DARPA has a new Grand Challenge underway, but it's not an automationBig Performance from Low-Power Hardware. Read more ... » moonshot like the selfWhen is CES 2016, what will be the best gadgets and how much are ticket prices?. Read more ... »-driving car challenges of the earlyHome IoT security could come from a glowing rock next year. The Defense Department's R&D wing wants to revolutionize something with a bit less sex appeal, but plenty of real-world applicationsNvidia Releases Machine Learning Products for Hyperscale Datacenters. The Spectrum Collaboration Challenge, which DARPA has cleverly abbreviated SC2, is about getting the billions and billions of wireless devices out there to play nice together rather than fight for space in the increasingly crowded RF landscape.

A user told Tay to tweet Trump propaganda; she did (though the tweet has now been deleted). Microsoft has apologized for the conduct of its racist, abusive machine learning chatbot, Tay. The bot, which was supposed to mimic conversation with a 19-year-old woman over Twitter, Kik, and GroupMe, was turned off less than 24 hours after going online because she started promoting Nazi ideology and harassing other Twitter users. The company appears to have been caught off-guard by her behavior. A similar bot, named XiaoIce, has been in operation in China since late 2014.

In much the same way businesses have been eager to use big data analytics to improve their operations, many companies have paid a lot of interest to the growing field of machine learning. Unlike some other tech trends that have come and gone, machine learning appears to be more than just some fad. The recent rise in the number of machine learning SaaS solutions launched in 2015 shows that this development has genuine staying power. Machine learning products are on the rise as well, and as organizations become more familiar with the concept, the demand will almost certainly increase. While much has been made over what affects machine learning can have on the world and businesses in particular, it's equally important to look at the impact it may have on IT departments.

IN 1996 IBM challenged Garry Kasparov to a game of chess against one of its computers, Deep Blue. Mr Kasparov, regarded as one of the best-ever players, won--but Deep Blue won the rematch. Two decades on, computers are much better than humans at chess but remain amateurs when it comes to the much tougher, ancient game of Go. Or at least, they did. Now a computer has managed to thrash a top-drawer human player.

DARPA has a new Grand Challenge underway, but it's not an automation moonshot like the self-driving car challenges of the early 2000s or the recent (and hilarious) Robotics Challenge. The Defense Department's R&D wing wants to revolutionize something with a bit less sex appeal, but plenty of real-world applications: radio frequency spectrum splitting. The Spectrum Collaboration Challenge, which DARPA has cleverly abbreviated SC2, is about getting the billions and billions of wireless devices out there to play nice together rather than fight for space in the increasingly crowded RF landscape. Seriously, check out that cool chart at the top (much bigger version at DARPA's site if you want to print out the poster – 56k warning): everything is spoken for right up to the border with microwave frequencies, and more gadgets are crowding into each one daily. "The current practice of assigning fixed frequencies for various uses irrespective of actual, moment-to-moment demand is simply too inefficient to keep up with actual demand and threatens to undermine wireless reliability," said William Chappell, director of DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office, in a DARPA press release.

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is expected to be the next big thing in technology, and many tech companies are investing heavily to make sure they don't lose out on opportunities as and when the technology becomes more mainstream in the coming years. While AI has already started intriguing and exciting industry insiders and tech enthusiasts alike, the increasing chatter surrounding the new technology has given rise to multiple concerns regarding job losses and science fiction-like scenarios of AI-enabled robots starting to exert control over humans, eventually taking over the planet, not unlike the dystopian sci-fi movie'I, Robot'. While Alphabet Chairman, Mr. Eric Schmidt, has already admitted that jobs may be at stake because of artificial intelligence, the founder and CEO of Facebook, Mr. Mark Zuckerberg, recently categorically denied that AI-enabled robots are about to take over the planet any time soon. Whatever be the case, most established technology companies are diving into AI-related research headlong, and while American tech giants like Google and Facebook are already burning the midnight oil on research related to artificial intelligence, South Korean conglomerate, Samsung, is also spending the big bucks by investing in a number of tech startups worldwide, in an effort to increase its presence in the sector. According to reports in the South Korean media, Samsung Venture Investment, which happens to be a subsidiary of the Samsung Group and hence, a sister concern for Samsung Electronics, has already invested a truckload of money in more than ten global tech companies, all of which are deeply involved in AI-related research.

Microsoft has apologized for the conduct of its racist, abusive machine learning chatbot, Tay. The bot, which was supposed to mimic conversation with a 19-year-old woman over Twitter, Kik, and GroupMe, was turned off less than 24 hours after going online because she started promoting Nazi ideology and harassing other Twitter users. The company appears to have been caught off-guard by her behavior. A similar bot, named XiaoIce, has been in operation in China since late 2014. XiaoIce has had more than 40 million conversations apparently without major incident.

Everyone in business wants to know what's going to happen in the future, and for some time now Ford has been investing in futurism, an evolving academic and professional discipline. The need for this was particularly evident after the Business Insider Transportation team in New York spent a few days at the New York Auto Show, asking everyone to predict was will happen in 2016 -- and beyond. The car business these days is all about change: automakers becoming "mobility providers," electric cars potentially displacing gas-powered vehicles, even autos driving themselves. Heck, even Apple may get in on the action. For nearly a decade, Sheryl Connelly has been Ford's manager of global consumer trends and futuring.

It took less than 24 hours. Microsoft had released its latest experiment with artificial intelligence: a Twitter bot named Tay that was designed to research and foster "conversational understanding." But Tay learned too much, much too young. And, as with so many things on the internet, the best of intentions went awry almost immediately. Tay was programmed to edit responses to her on Twitter in order to form new thoughts and sentences.

A fully loaded fireproof mini tankbot has proved size really doesn't matter. Called Uran-9, this mini tank bot stands just a few feet taller than a human and is fully loaded with a machine gun, missiles and a 30-millimeter cannon that fires 350 to 400 rounds per minute. A Russian defense organization created this unmanned vehicle to provide reconnaissance and fire support to infantry and counter-terror units. Uran-9 stands just a few feet taller than the average human being, but there is no need to be any bigger as the machine does not transport soldiers. This vehicle will assists infantry units and counter-terrorism groups by reaching places soldiers are unable to travel.