When was the last time you asked your computer something? There's Siri, Google, and Cortana of course, but these systems, clever as they may be, are the thin end of a newly emerging wedge of remarkable new approaches to computer learning and marketing. If you need proof that we are entering a new era of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) you need to look no further than Google's DeepMind project. Early this year DeepMind, Google's AI computer, developed initially in London, challenged and beat South Korean Grandmaster Lee Sedol at the ancient game of Go. Why this challenge is so important requires you to think back to the Deep Blue computer, which finally beat Gary Kasparov at chess in the 1990s. Deep Blue had it easy.

WHEN Germany occupied Poland during the second world war, a young Pole was scratching a living under false papers as a car mechanic. The man, Stanislaw Lem, who was to become one of world's most famous science fiction writers, used to "mend" German vehicles so they would break down. The habit never left him. With Summa Technologiae, his masterwork of non-fiction which has been translated into English for the first time, Lem has taken Western civilisation for a spin – with spectacular consequences. The book will be a fabulous shock to those who know only his science fiction, such as Solaris or The Cyberiad.

From picking our favorite restaurants to predicting weather and correcting global food shortages, artificial intelligence is already augmenting everyday life. Firmly rooted in the realm of science fiction, artificial intelligence (AI) has often felt external – something happening out there. In reality, AI is a huge part of our everyday lives. We just don't recognize it. Bank alerts of suspected fraudulent charges, smartphone notifications to exercise, Siri or Cortana's ability to recognize voices – are all examples of AI. "Artificial intelligence is basically where machines make sense, learn, interface with the external world, without human beings having to specifically program it," said Nidhi Chappell, director of machine learning at Intel. AI improves lives in many other areas too.

Artificial Intelligence Marketing used to be a concept only speculated about in science fiction movies. Who would've thought that in 2016, it would start to play a real role in our daily lives? Because of the wide reaching applications of Artificial Intelligence, marketers must take note and determine ways to use it to their advantage. AI presents marketers with the unique opportunity to run campaigns in a way that have previously never been done or even thought of. This data driven, personal touch will allow marketers to get quite personal with the audience.

I read an interesting article about Google using their DeepMind AI system to improve their power usage efficiency by 15% – which adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars of savings. Of course, DeepMind has been a big investment for Google and finding areas for them to gain efficiency leads to immediate payback – not necessarily covering the entire investment, but savings that add up over time to those hundreds of millions. Like any good organization, I'm sure that Google started with metrics so they had a handle of not just what the costs were, but where the biggest cost impacts were occurring. As the saying goes, "you can't change what you don't measure". However, a lot of organizations get stuck in metrics mode and never get around to the work of actually optimizing – they are are always measuring but never changing.

At Gigaom Change Leader's Summit 2016 in September, we will be exploring seven key business technologies that are real today. In anticipation of that event, we are doing a series of short pieces on the featured technologies. In 1950, Alan Turing asked the question of whether a machine can think. In 1955, John McCarthy coined the term "Artificial Intelligence." In 1956, a group consisting of McCarthy and three other AI scientists proposed a summer retreat to work out the essentials of the new field.

The Chinese military is looking to adapt its technology with the belief that future combat missions will require weapons to be both cost-efficient and flexible. They will also be based on a modular design, which will allow the missiles to be configured in regards to what mission they will be carrying out. "We plan to adopt a'plug and play' approach in the development of new cruise missiles, which will enable our military commanders to tailor-make missiles in accordance with combat conditions and their specific requirements," Wang Changqing of the China Aerospace and Industry Corp told China Daily newspaper. He added that Chinese engineers had been researching the use of artificial intelligence in cruise missiles for a number of years and that the country was the world leader in this field. However, he did not produce any evidence to back up his claims.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. Well, you can go ahead and add foosball to the list of things that humans won't have a chance at once robots get involved: I like the idea of a robot on robot foosball match, although I would guess that it would be far too fast for a human to actually enjoy watching. The project Europa-Explorer is a pilot survey for future missions to Jupiter's moon Europa.

Artificial Intelligence – a technology which has continually broken promises. AI technology has always been the star striker of the technology field, hugely expensive and much hyped. However, AI has never scored the big goals promised by those working on the sidelines, with a Minority Report-esque world remaining in the realms of fiction. However, no one can ignore the renewed enthusiasm that AI is today courting – companies like Salesforce, Intel and Apple are rushing to acquire AI start-ups, bolstering their in-house offerings, while others are creating secretive labs in order to get a jump on competitors. Everyone seems to be throwing their hat into a driverless, smart, self-learning, AI project or company, indicating that the much lauded'Machine Age' may be closer than critics think.

Artificial Intelligence is one of the most exciting technologies of the century, and Deep Learning is in many ways the "brain" behind some of the world's smartest Artificial Intelligence systems out there. Loosely based on neuron behavior inside of human brains, these systems are rapidly catching up with the intelligence of their human creators, defeating the world champion Go player, achieving superhuman performance on video games, driving cars, translating languages, and sometimes even helping law enforcement fight crime. Deep Learning is a revolution that is changing every industry across the globe. Grokking Deep Learning is the perfect place to begin your deep learning journey. Rather than just learn the "black box" API of some library or framework, you will actually understand how to build these algorithms completely from scratch. You will understand how Deep Learning is able to learn at levels greater than humans.