At the end of Sept 2016 #ArtificialIntelligence paranoia was evident. An AI Allliance (Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, to benefit people and society.) Commenting on the Partnership, Mashable seems rather ignorant; or at least they don't speak for S45, when they wrote (1 Oct 2016): "We are racing toward a future we barely understand." Mashable elaborated: "And it scares the hell out of people." Why does Mashable think the future is difficult to understand?

CHINA has long been seen as the "world's factory," churning out vast mountains of low-quality goods, but it is also considered a nation incapable of producing innovative products and ideas. Now, this is beginning to change -- China is closing the innovation gap. From drones to artificial intelligence, the Internet to genetic engineering, innovative Chinese companies are leading global innovation and reshaping the country's technology and business landscape. "There is a huge market with great opportunity," said Dai Xiang, co-founder and general manager of Enpower Energy, a manufacturer of aqueous ion batteries, which are cleaner, safer and more cost-effective than lead-acid batteries. After 20 years in the United States, working as a senior manager for start-ups in Silicon Valley, Dai decided to go back to China and start his own business.

"Data-Driven Thinking" is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today's column is written by Mark Smith, president at Kitewheel. Marketers, being marketers, are always looking to invent new names for their products to make those products seem better than previous iterations. This is most common when the need for new product cycles outpaces companies' ability to produce significant new features or advances. For an excellent example, take a look at what's been happening in the analytics space for the past 25 years.

The honor and struggle of the working class is a staple of auteur cinema -- in modern days, via some of the works of the Dardenne brothers and Mike Leigh and, in earlier times, with classics such as "The Bicycle Thief." But few directors do neorealism like Ken Loach. And few Loach movies arrive at a more propitious moment than the British director's latest, "I, Daniel Blake." The surprising (to some critics, really surprising) recipient of this year's Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, "Blake" made its U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival on Saturday ahead of its American release in December. It comes as income inequality has dominated a presidential election cycle and driven various forms of populism across Europe.

Patrick Meier (center, in cap) flies a drone in Nepal after the earthquake in 2015. Meier and his team were able to to capture detailed images of damage around the capital, Kathmandu. He believes using this technology will make crisis mapping even more effective for disaster response. Patrick Meier (center, in cap) flies a drone in Nepal after the earthquake in 2015. Meier and his team were able to to capture detailed images of damage around the capital, Kathmandu. He believes using this technology will make crisis mapping even more effective for disaster response.

Major technology firms have joined forces in a partnership on artificial intelligence, aiming to cooperate on "best practices" on using the technology "to benefit people and society." Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, IBM, and Google-owned British AI firm DeepMind on Wednesday announced a non-profit organization called "Partnership on AI" focused on helping the public understand the technology and practices in the field. The move comes amid concerns that new artificial intelligence efforts could spin out of control and end up being detrimental to society. The companies "will conduct research, recommend best practices, and publish research under an open license in areas such as ethics, fairness, and inclusivity; transparency, privacy, and interoperability; collaboration between people and AI systems; and the trustworthiness, reliability, and robustness of the technology," according to a statement. Academics, non-profit groups, and specialists in policy and ethics will be invited to join the board of the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society (Partnership on AI).

Barely a day goes by without a story taking the internet by storm about the use of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), Machine Learning and Big Data, how these technologies will impact marketing, advertising agencies and nearly every type of company and industry. What's lesser discussed, is why these technologies are gaining so much traction. Digerati sat down with technology observer Cami Rosso to ask why, and why now. What do you think is driving this interest in A.I., Big Data and Machine Leaning? One aspect of this demand is that machine learning has quickly become the new'must-have' capability for forward-thinking software providers, principally because Machine Learning, a subset of A.I., enables computers to learn without hard-coding.

Big Data is the new competitive advantage. From being a massive challenge, it has now become an enormous opportunity. The amount of data in the world is fast exploding, yet analyzing this data is paving the way for innovations, even faster! Newer analytical solutions are being offered everyday to help companies outperform competition. Machine learning on the other hand, is out-reaching milestones one after another, and attracting billions of investment from the tech giants.

Salesforce.com Inc. CRM 0.18 % 's annual Dreamforce customer conference, set to blanket downtown San Francisco next week, will be an unusual blend of business, technology, entertainment, philanthropy and personal empowerment. The conference, which is the world's largest tech get-together sponsored by a single company, will be an expression of the business-software provider's socially conscious corporate culture and the idiosyncratic character of its Chief Executive Marc Benioff. The event, which is expected to draw 170,000 attendees--17% more than last year--comes as Salesforce, whose public profile to date has been confined largely to salespeople and marketers, is stepping onto a larger stage. The company on Thursday vowed to block Microsoft Corp. MSFT 0.35 % 's 26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn Corp. LNKD 0.13 %, after failing in its own effort to buy the online network of 450 million mostly professional members. Meanwhile, Salesforce is considering a bid for the consumer-focused messaging service Twitter.

Amsterdam, September 29, 2016 – One of the world's first automated inspections by an intelligent drone with deep learning capabilities was demonstrated at the GPU Technology Conference Europe today by Aerialtronics, a Dutch manufacturer of technologically advanced drones, Neurala, a pioneer in deep learning software, and NVIDIA, the world leader in GPU-accelerated computing. This new "intelligent drone" identifies objects and their condition in flight, which dramatically increases the efficiency and accuracy of documenting assets, lowering costs, and making it easier for frequent inspections. It adds to the use of commercial drones to help businesses access difficult and dangerous areas, such as cell towers and turbines. The resulting system can visually inspect a cell tower and recognize the equipment mounted on the mast. This is the first step required to start automating the documentation of assets, and assessing the mechanical functionality and condition of the cell tower to identify rust and other defects.