A panel of academic and industrial thinkers has looked ahead to 2030 to forecast how advances in artificial intelligence (AI) might affect life in a typical North American city – in areas diverse as transportation, healthcare and education – and spur discussion of how to ensure the safe, fair and beneficial development of these rapidly emerging technologies. Titled "Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030," this year-long investigation is the first product of the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100), an ongoing project hosted by Stanford University to inform societal deliberation and provide guidance on the ethical development of smart software, sensors and machines. "We believe specialized AI applications will become both increasingly common and more useful by 2030, improving our economy and quality of life," said Peter Stone, a computer scientist at The University of Texas at Austin and chair of the 17-member panel of international experts. "But this technology will also create profound challenges, affecting jobs and incomes and other issues that we should begin addressing now to ensure that the benefits of AI are broadly shared." The new report traces its roots to a 2009 study that brought AI scientists together in a process of introspection that became ongoing in 2014, when Eric and Mary Horvitz created the AI100 endowment through Stanford's School of Engineering.

No one will read what your bot has to say. At best, they will skim it and move on. You challenge is to take something complex and boil it down to a few crucial words -- and to make those words so powerful that the message sticks to the user like glue. Your chatbot should have a single-minded focus, and anything that does not adhere to this focus should be stripped away. Have you ever wondered why Donald Trump won the Republican primary?

Whether they are assisting your doctor in surgery, driving your car, analyzing crime patterns, or cleaning and providing the security system for your home, artificial intelligence (AI) will play a big role in urban living in by 2030. But to maximize the benefits of an AI-wired city tomorrow, expert and the public need to have a frank conversation today, according to the first report from Stanford University's 100-year study on AI, which was released last week. "As a society, we are now at a crucial juncture in determining how to deploy AI-based technologies in ways that promote, not hinder, democratic values such as freedom, equality, and transparency," the panel states in its report, which analyzes the role AI will play in the typical North American city in 2030, focusing on eight domains: transportation, home robots, healthcare, education, entertainment, low-resource communities, public safety and security, and employment and the workplace. "Policies should be evaluated as to whether they foster democratic values and equitable sharing of AI's benefits, or concentrate power and benefits in the hands of a fortunate few." The report outlines not only the ways AI could potentially be used throughout everyday life, but also how public opinion surrounding the implementation of AI has changed, and will continue to.

Intel Corp. INTC, 1.36% said it would acquire Movidius Ltd., a maker of semiconductors for drones and other autonomous machines, a move that would bolster Intel's artificial intelligence portfolio amid its desire to become a bigger player in the space. Summit Bridge Capital, ARCH Venture Partners and Sunny Optical Technology Group became investors in Movidius through a 40 million financing round in April 2015. Atlantic Bridge Capital, AIB Seed Capital Fund, Capital-E, DFJ Esprit and Robert Bosch Venture Capital invested earlier. Terms of the transaction weren't disclosed. The deal, subject to certain closing conditions, was announced in blog posts Monday.

Volvo is sticking by its over-the-top claim that by 2020 nobody will be killed or injured in a new Volvo. This vision was first announced back in 2012, and now, halfway to the self-imposed deadline, Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive officer of Volvo Cars, has reaffirmed it during a press conference on Tuesday. Volvo, together with automotive safety systems provider Autoliv Inc. announced plans to launch a new jointly-owned company to develop autonomous driving software. Samuelsson said, "This is very crucial for Volvo to meet our vision for the future." He continued, reiterating that "by 2020 nobody should be killed or seriously injured by Volvo."

Nine times out of ten, when you hear about deep learning breaking a new technological barrier, Convolutional Neural Networks are involved. Also called CNNs or ConvNets, these are the workhorse of the deep neural network field. They have learned to sort images into categories even better than humans in some cases. If there's one method out there that justifies the hype, it is CNNs. What's especially cool about them is that they are easy to understand, at least when you break them down into their basic parts.

Packt, a Birmingham-based company which aims to "help the world put software to work in new ways," concocted a survey and discovered what developers want from their profession this year and which are the skills the people working in tech need for the future. In short, developers believe that machine learning and big data analytics, virtual and augmented reality and the Internet of Things are the "next big thing" and that security is one of the highest paying industries in 2016, especially for freelancers. Learning new skills has become a must for those who want to stay relevant. The JAX London Conference is a three-day conference for cutting-edge software engineers and enterprise-level professionals. JAX brings together the world's leading innovators in the fields of JAVA, microservices, continuous delivery and DevOps.

In partnership with The Relevancy Group and CEO David Daniels, Persado today announced the findings of a new research report entitled The Science Behind Customer Engagement: How Machine-Learning Drives Action. The survey assesses the importance of understanding how machine-learning is helping marketers communicate with a growing online audience of 3.6 billion, roughly 50% of the world's population. Surveying 301 advertising and marketing executives on their experience with machine-learning, automation, and predictive platforms across marketing and advertising practices, The Relevancy Group found that incorporating cognitive or "smart" content generated through machine-learning platforms is an effective practice that resonates with a customer's emotional decision-making. In fact, the study found that early adopters of this technology who were able to leverage the right message and deliver on emotional personalization could drive a 3-5x increase in revenue. The findings indicate the market's need for better understanding and adoption of these technologies with most marketers showing willingness to adopt content created via machine learning.

Last week, Turing Robotics Industries (TRI) announced details of a new device, which it says it plans to release in 2017, featuring some truly extraordinary specs. From dual-Snapdragon 830 SoCs and 12GB of RAM, to a'graphene supercapacitor battery', hydrogen fuelcell, and quad nano-SIM, the Turing Phone Cadenza's spec sheet reads like a fanciful wishlist with little basis in reality. Now, TRI is promising another device with even more outlandish specs - but before we get into that, it's worth briefly reminding ourselves who TRI is, and what they've done so far. TRI originally unveiled the Turing Phone, a crowdfunded Android handset, back in April 2015, promising delivery by the end of the year. Those who committed up to 1,300 for the device were then told it would arrive no later than the end of Q1 2016, then April, May, and June - but as Android Authority noted, backers were still waiting to receive the device in late July.

Samsung has filed for a patent covering a mobile device that could run a second operating system via virtualization. The Samsung patent application, reported on SamMobile and MSPowerUser, covers all sorts of digital devices, according to Samsung: smartphones, tablet PCs, notebook computers, and more. "In this specification, the case where as an example, the first operating system is the android, the second operating system is the window (Windows) is shown," the patent's translation reads. But the patent also makes clear than any OS could be used, including Tizen, Linux, or MacOS. In the world conceived by the patent, the host OS would run the device, and the secondary OS would be run essentially as an app.