SAN FRANCISCO – At the top of the corporate world, Apple and Google are in a back-and-forth battle to be No. 1. It is not clear which of the two Silicon Valley giants will emerge on top in a contest that highlights the contrast of very different business models. Apple then regained, lost and recovered the leader position in May in a battle that appears set to continue for some time. As of the end of Friday, Apple was worth some 522 billion, to 496 billion for Alphabet. The two companies have both been hugely profitable in recent years, for different reasons. Apple has delivered a line of must-have iPhones and other gadgets that have set trends around the world but now "appears to be a little bit immobile," says Roger Kay, analyst at Endpoint Technologies Associates.

Ever since Charles Babbage's conceptual, unrealised Analytical Engine in the 1830s, computer science has been trying very hard to race ahead of its time. Particularly over the last 75 years, there have been many astounding developments – the first electronic programmable computer, the first integrated circuit computer, the first microprocessor. But the next anticipated step may be the most revolutionary of all. Quantum computing is the technology that many scientists, entrepreneurs and big businesses expect to provide a, well, quantum leap into the future. If you've never heard of it there's a helpful video doing the social media rounds that's got a couple of million hits on YouTube.

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Our Digital & Social Media Coordinator Lucy Woods speaks with Neil MacDonald who recently joined Speechmatics as Chief Revenue Officer. Having recently announced Speechmatics to feature as a finalist in the Fast and Furious Pitch Off (press release here) at Venturefest East, we wanted to find out more about this rising start-up. Speechmatics is the culmination of 3 decades of advanced Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence research conducted by our founder Dr Tony Robinson. We apply the latest research in Neural Networks to the task of understanding speech. We provide an automatic speech recognition technology that unlocks the data contained within what we say to each other verbally.

This year's I/O was a big one. Among other things, the Mountain View, California company announced its Daydream VR platform for Android, an evolution of the Google Now assistant in the form of an AI-powered "Google Assistant," a couple of new messaging apps and some hardware to play the part of debuting the Assistant, a new version of Android Wear, and more. The keynote had this overarching theme that Google is no longer just a company that does search and ads. Now, Google is diving head first into artificial intelligence and machine learning, and most of the things that were announced in the keynote fell into that narrative for the most part. This is the stuff that's not coming out for at least half a year.

This year's I/O was a big one. Among other things, the Mountain View, California company announced its Daydream VR platform for Android, an evolution of the Google Now assistant in the form of an AI-powered "Google Assistant," a couple of new messaging apps and some hardware to play the part of debuting the Assistant, a new version of Android Wear, and more. The keynote had this overarching theme that Google is no longer just a company that does search and ads. Now, Google is diving head first into artificial intelligence and machine learning, and most of the things that were announced in the keynote fell into that narrative for the most part. This is the stuff that's not coming out for at least half a year.

Back in 2015, SAP announced Digital Boardroom a solution for simplifying the performance for real-time reports across business areas. The solution, which is built on SAP Analytic Cloud, relies on data from both external sources and the featured S/4HANA platform. In this context, business application journey has not finished yet. SAP CEO Bill McDermontt considers more is coming and released a prediction on the next 5 to 10 years, which will generate a hype around especially on machine learning, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality. Considering the fact S/4HANA platform has already added more than 3200 clients around the world, I believe there is an important market evolution ahead.

Baidu is planning to shift its focus to Artificial Intelligence (AI).(Photo Baidu Inc. is planning to overhaul its business model, shifting from its current search oriented model to one that focuses on'artificial intelligence.' Baidu CEO Li Yanhong said in a company's internal letter on Tuesday that this change will help the company to develop new products in areas such as search, automatic translation, and driverless vehicles. Industry observers say that the shift in business model will likely affect the company's short-term profitability. Li also promised to put more emphasis on user experience and set up a department to weed out any action or behavior that damages its user' experience.

Brian Christian is the author of The Most Human Human, which was named a Wall Street Journal bestseller and a New Yorker favourite book of 2011, and has been translated into ten languages. He is the coauthor, with Tom Griffiths, of Algorithms to Live By, available Spring 2016. The Most Human Human is a provocative, exuberant, and profound exploration of the ways in which computers are reshaping our ideas of what it means to be human. He has just released his latest book, Algorithms to Live By. Co-written with cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths, the book offers a fascinating exploration of how computer algorithms can be applied to our everyday lives, helping to solve common decision-making problems and illuminate the workings of the human mind.

Everywhere you turn these days there are more and more automated processes appearing all the time. From automatic vacuum cleaners to self-order counters at restaurants, to cars that automatically park themselves, robots are all around us in one way or another and physics is no different. In using the latest artificial intelligence to do the same tasks as people, we are not only saving time and money but saving on resources too. A recent physics experiment developed by physicists from The Australian National University (ANU) and the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy (UNSW ADFA) was shown to be completed by artificial intelligence (AI) just as a human would. The test was to create a replica of "Laser Beam" experiment that won the 2001 Nobel Prize and produced an extremely cold gas trapped in a laser beam (known as Bose-Einstein condensate) and the incredible AI literally taught itself how to do the experiment, from start to finish, in under one hour!