A century ago, more than 60,000 tigers roamed the wild. Today, the worldwide estimate has dwindled to around 3,200. Poaching is one of the main drivers of this precipitous drop. Whether killed for skins, medicine or trophy hunting, humans have pushed tigers to near-extinction. The same applies to other large animal species like elephants and rhinoceros that play unique and crucial roles in the ecosystems where they live.

California: Internet giant Google has asserted that its Artificial Intelligence(AI) and cloud computing is the most lucrative and promising businesses in the tech industry. That AI type of service-based business is fast becoming the new way to reap profits in the tech industry, the California-based tech giant said. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence exhibited by machines or software. It is also the name of the academic field of study which studies how to create computers and computer software that are capable of intelligent behaviour.

California: Internet giant Google has asserted that its Artificial Intelligence(AI) and cloud computing is the most lucrative and promising businesses in the tech industry. That AI type of service-based business is fast becoming the new way to reap profits in the tech industry, the California-based tech giant said. "We've always been doing cloud, it's just that we've been consuming it all internally at Google. But as we have grown, really matured in how we handle our data center investments and how we can do this at scale, we have definitely crossed over to the other side to where we can thoughtfully serve external customers," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said. "We have been investing in machine learning and AI for years, but I think we're at an exceptionally interesting tipping point where these technologies are really taking off. That is very, very applicable to businesses as well. So thoughtfully doing that externally we view as a big differentiator we have over others," Pichai added.

Robots are increasingly becoming more important. Not only are they being used in areas such as medicine, agriculture and manufacturing, they are now also capable of driving cars and piloting drones. However, their increasing use and expanding capabilities have significant implications. On 21 April Parliament's legal affairs committee held a hearing to discuss with experts the issues involved, such as safety, liability and risk management. More and more appliances are now able to operate interactively and autonomously to some extent.

Ovo Energy CTO Mariano Albera has built up the technology team at the utilities company from just three engineers to a unit of 100, embedding a culture shift here Ovo is a tech company first and an energy company second. How are you influencing the products, experience and services your organisation offers to its customers? Technology is at the heart of everything we do at Ovo Energy. For the past two years we have been transforming ourselves to be a Technology and Digitally driven company, which means we drive most projects and digital products directly from the Technology team and with a Digital Customer first focus. How as CIO have you affected cultural change and / or behaviour in your organisation and to what extent?

Online channels have expanded the marketer's tool kit and as a result, brands have immersed themselves in consumers' day-to-day lives. According to our Digital Connections research, 80% of European consumers think the internet is a great place to find new brands, but more than half of consumers think there is too much choice available. With so many brands competing for consumers' attention, marketers need to ensure they are reaching the right people, at the right time and on the right device. To help marketers quickly and accurately find new customers in an increasingly complex marketplace we have launched a new solution, TD ENGAGE, which works by combining data with artificial intelligence and advanced programmatic targeting. Identifying and acquiring new customers has always been a costly challenge for marketers.

Alibaba has invested some serious dollars in their AI program, and as an e-retail platform it's no surprise that cranky customers are one of their top concerns. The company is now using audio speech recognition to guess just how angry a customer is over anything from a botched product to a bungled order. "Speech recognition will enable [Alibaba] to tell [us what] our customer's emotions are like, and how angry [they are]. Then our customer service will be able to react to the customers accordingly, with the help of data derived from speech recognition," Wanli Min, Senior staff data scientist in Alibaba Cloud said in Cloud Computing Conference held in Shenzhen on Wednesday. Speech recognition is the next step of Alibaba's AI development plan.

"Data-Driven Thinking" is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today's column is written by Alastair Boyle, global client partner and head of strategy at Essence. You might be surprised to hear these words in the same sentence, but compassion has been a core concept in advertising ever since it emerged as a specialist practice in the '40s. And now we're increasingly relying on artificial intelligence (AI) to help us be compassionate. Compassion is about feeling empathy with another's need state and attempting to meet those needs.

A Google empire built on search shifted attention on Thursday to high-speed Internet networks, 360-degree video broadcasting and "other bets" as parent company Alphabet logged disappointing earnings. Alphabet said net income hit 4.2 billion in the first three months of this year, but shares sank more than five percent to 714 in after-market trades that followed release of the report. The earnings per share fell 46 cents short of analysts' expectations. Revenue in the quarter rose to nearly 20.3 billion compared to 17.26 billion in the same period a year earlier. The results "represent a tremendous start to the year," said Alphabet chief financial officer Ruth Porat.

"This project has been a lot of fun for us," says Dr. Guy Yachdav, who lead the class and was in charge of the project. "In its daily work, our research group focuses on answering complex biological questions using data mining and machine learning algorithms. For this project we used similar techniques. "Only this time the subject matter was a popular TV show. The epic scale of the worlds created by George R. R. Martin provides an almost endless resource of raw multi-dimensional data.