Logan Marshall-Green stars in the upcoming ultra-violent sci-fi/horror/action film, Upgrade, directed by Australia's own Leigh Whannell. The film follows Marshall-Green's quadriplegic character Grey, as he's upgraded with a new form of artificial intelligence chip that restores all of his former functions – as well as turning him into a killing machine. He then uses his newfound gifts to seek revenge on the men that killed his wife. Here is another science-fiction premise that may have some actual future plausibility, with a mix of gory violence to spice up the entertainment factor. Judging by this trailer, Whannell looks to have hit the mark. While I think the red band trailer below may be revealing too much awesome action already, it does do plenty to get action/sci-fi/horror fans excited.

We live in an age when regular people of modest incomes have access to artificial intelligence that can automate their responses and minimize the amount of time they spend talking to boring people about boring things. But billionaire and chairman of the company that oversees CBS and Viacom Sumner Redstone had to do the normals one better. According to the Wall Street Journal, lately Redstone, who is 94 and in ill health, has taken to communicating via an iPad outfitted with clips of him saying "yes," "no," and "fuck you." Questions have surfaced in recent years about Mr. Redstone's mental standing. To help him communicate, some people who recently have met with him say that he has an iPad loaded with snippets of his voice, connected to buttons for words or phrases including "yes," "no" and "f-- you."

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has issued a list targeting 1,300 Chinese products, including industrial robots and telecommunications equipment. But the proposed tariffs wouldn't take effect before a public comment period ends May 11.

Cambridge AI decision making platform, PROWLER.io, will be centre stage in California in May as the award-winning startup holds a provocative thought leaders' summit. Business Weekly's newly crowned Startup of the Year is bringing together a cohort of great minds to push the frontiers of AI thinking for a one-day event in Palo Alto on May 9. Founder and CEO Vishal Chatrath says it will be the first of many such think tanks talking about "AI taking decisions – leaving today's discussions about perception and classification in our wake." Chaired by David Rowan, editor-at-large of WIRED magazine, the event is designed, in Chatrath's words, "to share bold provocations on the future of AI." Guests will be drawn from academia, big tech, government, complexity theory, finance, gaming, quantum, safety tech and regulation. Speakers will give a 15 minute talk, ending with "a bold provocation around decision making and AI. "We are deliberately curating a wide-ranging agenda for the first of an annual event series for PROWLER.io," said Chatrath.

The space race was in full swing. For the first time, a space probe had recently landed on another planet (Venus). And I was eagerly studying everything I could to do with space. Then on April 2, 1968 (May 15 in the UK), the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey was released--and I was keen to see it. So in the early summer of 1968 there I was, the first time I'd ever been in an actual cinema (yes, it was called that in the UK). I'd been dropped off for a matinee, and was pretty much the only person in the theater. And to this day, I remember sitting in a plush seat and eagerly waiting for the curtain to go up, and the movie to begin. It started with an impressive extraterrestrial sunrise. But then what was going on? Those were landscapes, and animals. I was confused, and frankly a little bored. But just when I was getting concerned, there was a bone thrown in the air that morphed into a spacecraft, and pretty soon there was a rousing waltz--and a big space station turning majestically on the screen. The next two hours had a big effect on me. It wasn't really the spacecraft (I'd seen plenty of them in books by then, and in fact made many of my own concept designs). But what was new and exciting for me in the movie was the whole atmosphere of a world full of technology--and the notion of what might be possible there, with all those bright screens doing things, and, yes, computers driving it all. It would be another year before I saw my first actual computer in real life. But those two hours in 1968 watching 2001 defined an image of what the computational future could be like, that I carried around for years. I think it was during the intermission to the movie that some seller of refreshments--perhaps charmed by a solitary kid so earnestly pondering the movie--gave me a "cinema program" about the movie. Half a century later I still have that program, complete with a food stain, and faded writing from my 8-year-old self, recording (with some misspelling) where and when I saw the movie. A lot has happened in the past 50 years, particularly in technology, and it's an interesting experience for me to watch 2001 again--and compare what it predicted with what's actually happened. Of course, some of what's actually been built over the past 50 years has been done by people like me, who were influenced in larger or smaller ways by 2001. When Wolfram Alpha was launched in 2009--showing some distinctly HAL-like characteristics--we paid a little homage to 2001 in our failure message (needless to say, one piece of notable feedback we got at the beginning was someone asking: "How did you know my name was Dave?!"). One very obvious prediction of 2001 that hasn't panned out, at least yet, is routine, luxurious space travel. But like many other things in the movie, it doesn't feel like what was predicted was off track; it's just that--50 years later--we still haven't got there yet. Well, they have lots of flat-screen displays, just like real computers today.

The race for making perfect hardware to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) applications is heating up and many companies are jumping in with their products and solutions. Of the three key parts of hardware infrastructure compute, storage, and networking compute has made significant progress in the last couple of years. The other two areas, storage and networking, are lagging behind and have yet to see major innovations pertaining to AI applications. Currently, the industry is going with the fastest available option and promoting that as a solution for deep learning. Over time, more research and development (RandD) will go into these areas and new products will emerge that are designed specifically for AI.The distributed computing infrastructure that allows AI applications to run on multiple machines is in its infancy.

Adobe is mixing the robust tools of its professional video applications with the automation of artificial intelligence. Ahead of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show next week, the company announced several new features for both video and audio software, including Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, and Character Animator. Creative Cloud members have access to the updates today. A major goal across the board was to speed up workflows, as video creatives are continually asked to deliver content in more formats across more devices, and further improve how all the Creative Cloud programs talk to each other. Adobe Sensei, the software company's AI platform, powers two new Premiere Pro tools designed to speed up the editing process by automatically matching colors between separate clips and optimizing the blend of dialog with other audio tracks.

Between Timberland and Walgreens, take elevators to Level 4 and walk across the Dome. Take elevators to Level 5 and walk across movie theater lobby. Escalators to Level 4 will take you to Bespoke Events on the left.

Right in time for NAB, Adobe today announced the latest updates to its Premiere CC and After Effects CC video editing and motion graphics tools. The general theme of this release is the introduction of two new AI-powered tools that will make the life of editors easier, as well as a variety of small updates that all result in an improved overall workflow. "The demands and pace of video content creation are reaching levels we've never seen before. The time pressure on video professionals means the need for powerful and efficient creative tools has never been greater," said Steven Warner, vice president of digital video and audio at Adobe. "Adobe video apps like Premiere Pro and After Effects give them that power which, combined with the services available in Creative Cloud, provides broadcasters, media companies, filmmakers and YouTubers a complete ecosystem to bring their stories to screen faster than ever."

Fortnite Battle Royale has added a message to its mobile app telling kids not to play in school. The game was released on mobile just a few weeks ago but some teachers say it's distracting their students. One teacher posted on the game's Reddit thread, asking the game's developers if they could "mess with" his students. The message "Mr Hillman says stop playing in class" now features on a loading screen in the app. In a now deleted Reddit post Mr Hillman wrote: "First, I love your game. My friends from college and I play pretty much every night. "One problem, since mobile came out my students won't stop playing in class.