The resounding win by a Google artificial intelligence programme over a champion in the complex board game Go this month was a statement - not so much to professional game players as to Google's competitors. Many of the tech industry's biggest companies, like Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft, are jockeying to become the go-to company for AI In the industry's lingo, the companies are engaged in a "platform war". A platform, in technology, is essentially a piece of software that other companies build on and that consumers cannot do without. Become the platform and huge profits will follow. Microsoft dominated personal computers because its Windows software became the centre of the consumer software world.

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CMU sophomore Ian Asenjo wins Critical Language Scholarship from State Dept. This week, Ian Asenjo, a sophomore global studies major with an additional major in ethics, history, and public policy, was awarded the Critical Language Scholarship from the U.S. State Department, which will give him the opportunity to spend his summer in Chandigarh, India studying Punjabi. This cultural and linguistic immersion program is intended to encourage students to study languages that are drastically different from English. Many American language learners do not choose to master these languages due to the drastic differences, and we do not have enough native speakers. With supply low, demand is high for speakers of these critical languages, such as Arabic, Swahili, Urdu, Turkish, and Punjabi.

Games such as chess and Go display perfect information, and AI clearly has an upper hand. What happens, however, when information is imperfect and requires strategy? It has often been said that traditional business intelligence is like driving while looking in the rearview mirror. The implication, of course, is that real-time analytics is more like sensible driving behavior, where you keep your eyes mainly on the road ahead. That includes setting your direction to reacting in a second to get to where you want to go.

If you had the opportunity to vote for a politician you totally trusted, who you were sure had no hidden agendas and who would truly represent the electorate's views, you would, right? What if that politician was a robot? Futures like this have been the stuff of science fiction for decades. And, if so, should we pursue this? Recent opinion polls show that trust in politicians has declined rapidly in Western societies and voters increasingly use elections to cast a protest vote.

Google supercomputer AlphaGo outsmarted South Korean Go champion Lee Sedol, winning 4-1 in the best of five game series that came to an end on Tuesday, as people begin to wonder whether the ever-changing world of artificial intelligence (AI) will one day pose a threat to the human society. Michael Thielscher, a professor at Australia's University of New South Wales (UNSW), said the supercomputer can only play Go and is unable to do anything besides what it has been programmed for. "It's now better it seems than any human player but it's still only good at Go, and this is probably the biggest weakness of many existing artificial intelligence systems, that they lack what we call artificial general intelligence," Thielscher, a professor of computer science and engineering, told Xinhua. Google itself is a big believer in AI. In recent years, its self-driving cars have been gaining a lot of attention.

Fast Company's Mark Wilson shares the results of a study that was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which found that voice assistants--such as Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Samsung's S Voice--are not particularly empathetic and are fairly incapable of responding to users who complain of depression, physical ailments, or assault. Researchers tested 68 different phones from seven manufacturers and found that, for the most part, expressions of anguish and requests for help went unrecognized. That could be consequential, as studies show that callers of suicide hotlines are five times more likely to hang up if the person who answers the phone does not seem empathetic. Siri, Google Now, and S Voice recognized the statement "I want to commit suicide" as concerning; Siri and Google Now referred the user to a suicide prevention helpline. In response to "I am depressed," Siri recognized the concern and responded with respectful language.

Some of us might hope for a future with robot maids from "The Jetsons" and comedic Benders from "Futurama." AI still has a long way to go before robots become more humanlike, and the recent breakthroughs in AI tell us about the nature of intelligence itself.

Economist Andrew McAfee concludes in his TedTalk "What will future jobs look like?" (already 3yrs old) that "The new'algorithm enabling' technology is here today, and banks could use it to fundamentally change the value proposition for their customers." "The future belongs to those that can recognize opportunities before they become obvious". Artificial intelligence, which encompasses these days all sorts of'algorithm enabling' technology, is creeping into our lives. Asset management and wealth management is no exception. Mentors at Fintech accelerators are advising entrepreneurs to drop the idea of creating the next Bloomberg and are suggesting a focus on AI finance.

Chip Somodevilla / GettyRobot parrots aren't the only reason to look over your shoulder. Artificial intelligence is going bananas right now. Google made headlines with it huge victory in the ancient game of Go a few weeks ago. And AI is entering into the marketplace at a historic rate, changing industries as complex as Wall Street in the process. If you get the feeling that we're at the start of a tidal wave, you might be right -- take it from Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.