There was lots to get excited about this evening thanks to the launch of the Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), Cambridge University's new 10m initiative to tackle the big questions around the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). The Cambridge cosmologist Professor Stephen Hawking was guest of honour and took the floor to have his say. He has been outspoken about the potential benefits- and dangers- of AI. Speaking ahead of the event, he said: "The rise of powerful AI will be either the best or the worst thing to ever happen to humanity. We do not yet know which. "The research done by this centre will be crucial to the future of civilisation and of our species." Prof Hawking addressed assembled guests and dignitaries in Cambridge, at the newly-refurbished David Attenborough Building. He said: "We spend a great deal of time studying history, which let's face it, is the history of stupidity.

They're practically everywhere, and it's no wonder: according to some analysts, the fitness tracker market is one poised to reach 19 billion in 2018. But some companies are positioned better than others. On Wednesday, one of the arguable forerunners, Moov, took the wraps off the Moov HR, an activity tracker that measures heart rate with pinpoint accuracy. The Moov HR builds on the foundation of the startup's previous sensor, the Moov Now, which garnered praise for its innovative approach to fitness. Rather than simply measuring the number of steps you've taken, the calories you've burned, and distance you've walked, it fed that data into an artificial intelligence that dynamically guided you through goal-oriented workouts.

The logo of Microsoft is pictured in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, August 8, 2016. New York: In a major breakthrough in the field of speech recognition, Microsoft researchers have created a technology that accurately recognises the words in a conversation like humans do. The team from Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and Research reported a speech recognition system that makes the same or fewer errors than professional transcriptionists. The researchers reported a word error rate (WER) of 5.9 percent, down from the 6.3 percent WER the team reported just last month. The 5.9 percent error rate is about equal to that of people who were asked to transcribe the same conversation, and it's the lowest ever recorded against the industry standard "Switchboard" speech recognition task.

In 360 BC, Plato wrote, "Whatever comes into existence, always comes as a whole." In 2016, scientists are using the same philosophy to develop a new automation model for robotic systems. "No phenomenon exists entirely alone. Each is a part of other phenomena," wrote Hua Chen, an associate professor at Hohai University, Chanzhou Campus, with YangQuan Chen, a professor at the School of Engineering, University of California, Merced. In a paper published in IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica (JAS), Chen and Chen proposed a new model for designing control systems used in automation.

Artificial intelligence is a "momentous development," said George Lee, co-chairman of the global technology, media and telecom group at Goldman Sachs. "As awesome as the internet has been, it will be best remembered as really the predicate for machine learning," said Lee, who's also chief information officer of Goldman's investment banking division. He appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Alley" on Wednesday from Goldman's Builders Innovators Summit in Santa Barbara, California. The internet enabled computing scale in a network and serves as a way to "collect data that's used to train all these algorithms," Lee said, predicting machine learning will "change our world … and even the course of our species in ways that are hard to predict today." Analyzing data is "one of the magic pieces" of machine learning, he said.

A new research centre opened its doors Wednesday at Britain's Cambridge University to look at the implications--good and bad--of artificial intelligence. Professor Stephen Hawking, who was due to speak at the centre's launch later on Wednesday, said: "The rise of powerful AI will be either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity. "We do not yet know which. The research done by this centre will be crucial to the future of our civilisation and of our species," he said. Making sure AI is used to benefit humanity is the express aim of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), funded by a 10 million (11.2 million-euro, 12.3-million) grant from the Leverhulme Trust. A collaboration between the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London, and Berkeley, California, the CFI will see researchers from multiple disciplines work with industry representatives and policymakers on projects ranging from regulation of autonomous weapons to the implications of AI for democracy. Its practical applications can help us to tackle important social problems, as well as easing many tasks in everyday life," said Margaret Boden, a professor of cognitive sciences and consultant to the CFI.

At last week's White House Frontiers Conference, President Obama outlined a vision for the development of AI: A plan that involves the collaboration of the US government. The event, co-hosted by the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, was the first of its kind. Earlier that week, the White House had unveiled a report--Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence--which outlined how the government can be involved in researching, developing, and regulating future technologies. So how well does the American president understand AI? And how powerful will these policies be?

On Election Day, journalists at The Washington Post will get an assist from their non-human counterparts. The newspaper announced Wednesday morning that it will use automation to cover 500 races. The automation technology, Heliograf, was first used by The Post to cover the Rio Olympics and will be repurposed to provide "up-to-date reporting, analysis and results for nearly 500 races." In addition, the Post will surface stories based on the readers' location. In August, Washington Post Director of Strategic Initiatives told Poynter that Heliograf wasn't aimed at replacing human reporters -- rather, it's intended to be a complementary service aimed at freeing up reporters and editors to cover more nuanced stories.

It's another step in the march toward advice that erodes investors' needs for human help: A robo adviser focused on serving the high-net-worth client, powered by artificial intelligence and designed to automate their specific tax management concerns. Meeting the complicated needs of the wealthy requires a deep knowledge of tax rules and regulations says Hedgeable CEO Mike Kane. "Technology and AI systems can interpret and learn from these rules better than humans can, without our emotional biases." Doubling down on its embrace of Asian themes, Hedgeable's newest offering in its robo platform is a feature called'Tax Samurai,' run by an AI bot called'Katana.' For 30 basis points, it will work for client accounts with a minimum of 1 million to analyze their securities, aggregate all of their financial data, create tax efficient transfers, apply automated downside protection on any current holdings, and perform tax efficient trading and tax-loss harvesting.

How will AI shape the average North American city by 2030? A panel of experts assembled as part of a century-long study into the impact of AI thinks its effects will be profound. The One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence is the brainchild of Eric Horvitz, a computer scientist, former president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and managing director of Microsoft Research's main Redmond lab. Every five years a panel of experts will assess the current state of AI and its future directions. The first panel, comprised of experts in AI, law, political science, policy, and economics, was launched last fall and decided to frame their report around the impact AI will have on the average American city.