok left SmartCow and started NeuralBay, a company that focuses on detection and recognition software related to humans, objects and text, and offers AI-driven solutions for multinational corporations. Her clients include an aviation corporation, an automation industry company and chocolate company Ferrero. Ms Kwok traces her interest in tech to a box of Lego bricks with electric cables called Lego Mindstorms, which her parents, who work in banking, bought for her when she was in primary school.