Google is starting a research unit in Europe focused solely on machine learning, a major branch of artificial intelligence. The Zurich-based project, announced today (June 16), will be key to the company's ambitions, as it bets big on machine learning to power its next generation of products. These include the digital assistant inside its Allo chat app, its driverless car efforts, and enhancements to its ubiquitous search engine. The new unit, called Google Research, Europe, comes at a time when the search giant is facing serious scrutiny from European authorities. The European commission has the company in its crosshairs, as it faces two antitrust charges, over a search product and Android, which could rack up billions in fines.

Do join our debate chaired by Will Hutton, author of'How Good We Can Be', on The Future with AI: Will it be good for us? The UK has a wealth of capability in AI techniques and their application, but a future with AI raises many questions. In this 90 minute debate our panel of thought leaders chaired by Will Hutton, author of'How Good We Can Be', will address your questions. They will discuss the safeguards that might be needed to ensure a responsible and ethical approach towards the applications of AI technologies. The debate will be followed by refreshments and networking.

Come to Singularity Hub for the latest from the frontiers of finance and technology as we bring you coverage of Singularity University and CNBC's Exponential Finance conference. "Technology is a double-edged sword...every technology has had its promise and peril." Appearing via a telepresence robot, Ray Kurzweil took the stage at the Exponential Finance conference to address questions posed by CNBC's Bob Pisani. Though the conversation covered a slew of topics from quantum computing to uploading the human mind, it returned repeatedly to artificial intelligence and its implications for humanity. Unphased, Kurzweil at one point stated his position succinctly: "We have a moral imperative to continue reaping the promise [of artificial intelligence] while we control the peril. I tend to be optimistic, but that doesn't mean we should be lulled into a lack of concern."

James Crowder is the chief engineer at Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services. Imagine yourself a passenger in a futuristic self-driving car. Instead of programming its navigation system, the car interacts with you in a near-human way to understand your desired destination. The car has learned your preferences for music, temperature and lighting; these are adjusted without the need to twist a knob. Two distinct paths of technological evolution are advancing technology to create this future (and more): virtual intelligence (VI) is planned, controlled and predictable; in sharp contrast, artificial intelligence (AI) is none of these.

They are all around us and we still really haven't noticed them, intelligent machines. They are chatting with us, doing research, making art, planning military strategies, controlling a lot of our transportation and sorting out what we get to read in the news. A survey carried out by the analyst firm Freeform Dynamics, examines how IT decision makers react to machines with decision making and learning capabilities it also examines the attitude towards the fast-paced adoption of intelligent machines and systems. The report looks at the positive impacts already being observed in the commercial world and the potential barriers to mainstream adoption over the coming decade. To give just one example, a fifth of respondents (20%) said increased'noise' on Although businesses are exploiting the advantages of using intelligent services, they are also aware of the unpredictable dangers they might become vulnerable to.

If there was any doubt that artificial intelligence is the future of technology, look no further than Google. The company announced the new AI research push on Thursday in a blog post. Opening as part of Google's existing Google Research center in Europe, the Machine Learning Research Group will focus on, naturally, Machine Learning, in which computers use vast amounts of data to teach themselves and build rules about the data; Natural Language Processing for speech-systems and conversational queries; and Machine Perception, which is used to understand the contents of images, sounds, music and video. This announcement comes four years after the company began aggressively pursuing machine learning technologies, three months after Google's AI beat one of the world's best Go players and just weeks after Google codified its approach to AI during its annual Google I/O developers conference. During I/O, Google unveiled Google Assistant, a voice-based digital assistant designed the take on Microsoft's Cortana, Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa.

Android co-founder Andy Rubin has spoken about how he sees artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing transforming the future of technology. At Bloomberg's Tech Conference in San Francisco today, the Google veteran focused on how AI could be applied to smartphones and other devices to completely change the way consumers use gadgets in their everyday lives. Rubin noted how new computing platforms appear every 10 to 12 years, citing MS-DOS, Windows PC and mobile – 'What's the next platform?' he asked rhetorically. 'It's about data and people training AI systems to learn.' He explained that a combination of AI and quantum computing could result in one powerful, conscious intelligence system – displacing the likes of Siri.

Exploration of ANNs for the economic purposes is described and empirically examined with the foreign exchange market data. For the experiments, panel data of the exchange rates (USD/EUR, JPN/USD, USD/GBP) are examined and optimized to be used for time-series predictions with neural networks. In this stage the input selection, in which the processing steps to prepare the raw data to a suitable input for the models are investigated. The best neural network is found with the best forecasting abilities, based on a certain performance measure. A visual graphs on the experiments data set is presented after processing steps, to illustrate that particular results.

The company this morning unveiled Tetration Analytics, which it said is designed to gather "telemetry from hardware and software sensors, and then analyse the information using advanced machine learning techniques". However, it is being heavily promoted as a kind of "time machine" for the data centre. "This is a good sign for Cisco Tetration," Warrilow said. Gartner sees Tetration occupying a space in a broader market Gartner calls IT operations analytics (ITOA).

Vine is the entertainment network where the world's stories are captured, created and remixed. Day after day, we see the impact of Vine extend beyond our phones and prove Vine is much more than just an app. The stories shared on Vine spark new trends, influence culture and reach millions of people around the world. In this role, youll be a key player in developing Vines content recommendation system. Your team will be tasked with designing systems to solicit, understand, and transform user tastes and preferences into high quality content recommendations.