It's no secret that much of the wisdom of the world lies in unstructured data, or the kind that's not necessarily quantifiable and tidy. So it is in cybersecurity, and now IBM is putting Watson to work to make that knowledge more accessible. Towards that end, IBM Security on Tuesday announced a new year-long research project through which it will collaborate with eight universities to help train its Watson artificial intelligence system to tackle cybercrime. Knowledge about threats is often hidden in unstructured sources such as blogs, research reports and documentation, said Kevin Skapinetz, director of strategy for IBM Security. "Let's say tomorrow there's an article about a new type of malware, then a bunch of follow-up blogs," Skapinetz explained.

CEO and co-founder of Viv Dag Kittlaus speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2016 at Brooklyn Cruise Terminal on May 9, 2016 in New York City. Apple's Siri co-creators, Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer, introduced their newly designed virtual assistant AI Viv, dubbed "The Global Brain." Kittlaus and Cheyer's latest venture in artificial intelligence research proved a rewarding call as AI Viv impressed the public. AI Viv goes beyond Siri's boundaries and performs various tasks that involve third-party exchange and transactions. While Apple's virtual assistant provided reliable in referencing information from the world wide web, users hoped to eventually see more.

Picking the winner from the 20 horse field at the Kentucky Derby is hard. So hard, in fact, that no expert polled by SBNation was able to do it. That's why the holy grail at the racetrack is the Superfecta, where bettors are asked not only to pick the winner, but the second, third and fourth horses to finish the Derby. This is fiendishly difficult task that, not surprisingly, defeated every expert at Churchill Downs, where no one predicted the top four horses correctly, much less in the correct order. In the world of AI, even Bing Predicts blew it, picking only heavily favored Nyquist to win the race, but missing the other 3 picks entirely.

Artificial Intelligence is the new technology catchphrase. While nobody knows the ultimate power and the effects of AI's workings at this point, many tech startups and big corporations are investing in this technology. Tesla's Elon Musk is one of the few to raise concerns over AI. Not long ago, he famously said "AI might threaten humanity," if used in the wrong way. However, Microsoft U.K.'s Chief Envisioning Officer Dave Coplin sees AI in a totally different light.

There is no disputing the fact that robots are having an impact on jobs, whether positively or negatively for humans. With the advancements in machine learning, it is no longer routine jobs that are being highlighted of being at risk of automation. Automation in high-paying jobs may not replace humans entirely, but can cut costs and free up time for the human to focus on other aspects of their job. One such area that is showing extensive progress in automating certain roles is in the medical field, everything from diagnosing patients, taking blood, performing surgeries and mixing medications. This market snapshot looks at the automation risks that face the medical field over the next few decades and whether this automation will help or hinder the doctor's role.

Losing jobs to technology is nothing new. Since the industrial revolution, roles that were once exclusively performed by humans have been slowly but steadily replaced by some form of automated machinery. Even in cases where the human worker is not completely replaced by a machine, humans have learnt to rely on a battery of machinery to be more efficient and accurate.

Genome-wide gene deletion studies have shown that a small fraction of genes in a genome are indispensable to the survival or reproduction of an organism (Winzeler et al., 1999; Kamath et al., 2003). These genes are referred as essential genes, and essential proteins are the products of essential genes. The deletion of such essential genes will result in lethality or infertility. Since being essential is highly dependent on the circumstances in which an organism lives, recently systematic attempts have been made to identify those genes that are absolutely required to maintain life, provided that all nutrients are available (Zhang and Lin, 2009). Such experiments have led to the conclusion that the absolutely required number of genes for a bacteria is on the order of about 250–300, which encode proteins to maintain a central metabolism, replicate DNA, translate genes into proteins, maintain a basic cellular structure, and mediate transport processes into and out of the cell.

Pianists, surgeons, typists, gamers and baton-twirlers all learn to use their hands more skillfully as they ply their trade, but what about robots? Researchers at the University of Washington say they've developed a five-fingered robot hand that's more capable than ours, and can learn to handle objects better and better without human intervention. The ADROIT Manipulation Platform draws upon machine learning and real-world feedback to improve its performance, rather than relying on its programmers to specify its every move. "Such dynamic dexterous manipulation with free objects has never been demonstrated before even in simulation, let along the physical hardware results we have," Vikash Kumar, a UW doctoral student in computer science and engineering, told GeekWire in an email. Kumar and his colleagues discuss the project in a paper to be presented May 17 at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

On the Internet, "nobody knows you're a dog," as the old meme goes, and today, the same can increasingly be said of robots. There are already scheduling robots that are virtually indistinguishable from humans, and recently students at the Georgia Institute of Technology learned that "Jill Watson" -- a teaching assistant they had relied upon all semester -- was in fact artificially intelligent. "The world is full of online classes, and they're plagued with low retention rates," said Ashok Goel, a Georgia Tech professor who teaches a class entitled Knowledge-Based Artificial Intelligence. "One of the main reasons many students drop out is because they don't receive enough teaching support. We created Jill as a way to provide faster answers and feedback."

In the telemarketing space, it's not always easy to see the innovation that leads to better performance. For the consumer, the word doesn't always leave a happy impression. For the business user, the thought of receiving a call means another thing that takes away the focus from the day. But in reality, we want to be sold to when the offering is timely and relevant. Does telemarketing software offer this insight, or is it time for something bigger?