Artificial intelligence, popularly referred to as AI, is no longer seen only in movies and TV series. Many of us are already taking advantage of it through mobile apps and smartphones. AI specifically refers to the enhanced ability that a piece of software may have, where it can understand specific information, add contextual knowledge to it and suggest responses based on that. For example, the suggestion about which content to view on YouTube has an element of AI working in the background. Available by default in many Android smartphones, Google Photos uses AI and machine learning to identify objects or human faces in a photo and club ones with common elements and the same faces into specific folders without the user's intervention.

Stanford University has invited leading thinkers from several institutions to begin a 100-year effort to study and anticipate how the effects of artificial intelligence will ripple through every aspect of how people work, live and play. This effort, called the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence, or AI100, is the brainchild of computer scientist and Stanford alumnus Eric Horvitz, who, among other credits, is a former president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. In that capacity, Horvitz convened a conference in 2009 at which top researchers considered advances in artificial intelligence and its influences on people and society, a discussion that illuminated the need for continuing study of AI's long-term implications. Now, together with Russ Altman, a professor of bioengineering and of computer science at Stanford, Horvitz has formed a committee that will select a panel to begin a series of periodic studies on how AI will affect automation, national security, psychology, ethics, law, privacy, democracy and other issues. "Artificial intelligence is one of the most profound undertakings in science, and one that will affect every aspect of human life," said Stanford President John Hennessy, who helped initiate the project.

SAN FRANCISCO – Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt says artificial intelligence is key to advances in diverse areas such as healthcare and datacenter design and that security concerns related to it are somewhat misguided. In a wide-ranging on-stage conversation here at the RSA Security conference with Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of The Great A.I. Awakening, Schmidt shared his insights from decades of work related to AI (he studied AI as a PhD student 40 years ago) and why the technology seems to finally be hitting its stride. In fact, last year Google CEO Sundar Pichai said AI is what helps the search giant build better products over time. "We will move from a mobile-first to an AI-first world," he said. Asked about that, Schmidt said that Google is still very much focused on mobile advances.

Mumbai, January 27, 2017: HDFC Bank Ltd., today announced the launch of IRA, its interactive humanoid, at the Kamala Mills branch in Mumbai. IRA, which stands for Intelligent Robotic Assistant, will help branch staff in servicing customers. With this launch, HDFC Bank becomes the first bank in the country to introduce a humanoid for customer service. Developed using Robotics and Artificial Intelligence technologies, IRA will be positioned near the Welcome Desk, where it will greet customers and guide them to the relevant counter in the branch such as Cash Deposit, Foreign Exchange, Loans, among others in the first phase. After the customer selects an option, IRA will offer to guide the customer to the respective counter, by displaying'Take Me There' on the screen.

The police body camera industry is the latest to jump on the artificial intelligence bandwagon, bringing new powers and privacy concerns to a controversial technology bolstered by the need to hold police accountable after numerous high-profile killings of unarmed black citizens. Now, that tech is about to get smarter. Last week, Taser, the stun gun company that has recently become an industry leader in body-mounted cameras, announced the creation of its own in-house artificial intelligence division. The new unit will utilize the company's acquisition of two AI-focused firms: Dextro, a New York-based computer vision startup, and Misfit, another computer vision company previously owned by the watch manufacturer Fossil. Taser says the newly formed division will develop AI-powered tech specifically aimed at law enforcement, using automation and machine learning algorithms to let cops search for people and objects in video footage captured by on-body camera systems.

It's no wonder titans of tech are locked in an epic battle of the bots, racing furiously to produce the best virtual assistant. Thanks to the sudden acceleration of artificial intelligence and advancements in speech recognition and big-data storage, the technology behind virtual assistants is rapidly spreading from phones to cars and homes, and the truly useful helper is approaching fast. The four giants are fighting for the biggest share of a market expected to grow to $12 billion by 2024. "There's a tremendous amount of promise for these agents to help and assist with many different tasks that we face every day," said Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research. "The more the agent can help you with, the more value it holds."

TECH billionaire Elon Musk believes artificial intelligence could be catastrophic for humanity who are set to become a cyborg race which will have to grapple with 15 per cent of the global work force being without a job. The creative genius added a'universal income' would have to be introduced for the global population because robots will do everything. Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai, the entrepreneur also told the 4000 strong conference he saw space flights to the far reaches of the solar system being as common as a plane ride in 50 years. And self-driven cars were just 10 years away from usurping human driven vehicles completely. The business magnate, who was being interviewed by Mohammad Abdulla Alergawi, the Minister of Cabinet Affairs and the Future for the UAE, told the slightly perplexed crowd: "One of the most troubling questions is artificial intelligence. I don't mean narrow A.I – deep artificial intelligence, where you can have AI which is much smarter than the smartest human on earth. This is a dangerous situation."

MARK Zuckerberg appears to have accidentally revealed plans to use artificial intelligence to spy on Facebook users' private messages in a bid to combat "terrorism". The billionaire hinted at this controversial scheme in an early version of a 6,000-word manifesto about Facebook's future. Once the final long document was released to the public, all mention of it seemed to have disappeared. "The long term promise of AI is that in addition to identifying risks more quickly and accurately than would have already happened, it may also identify risks that nobody would have flagged at all including terrorists planning attacks using private channels, people bullying someone too afraid to report it themselves, and other issues both local and global," he wrote on a version of the document given to Associated Press. But here's what the published version of the document said: "Looking ahead, one of our greatest opportunities to keep people safe is building artificial intelligence to understand more quickly and accurately what is happening across our community."

Astro Teller knows how to draw attention. He was wearing his rollerblades on Thursday when he glided into a roomful of reporters to announce that Project Loon--Alphabet's wacky-sounding plan to deliver the internet to the world's farthest-flung places via giant balloons--is even closer to reality than the company previously thought. It was a made-for-the-press moment, but Teller buried the lede. It's cool that these balloons may soon start broadcasting internet signals from the stratosphere. But the bigger deal here is that machine learning is moving beyond its digital origins into the real world.

Machine learning is steadily making its way into the business world, especially in the area of digital experience. The CMS industry is jumping headfirst into this technology with the aim of providing smart content to drive contextual experiences. As Forrester's recent industry overview said, "The web CMS market is changing because more organizations recognize the necessity of contextual digital experiences. Every vendor in this landscape is tracking toward this goal." And as contextual experiences become a differentiating factor, machine learning supplies the answer to how businesses can provide these differentiating experiences at scale.