Two years ago, Google spent over half a billion dollars for the tiny artificial intelligence startup DeepMind. Since then, the unit has walloped Atari video games and beaten an impossible board game. But those AI demonstrations have yet to spell actual revenue. Until now -- although the efforts are helping Google save money on its most expensive part. DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis told Bloomberg that his unit recently began applying its advanced AI to Google's data centers, finding ways to reduce the company's sizable energy bill.

Warning: The robots that power ever-popular review platform Yelp are becoming sentient. Okay, not really, but as Fast Company reports, the company is using artificial intelligence to better serve its millions of users. For an entire generation of diners, taking photos of their food has become second-nature -- and thanks to them, Yelp has a gigantic database of photos. While previously the company has relied on users to caption their own photos with "search-friendly metadata," it's now armed with software intelligence that can identify information about a restaurant based on photos alone. As FastCo explains, this is thanks to deep learning, "a form of machine learning that involves training neural networks to solve problems using large sets of data."

Recently I was consulting with a publishing company that is exploring various ways to digitize and contextualize its content. Knowing that some of the company's competitors had signed deals with IBM's Watson, I asked several executives why they had not done a Watson deal themselves. "We think that the market for AI software is rapidly commoditizing, and we believe we can assemble the needed capabilities ourselves at much lower cost," was this company's party line. Some particularly knowledgeable managers mentioned that they expected the company would instead make use of open-source cognitive software made available from various providers. These potential providers are not small vendors -- they include, for example, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo.

There are some very good questions being asked about artificial intelligence, and some very good answers on both sides from some very intelligent people. But which do you find more convincing? The Drum presents the case for and against as part of a recently published issue of the magazine, guest edited using AI. PRO: Chris Bishop, director of Microsoft Research in Cambridge, said earlier this year that he believes the hyperbole around the AI risks could jeopardise any future developments that may in fact assist humanity. "Any scenario in which AI is an existential threat to humanity is not just around the corner," he told the Guardian.

Samsonovich made the comments while attending the 2016 Annual International Conference on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA) in New York City, which takes place from July 16-19. The conference was sponsored by MEPhl and attracted more than 200 participants. "We are on the verge of a major breakthrough that was discussed since the fifties of the previous century," Samsonovich said on Tuesday. The breakthrough, according to Samsonovich, is the creation of free thinking machines capable of feeling and understanding human emotions, understanding narratives and thinking in those narratives, as well as being capable to actively learn on their own. "Those are the three key capabilities in my view that will determine the breakthrough," Samsonovich said, adding that progress is expected to be made in "several years."

Ambarish is the founder and CEO of Blippar, an augmented reality and image recognition platform. Leading venture capitalists, scientists and CEOs all have the same prediction for artificial intelligence: machines will take jobs away from both blue- and white-collar workers, "eat the world" and, ultimately, overthrow humanity. These histrionics have driven a widely accepted negative narrative about this technology's potential impact on the future of humanity. Bringing artificial intelligence into the mainstream world should be met with hope and empathy, not fear. The concerns of these experts -- wealthy men with unparalleled access to utilities, healthcare, public safety, education and job opportunities -- are the concerns of privilege.

The development of digital health technology causes many concerns regarding bioethics. Here are 10 examples why people should not be afraid of, but rather embrace the advancements of such technologies. The fear from the unknown is as old as mankind itself, thus the fear from technological development has the same age as advancement itself. When the telephone was introduced to Sweden in the late 1800s, people were afraid that the contents of the lines would spill out in some way if there was a break and many elderly persons refused to touch a telephone for fear of electrical shock. The fear is even scarier when it comes to one's health. Shortly after Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen introduced his discovery about the X-Ray, people got scared that it might read their thoughts, and they were afraid that such omnipotent gaze will see through their body and soul. Merchants even offered X-Ray proof underwear.

For more than a decade, Silicon Valley's technology investors and entrepreneurs obsessed over social media and mobile apps that helped people do things like find new friends, fetch a ride home or crowdsource a review of a product or a movie. Now Silicon Valley has found its next shiny new thing. And it does not have a "Like" button. The new era in Silicon Valley centers on artificial intelligence and robots, a transformation that many believe will have a payoff on the scale of the personal computing industry or the commercial internet, two previous generations that spread computing globally. Computers have begun to speak, listen and see, as well as sprout legs, wings and wheels to move unfettered in the world.

Google just paid for part of its acquisition of DeepMind in a surprising way. The internet giant is using technology from the DeepMind artificial intelligence subsidiary for big savings on the power consumed by its data centers, according to DeepMind Co-Founder Demis Hassabis. In recent months, the Alphabet Inc. unit put a DeepMind AI system in control of parts of its data centers to reduce power consumption by manipulating computer servers and related equipment like cooling systems. It uses a similar technique to DeepMind software that taught itself to play Atari video games, Hassabis said in an interview at a recent AI conference in New York. The system cut power usage in the data centers by several percentage points, "which is a huge saving in terms of cost but, also, great for the environment," he said.

For more than 10 years, Silicon Valley's technology investors and entrepreneurs obsessed over social media and mobile apps that helped people do things like find new friends, fetch a ride home or crowdsource a review of a product or a movie. Now it's found its next shiny new thing. And it does not have a "Like" button. The new era in Silicon Valley centres on artificial intelligence and robots, a transformation many believe will have a payoff on the scale of the personal computing industry or the commercial internet. Computers have begun to speak, listen and see, as well as sprout legs, wings and wheels to move unfettered in the world.