Drones and robots are getting computer vision with higher-resolution cameras and artificial intelligence to recognize objects and images. Many are made with developer boards like Nvidia's Jetson TX1, which provides the smarts for auto-navigation and collision avoidance. TX1 has the horsepower to process live image feeds, and software tools to instantly analyze and provide context to visuals. The TX1 is now a lot faster and better equipped to handle AI and image processing. Nvidia's new Jetpack 2.3 software tools for TX1, announced on Tuesday, are a major update that doubles the deep-learning performance of the board.

Sony (NYSE:SNE) launched its PS4 Slim this week with the PS4 Pro set to debut in November. These new models are set to dominate for the Christmas season and reinforce the company's lead over Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Nintendo (OTCPK:NTDOY). Their Virtual Reality product will also be there to tempt the consumer for the holiday season. In particular this will appeal to the youth dynamic, the holy grail for marketing departments. The PS4 is a terrific profit center for Sony but it is not the only ace in the pack for the company.

Many users see it as the most advanced and useful of the voice-activated virtual servants, improving upon efforts from Apple, Google and Microsoft despite Amazon having less of a visible track record in artificial intelligence. Much of the artificial intelligence software that powers the Echo was developed at Amazon's research and development base in Cambridge after the company bought Evi, an artificial intelligence startup in 2013. Since the Echo has an always-on microphone that is constantly listening and stores a history of commands in order to learn from them, it has raised snooping fears. Limp sought to dismiss these concerns, saying that the device will only record when activated by the "Alexa" wake word, and that a button on the device can mute the microphone. Users will also be able to delete any previous queries on Amazon's app.

Technology is advancing at an incredibly rapid pace. For most of us, robots and artificial intelligence systems are welcomed with open arms – something that can often make our lives easier. But the concern that they could replace human jobs has long been an issue. According to a new report from market research company Forrester, bots and AIs will have eliminated 6 percent of all US jobs by 2021. Digital assistants such as Microsoft's Cortana, Amazon's Alexa, and Apple's Siri don't yet have the human-like intelligence seen in AIs from the movies, but they are getting smarter all the time.

It is used to disguise a person's identity, cover explicit areas of an image or to render vehicle number plates unreadable. But deliberate pixilation of photographs could soon be rendered useless by artificial intelligence that can peer through the blurring to see what is hidden beneath. Software engineers have used machine learning to teach a piece of software to adapt image recognition techniques to recognise objects, faces and words in obscured images. Artificial intelligence could be used to defeat attempts to protect people's identity (stock image) or hide certain information in videos and photographs posted online. The software could mean that people who appear on Google Street View, for example, could be identified despite attempts by the search company to hide their identity with image blurring. It is a bizarre disappearing act that only the most affluent seem to be able to afford.

IBM introduced a series of new servers dubbed "x86 killers". The devices, designed to give a significant boost to artificial intelligence, deep learning and advanced data analytics, were picked up by the Chinese telecommunications company Tencent, and IBM claims the results are basically out of this world. "A large cluster of the new IBM OpenPOWER servers was able to run a data-intensive workload three times faster than its former x86-based infrastructure", IBM says in a press release. "While reducing the total number of servers used by two-thirds". The first of the three, and obviously the flagship server, is the IBM Power System S822LC for High Performance Computing.

The techniques Microsoft Research used to achieve a new world-best error rate will eventually enhance the Cortana Windows 10 personal assistant. Microsoft claims to have achieved the world's lowest error rate for speech recognition, as the company jostles with Amazon, Apple, Google, and IBM to develop products that understand speech as well as humans can. According to Microsoft, its speech scientists at Microsoft Research have achieved a word error rate (WER) of just 6.3 percent under an industry-standard evaluation, using techniques that will eventually enhance Cortana. The previous lowest error rate was 6.9 percent, achieved by IBM's Watson team, which beat their own record of eight percent set last year. Both Microsoft and IBM presented papers detailing their work on speech recognition at the Interspeech conference in San Francisco this week, where papers were also presented by Google's speech researchers.

Imagine infusing thousands of wireless devices into your brain, and using them to both monitor its activity and directly influence its actions. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, and for the moment it still is – but possibly not for long. Brain research is on a roll at the moment. And as it converges with advances in science and technology more broadly, it's transforming what we are likely to be able to achieve in the near future. Spurring the field on is the promise of more effective treatments for debilitating neurological and psychological disorders such as epilepsy, Parkinson's disease and depression.

Is artificial intelligence the next big wave in ed-tech offerings? NPR reports that Pearson, the world's largest education company, says artificial intelligence is already showing up in classrooms and could offer plenty in the way of assessment. An example of artificial intelligence at work in classrooms could entail software to provide instant feedback regarding students' knowledge, progress and method of learning. This could potentially lead to the elimination of the need for standardized testing (it's important to note here that Pearson controls up to 60 percent of the U.S. testing market, by some estimates). With more intuitive systems, however, students could feasibly be evaluated as they go -- which leads to the next big question: Will this technology help or hurt students?

Tech investor Marc Andreessen took the stage Tuesday at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. SAN FRANCISCO – For tech entrepreneurs, these are both the best of times and the gnarliest of times. But only standout ideas with either unique intellectual property or quantifiable traction are likely to benefit from this buoyant climate in the form of investments or acquisitions. "Only strong companies are getting acquired," Greylock Ventures' Josh Elman told attendees at TechCrunch Disrupt Tuesday, citing the 1 billion price tags paid for self-driving car startup Cruise Automation (General Motors) and Dollar Shave Club (Unilever). Elman might have added another recent purchase to the list, Microsoft's 26 billion spend for professional networking site LinkedIn, founded by Elman's fellow Greylock colleague and panelist, Reid Hoffman.