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.

For more than 30 years, Gibbs has advised on and developed product and service marketing for many businesses and he has consulted, lectured, and authored numerous articles and books. So the UK has just given itself a national headache. Whether you think the Brexit was the right decision or a dangerous and unmitigated screw-up (as I do), the consequences of the referendum will be non-trivial and take years to complete. But the mechanics of the UK exiting the European Union aside, the question of how people now feel about the Brexit is interesting. Are they awash in jubilation or has buyer's remorse set in?

Pinterest, the startup whose app lets people pin photos and other content to boards and even buy things shown in pins, today announced that the buy buttons that first appeared on the app are now coming to the web version. The startup is also adding a shopping bag that will follow you across devices. Pinterest introduced buyable pins last year, and today Pinterest president Tim Kendall demonstrated the updates for reporters at a briefing at Pinterest's San Francisco headquarters. The bag is a modern implementation of a shopping cart -- no longer will Pinterest exclusively be letting its partners handle purchasing. There's even a new Pinterest Shop, with sections for Top Shops from vendors, Pinterest commerce product marketer Amy Vener wrote in a blog post.

The Daily Roundup is our comprehensive coverage of the VR industry wrapped up into one daily email, delivered directly to your inbox. Machine Learning has the potential to revolutionize so many different aspects of our lives, and it's starting to enter into game development with IBM's Watson. For instance, developers could integrate cloud-based AI services into their game to dynamically change the game design progression curve based upon a user's behavior and performance. If the player is zipping through a series of easy puzzles with no problems, then Watson could detect that and quickly move the player to advanced levels in order to keep the game challenging and interesting for them. I was able to get a sampling of how a number of different innovative game designers have started to integrate machine learning resources last week at an Intel Buzz Workshop presentation by IBM's Interactive Media CTO George Dolbier.

Anki on Monday introduced Cozmo, a little robot powered by an advanced artificial intelligence. Cozmo promises to be far more interactive than any toy robot that has been released to date. Although the multidisciplinary team of roboticists, animators and game developers who designed Cozmo had play in mind, they noted that the combination of technology from toys, videogames and robotics represents a major leap forward. Anki's three creators all got their start at Carnegie Mellon's Robotic Institute. Cozmo, which can nestle in the palm of your hand, has a "brain" -- technically its CPU -- that can process more data per second than all the Mars Rovers combined, his makers said.

As a child, growing up with the 1970's and 80's episodes of the BBC TV series, the only way I could be convinced to watch the Saturday tea-time showings of Dr Who was by robbing the family dog of its worn old blanket and sitting with it over my head, peering at the TV (with its'remote' control attached to the TV unit on a cable) through a chewed hole. It was my way of convincing my 8-year old myself that I was safe and that it wasn't all real. And yet, even stripping away the blanket and upgrading the TV (and remote control) tech quite a bit, and replacing the Daleks with for example, Arnie's Terminator, the Matrix's Machines, Ex Machina's Ava (or even the comedy Fembots in Austin Powers), man's age-old fear of the machine and relentless need to fight, overpower and destroy it hasn't really changed that much … even if some of the methods have. From the industrial revolution onwards, our relationship with machines and technology of any variety has always been'love/hate'. Even the fact that films like Wall-E, Big Hero and the Iron Giant, and characters like The Hitchhiker's' bulbous Marvin and Star Wars' R2-D2, C-3PO and more recently, BB-9, have such a fond film-following stems in part from our need to'humanise' robots and make them less scary.

Artificial intelligence dealmaking has exploded recently, leaping to a new quarterly record of over 140 deals in Q1'16. Corporates and their venture capital groups are among the most active investors in this category (tech corporates have also been active acquirers in the category).

Rao goes on, "The production release of fully autonomous cars is probably at least five years away still, as these machines are not nearly safe enough for widespread consumer use. Google's self-driving cars still make mistakes, like getting confused by cyclists on fixed-gear bikes at stop signs. Tesla's Autopilot has run into trouble when driving on local streets instead of highways. In fact, there are an unlimited number of such corner cases that autonomous vehicles must respond to, and many still need to be discovered and factored in. Only when a sufficient number of scenarios have been addressed will autonomous cars be considered'safe enough.' As Tesla recently blogged: 'Getting [an autonomous car] to be 99% correct is relatively easy, but getting it to be 99.9999% Making mistakes at 70 mph would be highly problematic'."