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.

Artificial intelligence is either the bright shining future of technology or an insidious threat that could endanger all of mankind, depending on your point of view. Now Google, one of the companies leading the development of AI systems, has set out five key challenges that need to be overcome with the technology - but they are somewhat more mundane than robots rising up to take over the world. Instead, the company sees one of the key problems as being how to stop negative side effects, such as a cleaning robot that knocks over a precious vase to get its job done faster. Google has published a new research paper highlight five challenges it sees as needing to be overcome to prevent AI and robots causing unintended harm. It also says robots need to be programmed in a way so they do not'game the system' – such as simply covering mess in a room with a sheet it cannot see through rather than tidying up. Avoiding Negative Side Effects: How can we ensure that an AI system will not disturb its environment in negative ways while pursuing its goals, e.g. a cleaning robot knocking over a vase because it can clean faster by doing so?

Artificial intelligence is a 15 billion dollar industry and growing. With more than 2,600 companies developing intelligent technology, the value of AI is expected to rise to more than 70 billion by 2020. And it's not just attracting the tech giants: USAA is using AI to protect its users from identity theft, and Under Armour has connected its health app, MyFitnessPal, to IBM Watson so users can get a more thorough read of their health. For designers, that represents a major business opportunity. But AI is also a challenge requiring every strength and skill they've learned and many they haven't.

THERE IS SOMETHING familiar about fears that new machines will take everyone's jobs, benefiting only a select few and upending society. Such concerns sparked furious arguments two centuries ago as industrialisation took hold in Britain. People at the time did not talk of an "industrial revolution" but of the "machinery question". First posed by the economist David Ricardo in 1821, it concerned the "influence of machinery on the interests of the different classes of society", and in particular the "opinion entertained by the labouring class, that the employment of machinery is frequently detrimental to their interests". Thomas Carlyle, writing in 1839, railed against the "demon of mechanism" whose disruptive power was guilty of "oversetting whole multitudes of workmen".

From answering queries to predicting future of your relationship, a lot is already being said and written about Artificial Intelligence (AI). We've seen movies depicting the technology like Matrix, and even Bollywood doesn't fall short of explaining what's AI, of course with a fair share of melodrama. But, what seems fascinating and equally scary is a new report talking about an AI arms race. An army of machines may be decades away, and Anja Kaspersen, Head of International Security, World Economic Forum, pointing at a survey of AI researchers by TechEmergence (via Medium) points out how it poses an array of security concerns which could be curbed by timely implementation of norms and protocols. There are many questions raised about how AI could be a life-changing and threatening factor, and what it is goes into the hands of some malicious minds.

Stress is actually a bit of a buzzword. The initial definition was "the reaction to changes", which is why you get stressed also when good things happen, hence the distinction between good stress, eustress, and bad stress, distress. Since the 90's, stress has become a synonym of the everyday hustling, describing a life style. We focus on the original definition, evaluating the user autonomic balance that can be estimated from heart rate variability (HRV). The autonomic nervous system (the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems) has a direct influence over most of our internal organs.

With the news that Magic Pony has been acquired by Twitter, we are witnessing a crucial turning point - five of the world's biggest technology companies have now purchased UK-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) companies. It is no coincidence that at the same time (1972) we saw the birth of venture capital with both Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital raising their first small venture funds – which had similar characteristics to today's emerging European VC funds: small funds, thematic focused and highly supportive of entrepreneurs. At the same time, much has been said about the flow of capital into European venture capital funds and skills these venture team now have. The Magic Pony acquisition is an important part of the story in building Europe's emerging technology industry.

Some brands don't target well enough, while others go way too far, creeping people out. With personalized marketing, striking a delicate balance is the key. Personalization is an important skill for any marketer to master, but it's also quite a difficult one. There are just so many different ways it can go wrong. If your ads don't have any personalized components, people perceive them as not being relevant enough, making them that much more likely to use an ad blocker (provided they've heard of ad blockers).

JSW Ventures would focus on providing early-stage funding to technology-enabled startups operating in the education, healthcare, financial services, SaaS (software as a service) and enterprise software space. The fund will have an initial corpus of Rs 100 crore which it will invest over a three-year period. "JSW Ventures, the venture capital arm of the JSW Group, has received the mandatory clearances from Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), paving the way for it to begin investing," a statement by JSW said. "Technology innovation is happening across sectors, from old-fashioned verticals like real estate to research-driven work being done in machine learning and artificial intelligence," said Parth Jindal, JSW Cement managing director, who would be overseeing venture capital fund. According to JSW Ventures Managing Partner Gaurav Sachdeva, over the last one year, the fund has been actively working in the startup ecosystem, evaluating companies building innovative products, services or technology.

Google's AI Beating a Go Grandmaster is a way of judging the suddenly rapid progress of artificial intelligence that may show how far these technologies have come--and how far they may go. Artificial intelligence is a futuristic technology that is working on its set of tools at present. A slew of advances has been observed in last few years: Self-driving cars that have achieved a milestone by logging over 300,000 accident-free miles and becoming officially legal in three states; IBM Watson which beat two champions of Jeopardy!; and statistical learning techniques are conducting pattern recognition on complex data sets from consumer interests to trillions of images. These developments certainly raised the number of scientists or giants taking interest in AI, which has made it essential for developers to understand the ground realities of building AI applications. Every programming language is a AI language if you are adept in it!