A drone that hovers over Japanese employees and blares out music to force them to go home has been created by an office security and cleaning firm. The'T-Frend' buzzes over those trying to work late, blasting out the notes of'Auld Lang Syne', a Scottish tune used in Japan to announce that a store is closing. The bizarre machine is an offshoot of the country's efforts to reduce its notoriously long work hours. But experts have branded the idea'silly', claiming workers will simply take work home with them if they are forced to leave. A drone that hovers over employees and blares music to force them to go home has been created.

COMMANDING the plot lines of Hollywood films, covers of magazines and reams of newsprint, the contest between artificial intelligence (AI) and mankind draws much attention. Doomsayers warn that AI could eradicate jobs, break laws and start wars. The competition today is not between humans and machines but among the world's technology giants, which are investing feverishly to get a lead over each other in AI. An exponential increase in the availability of digital data, the force of computing power and the brilliance of algorithms has fuelled excitement about this formerly obscure corner of computer science. The West's largest tech firms, including Alphabet (Google's parent), Amazon, Apple, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft are investing huge sums to develop their AI capabilities, as are their counterparts in China. Although it is difficult to separate tech firms' investments in AI from other kinds, so far in 2017 (see chart 1) companies globally have completed around $21.3bn in mergers and acquisitions related to AI, according to PitchBook, a data provider, or around 26 times more than in 2015.

ZDNet's Sandra Vogel posted a formal review of the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, giving it an outstanding 9/10 rating. I've been spending quality time with this business-ready powerhouse and think that the AI found in the camera is worth discussing in a bit more detail. Huawei's partnership with Leica has resulted in some fantastic cameras and performance that is tough to beat. DxOMark awarded the Mate 10 Pro it second highest overall score, 97, and best still image score, 100. Keep in mind, these scores are not scaled to 100.

A quick scan of recent media headlines makes Artificial Intelligence (AI) sound like a worst-case scenario for human workers, but IT leaders certainly don't feel that way. In fact, a reduced human workforce was the least likely outcome of AI implementation according to these experts--only 45% believe it's …

Leading artificial–intelligence researchers gathered this week for the prestigious Neural Information Processing Systems conference have a new topic on their agenda.

What will be the impact of artificial intelligence on our industries? How safe is artificial intelligence and how will we live with it?

Check out the "Media, entertainment, and advertising" sessions at the Strata Data Conference in San Jose, March 5-8, 2018. Hurry--best price ends December 8. Subscribe to the O'Reilly Data Show Podcast to explore the opportunities and techniques driving big data, data science, and AI. Find us on Stitcher, TuneIn, iTunes, SoundCloud, RSS. In this episode of the Data Show, I spoke with Christine Hung, head of data solutions at Spotify. Prior to joining Spotify, she led data teams at the NY Times and at Apple (iTunes).

An automated army of pro-Donald J. Trump chatbots overwhelmed similar programs supporting Hillary Clinton five to one in the days leading up to the presidential election, according to a report published Thursday by researchers at Oxford University. The chatbots -- basic software programs with a bit of artificial intelligence and rudimentary communication skills -- would send messages on Twitter based on a topic, usually defined on the social network by a word preceded by a hashtag symbol, like #Clinton. Their purpose: to rant, confuse people on facts, or simply muddy discussions, said Philip N. Howard, a sociologist at the Oxford Internet Institute and one of the authors of the report. If you were looking for a real debate of the issues, you weren't going to find it with a chatbot. "And a lot of what they pass around is false news."

Every Christmas in the '80s, I wanted the same thing as many other pint-sized Star Wars fans: a robot sidekick to call my own. And not just any old droid would do: It had to be an R2-D2, specifically one that could drop its third leg down and cruise around the world at my side. Growing up in the Death Star era, our entire generation thought it had "The Force." But eventually we realized that moving objects with our thoughts and duping people with Jedi mind tricks were all in our imaginations. But droids--they were real, or at least they could be, one day.

People will hear the signature sound when they make a payment through a mobile device or at a cash register. The company is also launching a unique vibration and adding animation to its logo. The creation and selection process, which took a little over a year, involved focus groups, three specialist agencies and rounds of elimination to whittle down 200 different sounds. The new sound, vibration and animation are the culmination of months of global research spanning eight markets, including "neuro-research"--hooking people up to machines and studying their physical reactions to the various sound options. "We wanted to make sure we had the global view. Not just four-to-five uninformed people deciding which sound won the popularity contest," said Ms. Biggar.