Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have pledged 3bn ( 2.3bn) to fund medical research over the next decade. At a press conference in San Francisco, they said their ultimate goal was to "cure, prevent or manage all diseases by the end of the century". The funds will be distributed by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which they created in December 2015. Tech leaders are increasingly turning their attention to health. Earlier in the week, Microsoft said it intended to "solve" cancer by using artificial intelligence tools.

Google took a shot at Facebook's chatbot-building services on Monday with its acquisition of API.ai, a company that helps developers build and improve conversational interfaces for their services. API.ai has more than 60,000 developers using its platform to create conversational user interfaces for apps like Slack, Facebook Messenger and Kik. Its tools make it easier for programs to parse human language and translate it into action. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The company offers a vast suite of capabilities for natural language understanding, including pre-defined knowledge packages known as Domains, which make it easier for assistants to understand a variety of common requests any additional coding.

A global study of 750 grocery decision-makers reveals key challenges in meeting customer expectations. Grocery retailers face many challenges and barriers to delivering on their customer experience promises of'any time, anywhere'. To understand these challenges, we commissioned a global survey to discover how grocery retail managers and directors feel about their customer experience delivery. The research also uncovered thoughts on how to overcome the hurdles of delivering the best customer experience. The findings are the result of interviews with 750 grocery managers and directors across the globe, in the UK, USA, Germany and France.

The 2016 Summit will explore revolutionary applications of artificial intelligence that actually accelerate research outcomes in fields important to people living in rural communities in Wyoming and around the globe: biotech and health care delivery; energy; information security; transportation; agriculture; mobile financing; clean water and air; and communication. A reception with Gov. Mead will get things started Thursday evening at Jackson's Lift restaurant and the governor will follow that up with a press conference at 12:40 p.m. the following day. A complete agenda for the event can be found here. The Wyoming Global Technology Summit is the flagship event held annually in Jackson, for the Jackson Hole Technology Partnership. The summit annually gathers globally successful founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, financiers and scientists from many relevant disciplines, in addition to Wyoming entrepreneurs, thought leaders and nonprofit and public service groups.

Apple aapl is really pushing into this machine learning thing. A month after it came out that the company had bought Turi, it is now reported to have bought another company in the space, called Tuplejump. Tuplejump was (its website has vanished) an Indian-U.S. company with technology for managing large amounts of data, or "big data" as the jargon has it. TechCrunch, which reported the acquisition, said Apple was likely interested in an open-source Tuplejump project called FiloDB, which uses machine learning techniques to analyze fast-streaming data. Machine learning involves teaching computers how to learn from the data they are presented, so they can make predictions based on those learnings.

With technology increasingly enhancing human abilities, a day will come when Olympics become the Paralympics, envisions scientist Sethuraman "Panch" Panchanathan, from the US National Science Board by President Barack Obama. "You will find the so-called Paralympics could one day be for people who are high achievers and Olympics are for losers. If I had legs that were bionic, I would run faster. There will be a day when Olympics will become Paralympics and Paralympics will become Olympics," Panchanathan said at a keynote address at a conference here on Friday. "When you are talking of moving people from disability to ability, you can liken it to moving people from ability to super-ability. We all want to be super-able," he explained.

Apple is reportedly still hard at work on a Siri-powered device to rival the Amazon Echo. The project is out of the research and development and phase and into prototyping, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who has an excellent track record with Apple rumors. Gurman doesn't say what the smart home device will be, but presumably it will be some kind of speaker. The aim is for the Siri device to control smart home appliances--presumably via HomeKit--similar to the Echo. The Siri device would likely also be able to carry out the same tasks that the personal digital assistant already does on the iPhone and iPad.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is reportedly on a buying spree for machine learning companies. It seeks to enhance its expertise in artificial intelligence and for this purpose, the tech giant acquired another machine learning company, Tuplejump, which is based in India. Tuplejump is also present in US and has an exceptional machine learning team. Along with acquiring its business, Apple has also reportedly attained its team which is now based in Seattle along with Turi. This move was followed by its previous purchases, where it acquired Perceptio at the end of FY15, as well as Turi few months back.

Apple has reportedly acquired yet another startup company, and this time it is Hyderabad-based Tuplejump. The acquisition comes just a few months after the Cupertino giant bought Seattle-based Turi Inc. for 200 million and artificial intelligence startup Emotient for an undisclosed amount. The company had also acquired Perceptio last year. The iPhone maker hasn't confirmed the latest acquisition, but its spokesperson has given a hint to TechCrunch that the company may have bought it. He said that "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

SAP has unveiled plans to use machine learning to help eliminate bias in hiring and employee performance reviews. At the SuccessConnect event in Las Vegas, the company exhibited planned upcoming capabilities within its cloud-based SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite to help global organisations detect and avoid unconscious bias. As part of its commitment, SAP intends to optimise existing solutions and roll out new functionality in important decision areas that have prevented organisations from using total talent. The German company is designing the new features with a customer advisory group particularly focused on diversity and inclusion issues. The planned upcoming technology on display at SuccessConnect includes diversity and inclusion e-book, recruiting, calibration and mentoring.