This year would seem to be the year of'Cognitive Computing'. The word'cognitive' relates to conscious mental activities, such as thinking, understanding, learning, and remembering. At a deeper level it comprises of such things as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning(ML), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Natural Language Processing(NLP) and a host of other things. If this is related back to the previous definition of cognitive (thinking, understanding, learning, and remembering) you can see that you can tick most of those boxes, with a big question mark over'thinking'. Why is Cognitive Computing important?

As a masters student exploring artificial intelligence at Stanford University almost 30 years ago, Reed Hastings no doubt had an eye on where the future might take him. But of all the scenarios he imagined for his career, it's highly unlikely that any of them included the one that unfolded this past week: strolling the red carpet in the south of France, rubbing shoulders with some of the country's most glamorous actors and actresses, and fielding questions about his role as a global media kingpin. It's a future the CEO of Netflix says he couldn't even have predicted five years ago, when the company was still primarily shipping DVDs to customers in the U.S. while grappling with its emerging video streaming service. Even now, the Internet continues to scramble the game so fast that Hastings said his company is racing to keep up with all the changes. When asked, he didn't even want to hazard a guess as to where Netflix might be five years from now. "We don't really know," Hastings said.

In the latest sign that the use of artificial intelligence may eventually become common in Big Law, Baker & Hostetler has emerged as the first law firm to make public that it has licensed the artificial intelligence product developed by ROSS Intelligence for bankruptcy matters. Marketed as "the world's first artificially intelligent attorney," ROSS Intelligence uses International Business Machine's Watson technology to allow users to ask natural language questions and get answers. The process not only constantly monitors the law, but more importantly uses "machine learning" capabilities to continuously improve its search results. ROSS Intelligence CEO and co-founder Andrew Arruda said that a few other firms have also signed licenses, and those announcements will come shortly. Arruda first mentioned that Baker & Hostetler had signed on as a client at Vanderbilt Law School's Watson, Esq.

"AI and machine learning will undoubtedly alter both the headcount and the nature of skills required in the industry. A significant minority of survey respondents fear the effects on the workforce will be negative within the next few years. But wholesale displacement of humans is for the longer term – nearly seven in ten believe AI will bring complete or substantial change to their own jobs over the next 15 years…" A while ago, I wrote that AI and machine learning was more and more used in our daily lives – but that finance had so far failed to embrace these techniques. Euromoney Thought Leadership just published a very interesting report, where they surveyed 400 senior managers in finance and analysed their views about AI. I was actually slightly suprised by the results: the majority of participants thought that the main impact would be on 1) trading strategies, 2) credit scoring and 3) compliance.

The first 1,000-robot flash mob has assembled at Harvard University. "Form a sea-star shape," directs a computer scientist, sending the command to 1,024 little'bots simultaneously via an infrared light. The robots begin to blink at one another, and then gradually arrange themselves into a five-pointed star. The "K" stands for Kilobots, the name given to these extremely simple robots, each just a few centimeters across, standing on three pinlike legs. Instead of one highly complex robot, a "kilo" of robots collaborate, providing a simple platform for the enactment of complex behaviors.

Insurers are increasingly under pressure to cut costs and offer better digital services to their customers. While core systems replacement and modernization activities close the gap to a degree, carriers are looking to a range of automation technologies to improve service, reduce costs and increase profits. One type of technology insurers are examining is artificial intelligence. This is a broad and decades-old discipline covering a range of technologies where machines demonstrate "intelligence." A challenge in artificial intelligence and psychology disciplines has been defining intelligence.

"I don't just want them to catch up," she says of her students. "I want them to see mathematics as relevant and beautiful. I want them to be able to imagine a (successful) life for themselves." At 35, Nickels has earned a doctoral degree in mathematics education and is usingrobotics to help kids with cancer, sickle-cell disease and HIV-AIDS. She wants to both develop their intellect under the most challenging of circumstances – including, often, in the hospital between surgery and chemotherapy – and to give them back a sense of control over their destinies.

It's been rumoured for months, but on Friday, Electronic Arts confirmed that the next title in its Battlefield series of military shooters will be set during the first world war. While the rival Call of Duty titles have been marching ever further into the future, Battlefield 1 is an attempt to re-engage with fans of the genre, who fell for titles like Battlefield 1942, Medal of Honor and the original Call of Duty games with their depiction of historically authentic scenarios. "This was the dawn of all-out war, the switch from the old world to the new world," says creative director Lars Gustavsson. "Battlefield has always been about the land, sea and air war experience. This was something we had to do." According to Gustavsson, this project has been bubbling under for several years, though when Battlefield 4 came to a close, it gave the team the opportunity to start on something new.

Researchers often need to go beyond Google to find the kind of medical journal articles and flat data files necessary for their work. But many journal articles are locked away in databases like JSTOR or PubMed, which don't have the reliable search capabilities of an engine like Google -- so researchers have to waste time tracking them down. Enter Helix, a word processor plug-in created at this year's Disrupt NY Hackathon by Paul Burke and Neil Krishnan. Helix uses machine learning to suggest citations and relevant research as you write. Helix scans a writer's text as he or she types and automatically pulls in recommendations for relevant journal articles, news and Wikipedia pages.

"You should be able to message a business in the same way you'd message a friend," said Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook's F8 developer conference last month as he laid out his vision for the social network's future. Bots took front and centre of his 10-year road map – and we're not talking spammy Twitter accounts here. Instead, brands are increasingly experimenting with chatbots to usher in a new era of'conversational commerce', to use a term coined by Uber's Chris Messina. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), Facebook's chatbots will allow customers to interact with partner brands like KLM and 1-800 Flowers inside its Messenger platform to review orders, make customer service enquiries and more. The social giant's long-anticipated foray into AI will help it gain ground on messaging rivals, such as Kik and Chinese giant WeChat, which are investing in their very own branded bot armies.