It looks like robots are one step closer to taking over the world. Scientists at Sony's CSL research lab unveiled a new track called "Daddy's Car." If that sounds bizarre to you, you're not wrong. Although the song sounds like any run-of-the-mill track, it's actually created by the artificial intelligence software Flow Machines. The software draws from a massive database of songs to compose its music, combining small elements of many tracks to create new compositions.

Computers can already recognize you in an image, but can they see a video or real-world objects and tell exactly what's going on? Researchers are trying to make computer video recognition a reality, and they are using some image-recognition techniques to make that happen. Researchers in and outside of Google are making progress in video recognition, but there are also challenges to overcome, Rajat Monga, engineering director of TensorFlow for Google's Brain team, said during a question-and-answer session on Quora this week. The benefits of video recognition are enormous. For example, a computer will be able to identify a person's activities, an event or a location.

Over 500 founders, CTOs, business leaders, software engineers & entrepreneurs came together at the 2nd annual Deep Learning Summit in London, to explore how deep learning will impact communications, manufacturing, healthcare, transportation and more. This event took place alongside the Deep Learning Summit, view the Storify: goo.gl/pCcQ33

Bots on Slack can help your team be more productive and accomplish more tasks. They can help you increase visibility into your operations or help your customers easily get information through a natural, conversational interface. However, building and running bots can be a time consuming and difficult task. Developers must provision, manage, and scale the compute resources that run the bot's code. Wouldn't it be nice if you could focus on building great bots without worrying about how to run and scale them?

BRATISLAVA (Reuters) – The European Commission wants to reduce national restrictions on where some types of commercial and health data can be stored, Vice-President Andrus Ansip said on Thursday. BRUSSELS (Reuters) – U.S. software company Salesforce called on EU regulators on Thursday to investigate antitrust issues related to Microsoft's 26 billion bid for social network LinkedIn. SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A bill signed into law on Thursday by California Governor Jerry Brown allows a self-driving vehicle with no operator inside to test on a public road, a key step enabling a private business park outside San Francisco to test driverless shuttles. NEW YORK (Reuters) – Unocoin, a Bangalore-based bitcoin startup, has raised 1.5 million in funding from a mix of Indian and U.S. investors, the company announced on Thursday. Silicon Valley is diving into artificial intelligence (AI)and machine learning research, an industry estimated to zoom to 70 billion by 2020 from just 8.2 billion in 2013, according to a Bank of America report that cited IDC research.

Microsoft CEO says he wants to democratise artificial intelligence. MICROSOFT CEO Satya Nadella says the software giant is hellbent on ensuring the democratisation of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence, or machine intelligence, currently covers a broad range of somewhat modest capabilities in commercial technology such as voice recognition chatbots like Apple's Siri. When considering its ultimate potential some have famously described the pursuit of AI as summoning the demon but regardless of any fatalistic concerns for humankind, the pursuit of AI represents the most heated competition in the tech sector right now and holds the promise of unprecedented power. "We have set ourselves the goal of democratising AI," Mr Nadella told the audience during the keynote address at Microsoft's Ignite conference Tuesday morning AEST.

The group, officially named the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society, or just Partnership on AI, is dedicated to address potential problems the rapid development of machine intelligence can raise, before those problems appear. The group encourages the sharing of ideas and research related to AI, as each multinational tech giant has its own AI prototype. The group states that it is dedicated to working with the public, to both educate about the benefits of the technology and to hear concerns, varying from job loss to -- potentially -- robot uprisings. The group will have corporate and non-corporate members in its projects and discussions, with research organizations, including the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, included. Funds and logistical support will be provided by the tech giants.

Today the banking industry faces a rebirth by necessity. As the digital age morphs into the cognitive era, success depends on radical transformation that enables the integration of advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, blockchains and more. For 64 percent of those surveyed in 2016, their organization's efficiency remained the same or declined over the last three years.Tapping huge quantities of dormant, bank-owned data, much of it unstructured, is essential to offering the individualized engagement that customers demand, transforming operations and benefitting from fintech innovation. How can you take advantage of these technologies to build a cognitive bank?

Tech companies are investing heavily in artificial intelligence, and touting the financial benefits of AI-powered technologies like robots, virtual assistants and augmented reality, Now, a new study reports that artificial intelligence could dramatically boost economic growth and productivity. The Accenture report looked at 12 countries and found that AI -- or technology that senses the environment, comprehends what's happening and takes action -- could increase productivity by up to 40 percent in 2035. The report also forecasts economic growth in the U.S. could increase from 2.6 percent to 4.6 percent over the same period with the adoption of AI technologies. Among the countries that stand to make the largest gains in productivity from AI in 2035 are Sweden, Finland, the U.S. and Japan. "The impact this has is that it automates a lot of the low-level tasks and gets them done with higher satisfaction," says Accenture's chief technology officer, Paul Daugherty.

Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to further its artificial intelligence research. After a string of social-geared announcements, Microsoft has expressed its intention to "democratize AI" for every person an organization. To do this, the company has formed the Microsoft Research and AI group. The research group will be comprised of over 5 thousand computer scientists and engineers focused on the company's artificial intelligence products, and will be led by Harry Shum. Shum is the executive vice president of technology and research at Microsoft who currently leads several research groups including those for Bing and Cortana, which are primarily focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning.