Here's what it seems like when artificial intelligence learns to enjoy "Ode To Joy" in the style of EDM, Brazilian guitar, and The Beatles' "Penny Lane". The Sony Laptop or computer Science Laboratory in Paris was challenged to reorchestrate the concept music of the European Union. Employing the max entropy technique of equipment studying, they taught a laptop how to acknowledge the core features of various types of audio. Sony's CSL believes their system could be a stepping stone to creating AI that can compose authentic melodies we discover catchy and memorable. If you think the radio seems like audio manufactured by computer systems, just wait a couple decades for cyberBach.

Google's DeepMind artificial intelligence (AI) research group today announced that for all future research it will use TensorFlow, a machine learning library that Google open-sourced last year, instead of Torch, an older framework. The move suggests that some of Google's brightest AI minds are convinced of the promise of Google's own open source software; TensorFlow is now good enough for DeepMind. "We believe that TensorFlow will enable us to execute our ambitious research goals at much larger scale and an even faster pace, providing us with a unique opportunity to further accelerate our research programme," Koray Kavukcuoglu, a research scientist at Google DeepMind and one of Torch's core contributors, wrote in a blog post. This is important because of DeepMind's considerable capabilities -- earlier this year its AlphaGo AI player of the ancient Chinese board game Go beat top-ranked Go player Lee Sedol. To be sure, DeepMind is not Google's only AI research unit.

Taking a break from the tradition where Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin shared the company's progress and vision every year, this time it was Indian-origin CEO Sundar Pichai who updated the world with some of Google's achievements and key highlights. In a letter posted on official Google blog on Friday, Pichai reiterated "to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". Touching upon artificial intelligence (AI), powerful computing platforms and cloud, he stressed that mobile phone has become the remote control for daily lives and people are communicating, consuming, educating and entertaining themselves on smartphones "in ways unimaginable just a few years ago". "Search -- the very core of Google, comes from mobile and an increasing number of them via voice. The company made this easy and via Google Now, user can get information like the weather in your upcoming vacation spot," he posted.

Taking a break from the tradition where Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin shared the company's progress and vision every year, this time it was Indian-origin CEO Sundar Pichai who updated the world with some of Google's achievements and key highlights. In a letter posted on official Google blog on Friday, Pichai reiterated "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". Touching upon artificial intelligence (AI), powerful computing platforms and cloud, he stressed that mobile phone has become the remote control for daily lives and people are communicating, consuming, educating and entertaining themselves on smartphones "in ways unimaginable just a few years ago". "Search -- the very core of Google, comes from mobile and an increasing number of them via voice. The company made this easy and via Google Now, user can get information like the weather in your upcoming vacation spot," he posted.

When it comes to the potential impact AI could bring, mass-unemployment is probably a more realistic concern for us than, say, the Skynet (the murderous AI system of the Terminator film franchise), says Martin Ford, a technology entrepreneur and author of two books about how tomorrow's technology might give a fatal blow to the social structure that we thrive on today. If we look far enough into the future, Ford says, few jobs would be safe from being automated, as algorithms with deep learning capabilities would take over not only entry-level jobs, but also those requiring years of training and experience. "In terms of jobs [that may be done by AI]… the important word there is'predictable'," Ford says. "If another smart person could study a record of everything you've done in the past in your job and based on that, learn how to do your job, then someday, maybe a machine might be able to do the same thing." Ford's warning of a jobless future is not entirely new; and as always, the idea is controversial because opponents argue that historically, workers have survived rounds of technological revolution and they always managed to find other jobs in newly emerged industries.

Here's what it sounds like when artificial intelligence learns to play "Ode To Joy" in the style of EDM, Brazilian guitar, and The Beatles' "Penny Lane". The Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris was challenged to reorchestrate the theme song of the European Union. Using the max entropy approach of machine learning, they taught a computer how to recognize the core features of different types of music. Sony's CSL believes their program could be a stepping stone to making AI that can compose original melodies we find catchy and memorable. If you think the radio sounds like music made by computers, just wait a few years for cyberBach.

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Chat bots are the tech du jour, and for good reason. No one likes the frustrating parts of customer service: the long hold times, multiple transfers, repeated requests for information, and unresolved issues. Bots offer the promise of personalized service -- at lower cost and larger scale -- by removing humans from the equation. There's huge potential upside for brands and consumers alike, especially now that Facebook is in the game, bringing with it the developer ecosystem and user base to make chatbots mainstream. That said, we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking chatbots, and more broadly, AI, will replace humans -- despite dystopian fantasies that machines will soon rule the world.

Speaking after the first day of the ICT meeting, Takaichi said she introduced eight basic principles Tokyo believes important when developing computer science that gives machines human-like intelligence, and that she was generally supported in calling for further discussion. The eight principles include making AI networks controllable by human beings and respect for human dignity and privacy. "The development of AI is expected to progress at a tremendous pace of speed, and it should be amazing technology that does not give anxiety to people," the minister of internal affairs and communications told reporters, noting the need to deepen international discussion about establishing a basic set of rules. The first G-7 ICT ministerial meeting in nearly two decades comes at a time when cyberattacks have become a global reality and the development of such potentially revolutionary technologies as artificial intelligence and the "Internet of Things" (IoT) -- the concept of connecting various products to the Internet -- continues apace. With cyberattacks having become a global reality, participants from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States discussed at the G-7 meeting ways to utilize advances in the field to drive economic growth while ensuring data security.

Online harassment is a serious issue, one that the engineers and designers behind the keyboard don't always think about when building software. Machine learning is become more prevalent but as more technology companies take advantage of it, they risk alienating their users even more by presenting content that isn't actually relevant. It's important to remember that on the other side of the cloud is a human. At the 2016 Collision Conference, speaker Pamela Pavliscak, founder of Change Sciences, thinks that explosion of machine learning carries with it the risk that companies will end up doing a disservice to their users. People feel like they're trapped in the filter bubble -- that they can't get out, that they're trying to expand their point of view (sometimes).