Investors poured a record high 1.05B into artificial intelligence startups in Q2'16, and AI is already affecting more areas of our lives than many people realize. Even retail and e-commerce companies are increasingly integrating the technology. Recently there's been a rush of AI announcements and acquisitions by major retailers: Just last week, Etsy acquired Blackbird to enhance its search functionality through AI, followed the very next day by Amazon acquiring Angel.ai And earlier this month, e-commerce unicorn Houzz (see our full unicorn tracker here) announced a deep learning initiative to help users find and buy products by clicking on images. Using CB Insights data, we dove into the wide array of AI startups focused on retailers and e-commerce businesses, including AI-powered personal shopping apps, natural language processing and image recognition tools for shopping websites, predictive inventory allocation tools, and more.

Several years ago I was working as the CTO of a major tech company with significant operations around the world. One morning while reviewing our daily collected figures I noticed and determined that we were facing a significant sales drop in one of our most important target regions that my team simply couldn't explain. We immediately scrambled all the relevant people in our department and began combing through our data to try and identify what the problem was and how to fix it. In a matter of days, we had identified the source and created an effective way to counter the problem, yet the scars of the experience were lasting and deep. In the weeks that followed we pored over our protocol to identify what we could have done better to address the issue faster.

Touch Bionics Announced To Release New Prosthetic Fingers Technology - Prosthetic fingers or arms fulfill the lack of real fingers or arms. Touch Bionics is a worldwide provider of prosthetic fingers or arms. The company's prosthetic devices are known as i-limb digits which are fully customized electronic prosthesis for those people who have lost his/her finger(s) or partial hand.

Computers really are becoming like people: Just because they are smart doesn't mean they won't do awful things. As John Markoff writes, the kind of artificial intelligence that is capable of winning at the game of Go or figuring out your fastest route home is also starting to show up in criminal schemes. One program, known as Blackshades, was sold in the online criminal underground known as the dark web and used for purposes like video and audio eavesdropping. The man who developed Blackshades was sentenced in June 2015 to 57 months in prison. As with most other crimes, though, the threat of hard time isn't going to stop everyone -- particularly as the costs keep coming down and the number of applications is exploding.

Britons are terrified of being enveloped by a dystopian future in which robots take control of society, research has found. More than a third of people fear the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) could lead to robots evolving beyond our understanding and taking over. And around 40% of us think so-called humanoids could eventually destroy humanity as we know it - concerns echoed by Professor Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, founder of the SpaceX programme who has previously described AI as mankind's "biggest existential threat". Our paranoia about androids was revealed in studies ahead of the launch of Westworld, a new Sky Atlantic programme starting on Tuesday in which guests at a futuristic park based in the Old West live out their wildest fantasies. While the new series, produced by JJ Abrams - the man behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Trek and Cloverfield - is pure fantasy, our fears of robots becoming the supreme beings on Earth are very real.

Five major technology companies said Wednesday that they had created an organization to set the ground rules for protecting humans -- and their jobs -- in the face of rapid advances in artificial intelligence. The Partnership on AI, unites Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM and Microsoft in an effort to ease public fears of machines that are learning to think for themselves and perhaps ease corporate anxiety over the prospect of government regulation of this new technology. The organization has been created at a time of significant public debate about artificial intelligence technologies that are built into a variety of robots and other intelligent systems, including self-driving cars and workplace automation. The industry group introduced a set of basic ethical standards for engineering development and scientific research that its five members have agreed upon. In a conference call on Wednesday, five artificial intelligence researchers representing the companies said they thought the technology would be a major force in the world for social and economic benefits, but they acknowledged the potential for misuse in a wide variety of ways.

Silicon Valley powerhouses are trying to calm public fears about the rise of artificial intelligence. A new non-profit coalition that counts Google, Facebook and Amazon as members is hoping to demystify the emerging technology -- one tech giants believe has the potential to transform their businesses. "They care how these technologies will influence people and [about] the social and societal consequences more broadly." Artificial intelligence is a field that encompasses many different technological developments. It's seen in innovations like self-driving cars, helping them navigate the roads, and in the personal assistant apps on smartphones that answer queries, organize calendars and more.

The gig: Kirstin Harper-Smith, 32, is senior project manager at Boston-based Suffolk Construction, where she is supervising the building of a 525-unit apartment tower on Hope Street in downtown Los Angeles. The 888 Grand Hope Lofts project by L.A. developer CIM Group will eventually rise 34 stories, consuming 27,000 cubic yards of concrete and 3,500 tons of rebar along the way. As head of the 10-person office side of the project, she oversees the budget, ensures safety requirements are met and directs who should do what jobs when -- all while trying to keep the project on schedule to wrap in about two years. She anticipates 10-hour days until then. An early start: Harper-Smith caught the engineering bug while growing up in San Diego.

On weekdays, Daisuke Kuramoto, 36, is just another computer engineer who develops education materials for an e-learning content provider. But once a month, he becomes Qramo, organizer of a computer programming workshop for children. "If you say I am'teaching' programming, that's incorrect," said Kuramoto, who heads the Tokyo-based volunteer group Otomo. "At the workshop, I'm just a participant who loves to play around with programming." Kuramoto started the workshop in 2008 and launched Otomo the following year, recruiting professional programmers, computer science students, parents and others with a knack for the activity.

The Data Science team at Greenhouse Group is steadily growing and continuously changing. This also implies new Data Scientists and interns starting regularly. Each new Data Scientist we hire is unique and has a different set of skills. What they all have in common though is a strong analytical background and the practical ability to apply this on real business cases. The majority of our team for example studied Econometrics, a study which provides a strong foundation in probability theory and statistics. As the typical Data Scientist also has to work with lots of data, decent programming skills are a must-have.