The true value of the Internet of Things is when it is used in conjunction with autonomous devices and machine learning, according to SAS' chief analytics officer for Australia and New Zealand, Evan Stubbs. Speaking at the SAS Analytics Insights event in Sydney yesterday, he said that IoT is just a small part of the "bigger revolution that's going on", which includes big data, analytics, machine learning and automation. "The Internet of Things in isolation is really boring at the end of the day," he said. "The exciting thing about the Internet of Things is the fact that it can create an entire army of autonomous devices linked to a central intelligence that can make decisions for us. "So the fact that your toaster has an IP address – who cares?

There is a difference between knowledge and understanding. Knowledge typically comes down to knowing facts while understanding is the application of knowledge to the mastery of systems. You can know a lot while understanding very little. Just as an example, IBM's Watson artificial intelligence system that defeated the TV Jeopardy champs a few years ago knew all there was to know about Jeopardy questions but didn't really understand anything. Ask Watson to apply to removing your appendix its knowledge of hundreds of medical questions and you'd be disappointed and probably dead.

The first wave of robots taking over human jobs is upon us. Apple Inc. AAPL, 1.76% supplier Foxconn Technology Co. 2354, -0.41% has replaced 60,000 human workers with robots in a single factory, according to a report in the South China Morning Post, initially published over the weekend. This is part of a massive reduction in headcount across the entire Kunshan region in China's Jiangsu province, in which many Taiwanese manufacturers base their Chinese operations. Roughly 600 companies are reportedly looking to reduce headcount with robots, as part of an effort to accelerate growth and reduce costs, according to the Chinese newspaper, which cited data from the Kunshan government. Last year, 35 Taiwanese companies, including Foxconn, spent a total of 4 billion yuan ( 610 million) on artificial intelligence as part of this initiative, according to the report.

From healthcare to agriculture to energy, AI has the power to radically transform the biggest industries on earth. Speaking on Tuesday at the EmTechDIGITAL 2016 conference at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco, a panel of business leaders explored how, and why, AI can make an impact. The panel included Anthony Goldbloom, co-founder and CEO of Kaggle; Naveen Rao, CEO of Nervana; Tye Brady, chief technologist of Amazon Robotics; Erik Andrejko, vice president of science for The Climate Corporation; and Colin Parris, vice president of GE Software Research--a mix of startups as well as business giants. Here's how each company sees AI changing each industry. Goldbloom is head of "The world's largest community of data scientists"--to be exact, there are more than 550,00 data scientists involved, which is a quarter of the world's total population.

We've seen a big rise of apps and bots, and a lot of them have something in common besides being based on artificial intelligence and machine learning: they are written for English-speaking users.

Google DeepDream didn't just create a bunch of trippy, fascinating, slightly schizophrenic images -- it also inspired an entirely new research project within Google, and it's called Google Magenta. Starting the first of June, a small team of Google researchers will use the company's TensorFlow AI platform to develop an AI artist capable of creating its own visual art. The resulting artwork could eventually be made public through an app where anyone can browse creations as imagined by machines. Google Magenta was recently announced by researcher Douglas Eck, one of the individuals taking part in the program. Speaking at the music and tech festival Moogfest, Eck said that DeepDream directly inspired Magenta, which will also apparently be used to create some music, though details on that are vague.

Google Director of Research and renowned artificial intelligence (AI) expert Peter Norvig, presented an entirely different side of AI and machine learning at the EmTech Digital conference. He compared traditional software programming to machine learning to highlight the new challenges of debugging and verifying systems programmed with machine learning do what they are designed to do. Traditional software programming uses Boolean-based logic that can be tested to confirm that the software does what it was designed to do, using tools and methodologies established over the last few decades. In contrast, machine learning is a black box programming method in which computers program themselves with data, producing probabilistic logic that diverges from the true-and-false tests used to verify systems programmed with traditional Boolean logic methods. "The problem here is the methodology for scaling this [machine learning verification] up to a whole industry is still in progress. We have been doing this for a while; we have some clues for how to make it work, but we don't have the decades of experience that we have in developing and verifying regular software."

A lot of tech-smart people think artificial intelligence (AI) might pose a threat to the existence of humankind. Others think it's not something to worry about, or not for a very long time, if ever. Operating on the reasonable assumption that what happens tomorrow depends on what we do today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is holding public workshops in four cities to look at the state of AI and to look ahead at potential benefits and problems. What I heard is that what happens with AI is about us -- how we design it, manage it and use it. We have to be accountable.

So we read about Artificial Intelligence as a whole. We came across the much hyped and even more researched field of Natural Language Processing (referred as NLP from hereon) and the importance it plays in this digital era's ultimate dream of automation. But what are the possible ways in which this working of NLP can be actually put to use? A question we are sure a lot of you must have across with. 'How does it help any of us'?

In the 1990s, fashion's relationship with robots was the stuff of fantasy. On the runway of Alexander McQueen's imaginative Spring/Summer 1999 show, two robotic arms spray-painted a white dress worn by Shalom Harlow. Today, the industry's relationship with automation is much more practical. In the distribution centres of e-commerce giants like the Yoox Net-a-Porter Group and Amazon (which, in 2012, paid 775 million to acquire Kiva Systems, a manufacturer of robotic fulfilment systems used by Gap, Gilt Groupe and Saks 5th Avenue) software-controlled robots routinely navigate giant warehouses, picking and transporting inventory faster and more accurately than humans, enabling services like same-day delivery. "Automated storage and retrieval systems provide high storage density as well as inventory accuracy and management, yet require a smaller footprint," explains Steve Crease, director of operations at Yoox Net-a-Porter Group, which uses ASRS to deliver its "key service level" of same-day delivery.