What if the scariest thing about AI is the vocabulary test? Sure, some people worry about machines putting an end to humanity as we know it, but that may be no more likely than a Mayan-predicted apocalypse. Artificial intelligence, though, may actually bring us lots of things we'll like: self-driving cars, caregivers for the sick, personal assistants that know exactly what you need, when you need it. Yes, there is math and science, and a lot of it, behind the current boom in AI research, products and services. But you don't have to have a Ph.D. to get a handle on the basic ideas.

NEW YORK--The first-year anniversary of the Windows 10 launch is still about a month away. But Microsoft executive Yusuf Mehdi announced today in a blog post that the next major iteration of the company's operating system--dubbed the Windows 10 Anniversary Update--will become available on August 2. Microsoft is encouraging folks to request it in advance. Indeed, ahead of July 29, the one-year anniversary launch date, anyone running Windows 10 on a PC today can request the upgrade for free, after which it will cost is 119. Either way, you'll still have to wait until August 2 to get it. Mehdi says that more than 350 million devices are currently running Windows 10 worldwide, with customer satisfaction levels higher than any previous version of Windows.

While Google was building an artificial intelligence that could beat a grandmaster at the ancient game of Go, researchers at the University of Cincinnati took a different tack. They designed an AI that could take on a fighter pilot. Dubbed ALPHA, this system recently beat retired United States Air Force Colonel Gene Lee in multiple flight simulator trials, as the researchers explain in a paper recently published in the Journal of Defense Management. The idea isn't to replace human fighter pilots. According to Nicholas Ernest, a University of Cincinnati alum and the founder of Psibernetix, a company that aims to commercialize the technology behind ALPHA, this AI may ultimately act as a kind of digital assistant that provides real-time advice to pilots.

One of the most comforting things about being an iPhone user was trusting that Apple wasn't selling my personal information to the highest bidder. But in recent years, tech companies like Google and Facebook have leveraged their user data to create impressive products that rely on machine learning. With iOS 10, Apple finally gets serious about machine learning, too, but it's not at the expense of its users' privacy. In this week's episode of The iPhone Show, we take a closer look at "differential privacy," the concept that Apple is following as it kicks off its machine learning efforts in iOS 10. According to Apple, differential privacy has been used to improve the QuickType keyboard, emoji suggestions, and Spotlight search.

What's to stop intelligent algorithms, programmed to make a profit, from learning to collude with one another in ways which bend market rules? Such a scenario would require regulatory oversight from the very cutting edge of computer science. The idea of artificial intelligence manipulating outcomes in the real world and then exploiting these on the markets is bestseller material. But there's fascinating scope for this to actually happen as computing power increases and algorithms get smarter. Someone who has thought about this a lot is Anthony Amicangioli, CEO and founder of Hyannis Port Research.

The future of human workers is not as bleak as many fear, says a recent report by research firm Forrester. Though cognitive technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotic automation will eliminate 16% of US jobs by 2025, according to Forrester, they will also create new jobs amounting to a 9% increase over the same period. The net job loss, 7%, thus qualifies as only a bit bleak. It's not quite the apocalyptic 47% job loss figure suggested in Carl Benedikt Frey's and Michael Osborne's 2013 report, "The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?" Last month, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) came to a similar conclusion in a report titled "The Risk of Automation for Jobs in OECD Countries: A Comparative Analysis."

Proving that chatbots can actually be useful in real life, an automated lawyer chatbot has successfully challenged 160,000 parking tickets in London and New York. DoNotPay uses artificial intelligence to discuss the circumstances of the parking ticket with those who have received one, asking questions such as if there were clearly visible parking signs and then guides users through the process of lodging an appeal to the ticket using publicly available information. The 160,000 successful appeals are out of 250,000 seen, a success rate of a 64 percent, and is believed to have saved drivers around 2.5 million in fines. Perhaps even more remarkably, the service is completely free. "I think the people getting parking tickets are the most vulnerable in society," 19-year-old founder Joshua Browder told VentureBeat.

Fifteen years ago, when the time became ripe for post-PC devices that put a premium on integrating software and hardware, Apple was the best-positioned company to lead the charge -- and it did. The company's vertical integration, its attention to detail and innovation in both software and hardware and its willingness to make big bets gave it an edge. And it used that edge to reel off its now-familiar string of game-changing products like the iPod, the iPhone, the MacBook Air and the iPad. Now, the iPod is essentially gone, and the other products are in mature or maturing markets, with either pretty flat or dropping sales. And the tech industry is turning to a new battlefield: Artificial intelligence, spread across many devices.

The traditional definition of artificial intelligence is the ability of machines to execute tasks and solve problems in ways normally attributed to humans. Some tasks that we consider simple--recognizing an object in a photo, driving a car--are incredibly complex for AI. Machines can surpass us when it comes to things like playing chess, but those machines are limited by the manual nature of their programming; a 30 gadget can beat us at a board game, but it can't do--or learn to do--anything else. This is where machine learning comes in. Show millions of cat photos to a machine, and it will hone its algorithms to improve at recognizing pictures of cats.

From robotics to deep learning and image recognition, a glimpse of science fiction-like technologies developed by the nation's artificial intelligence industry is on display at Tokyo Big Sight in Koto Ward. At the three-day AI World exhibition, a total of 15 companies exhibited cutting-edge AI technology in an attempt to realize a society which will make entertainment and business more interactive and efficient. Equipped with the company's original AI engine Kibit, the robot recommends new books based on what people have read in the past and other personal preferences. Unlike the recommendation system that is widely used by online shopping sites today, Ubic's AI technology analyzes book reviews and makes recommendations based on feedback from actual people instead of a computer, said Ubic's spokeswoman, Akane Hirose. Kibiro also has a function to guess a person's age and gender by using an in-built facial recognition camera.