HYDERABAD: Tucked away in a little corner at Koramangala, Bengaluru, is a medical technology startup, SigTuple, that has built a device to digitise images of blood captured by a microscope and aid analysis through its cloud-powered engine. This, the founders believe, will help automate diagnosis, as they work towards branching into chest x-ray and retinal scan analyses. After being adapted in technology companies, artificial intelligence and machine learning are now being used in diagnosis and pathology by startups which are trying to increase efficiency and reduce redundancy in the world of healthcare. And, they are gaining investor attention -- these include Kalaari Capitalbacked Advenio Technosys, Bengaluru-based Spectral Insights and Cardiac Design Labs, among others. Founded in June last year, SigTuple is backed by Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal, and Accel Partners.

Recognizing the central role that technology now plays in the global economy, the World Economic Forum is establishing a new center in San Francisco to connect tech companies and policymakers in the heart of the world's technology industry. Building off the Forum's thesis of a "Fourth Industrial Revolution," the new facility will focus on bringing government officials and tech companies together to create frameworks for more productive legislative policies that can be implemented worldwide. "Depending on the collective choices we make -– as consumers, as communities, as business, government, and civil society leaders -– these technological breakthroughs could give us the power to move into a world that is even more prosperous, while being more sustainable and more inclusive," reads an early version of remarks prepared by World Economic Forum founder and chairman, Klaus Schwab. "Alternatively, we could end up in a world where our economic, political and social systems are more rigid, more unequal and more conflicted." Despite their deep roots in government-funded research, the relationship between policymakers and the tech companies that have sprung from the civic-minded seeds they nurtured with financing has always been a thorny or even openly antagonistic one (cf.

Apple has bought Tuplejump, a machine learning technology company with operations in both India and the United States, TechCrunch reports. Apple continues to buy companies with machine learning expertise. The reason the company had its eyes on Tuplejump was for its "FiloDB" project, according to the report. The lead engineer on FiloDB has been working at Apple since this May, according to his LinkedIn. The purchase price is unknown, although it's almost certainly lower than Apple's last machine learning purchase, Turi, which was bought for around 200 million earlier this year.

We have all had the experience. You are doing some on-line shopping. You drop a few items into your shopping cart and the website gets'helpful.' Across the bottom of the screen you see a collection of other items and you are told that they might be of interest to you. And the odd thing is, they mostly are kind of interesting.

Warning: There are spoilers ahead for "Westworld." The second episode of "Westworld" made a significant leap when it came to explaining "glitches" in the robotic hosts' programming. One of the programming employees, Elsie, expressed concern to Bernard about Peter Abernathy (the host who went "crazy" in the premiere). Peter Abernathy began reciting threatening lines from his old narratives. "Let me at least pull the hosts who had contact with him," Elsie asks Bernard.

Super human artificial intelligence is coming, says Sam Harris, a Stanford grad with his PhD in neuroscience from UCLA. He has five New York Times bestsellers under his belt. "It's very difficult to see how they won't destroy us or inspire us to destroy ourselves," he says. How should we be preparing? Sam says our current emotional response--that it's cool--is woefully lacking.

It's hard to let go of loved ones, especially when they pass away suddenly. But thanks to rapidly evolving artificial intelligence, you soon may not have to let go. Case in point, Eugenia Kuyda, the co-founder and CEO of a Russian artificial intelligence startup called Luka Inc, who recently brought her best friend back to life as an AI chatbot. Kuyda lost her best friend, fellow tech entrepreneur Roman Mazurenko, in November 2015, but just three months after his tragic car accident, she sent the first text message to his AI personality, Roman. With no grave to visit, because he had been cremated, the young programmer, decided to use every digital memory of him, including photos, news articles and thousands of SMS text messages he had sent to her over the years, and feed them into a neural network to create an AI chatbot that many of those who knew Roman say sounds just like him.

Full Artificial Intelligence does not exist. Also called Super AI or Strong Artificial Intelligence, it refers to the possibility of creating an artificial consciousness. Artificial Intelligence per se, does exist and has great potential to assist and complement the human being in Vision, Speech and Machine Learning. AI is just coming out of laboratories, is involving in business and in a still very shy way, in homes. AI can help in Medicine, Finance and other areas, but it is important to monitor their use.

Omar Abdelwahed, Head of Studio at SoftBank Robotics America, demos the capabilities of a humanoid robot, called Pepper, which is supposed to help customers shop in stores. "We designed Pepper to create empathy," says Steve Carlin, SoftBank Robotics America vice president in charge of sales and development. Steve Carlin, VP of Marketing and Business Development at SoftBank, discusses Pepper's new ability to help consumers shop at stores. "We've given Pepper a number of cues that will help people understand what it's doing," says SoftBank's Omar Abdelwahed, head of the company's robotics studio.

Maintaining the highest level of user safety will be non-negotiable when it comes to the deployment of autonomous vehicles whether they are used for personal or mass transport, or logistics in industrial environments. However, for reasons of sheer volume, it will be road vehicles where the biggest changes will be felt. Vehicle efficiency and road safety will be improved and congestion will come down and the technology and legislation is in development to make it a reality. It is generally agreed that the transition to autonomous driving will be gradual. In the US, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has defined five levels of automation, from 0 to 4, which it refers to as the automation continuum.