More than two hundred years ago, a French weaver named Joseph Jacquard invented a mechanism that greatly simplified textile production. His design replaced the lowly draw boy--the young apprentice who meticulously chose which threads to feed into the loom to create a particular pattern--with a series of paper punch cards, which had holes dictating the lay of each stitch. The device was so successful that it was repurposed in the first interfaces between humans and computers; for much of the twentieth century, programmers laid out their code like weavers, using a lattice of punched holes. The cards themselves were fussy and fragile. Ethereal information was at the mercy of its paper substrate, coded in a language only experts could understand.

Halfway through talking to two of Nintendo's most high-powered executives, one of them pulls a playing card from his pocket. It's a strangely low-tech demonstration – especially given that they are here to talk about the Nintendo Switch, perhaps the company's most important console ever made. But that card makes beautiful sense for at least two reasons. The first: that Nintendo actually started out as a business making handmade playing cards in 1889, and the Switch is a conscious attempt to reconnect with some of the companies long and celebrated history. But more importantly it is a way of understanding the very essence of what the Switch is about, or at least how Nintendo conceives of it – it's best compared not with the PlayStation or Xbox's run of blockbuster gaming experiences, but with the fun, social thrill of a game of poker.

Nintendo Creative Fellow and game design luminary Shigeru Miyamoto is renowned for his work on foundational franchises like Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. But there are a few things you may not know about the 64-year-old gaming celeb, like what he thinks of artificial intelligence or what he's been doing in his spare time. TIME spoke with Miyamoto mid-January, just after the Nintendo Switch hands-on for press in New York City. TIME: A question that goes back to the beginning, about Nintendo designer Gunpei Yokoi's idea of "lateral thinking with seasoned technology." Shigeru Miyamoto: As a company, we take in all different kinds of new technologies as they become available.

IBM wants to bring machine learning to its traditional mainframe customers, and eventually to any technology with large data stores hidden behind a company firewall in what IBM calls a "private cloud." Yes mainframes, those ginormous computing machines from an earlier age, are still running inside some of the world's biggest companies including banks, insurance companies, airlines and large retailers. In fact, according to IBM, a modern IBM z Systems mainframe is capable of processing up to 2.5 billion transactions per day – the equivalent of roughly 100 Cyber Mondays every day. IBM wants to bring some core Watson machine learning smarts to its mainframe clients -- and eventually to any computing done inside the data center -- to allow them to take advantage of all that data in a more modern machine learning context. "Over 90 percent of the data in the world can't be Googled. It resides behind firewalls on private clouds. How do we automate intelligence [for these data sources]?,"

Do you feel like artificial intelligence has nothing to do with social media marketing or content performance? Joshua Lawrence believes there are two types of photographers: moment capturers and image builders. A draftsman by trade, @jlstudios considers himself a precise builder of images that uses the technical expertise of lighting, props and his @Surface tethered to his camera to achieve the perfect shot. From tweaking the lighting to ensuring a perfect white balance, he relies on a high-tech setup to ensure he gets it just right, every time. Go behind the scenes on one of his latest shoots by watching our Instagram Story or clicking the link in our bio.

Artillery is no longer the King of War. Information technology has transformed the modern battlefield at sea, in the air and on land, and it is arguably the new King of War. In April the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) will help to demonstrate this as part of the Royal Navy led Information Warrior exercise. Information Warrior builds on the impressive success of last year's Unmanned Warrior exercise. It focuses is on how information can be used offensively and defensively to give the UK's armed forces a battle winning advantage.

Late last year, a team of Sony researchers based in Paris released a pair of new pop songs. One, called "Daddy's Car," straightforwardly echoed the soft '60s psychedelia of The Beatles; the other, "Mr. Shadow," was an electro-ish update on classic jazz à la Duke Ellington or Cole Porter. The songs were just fine (if that), from a critical standpoint. What made them major events was the fact that they were composed using artificial intelligence, specifically using the Flow Machines software developed by Sony's Computer Science Laboratory.

Apple is preparing to completely redevelop its fingerprint sensor to feature in a new iPhone, according to patent filings. The rumoured development is probably a way of having the technology fit into its next handset, mostly referred to as the iPhone 8. Because that phone is likely to bring with it an entirely new design – and a range of never-before-seen features – some of the most central parts of the phone will have to be re-designed. Apple is planning on making the display of the new phone reach all the way across the front of the handset, according to rumours, doing away with the black or white plastic that has surrounded the screen in some form since the very first iPhone. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

AI is largely seen as the full realization of what big data, analytics and automation have been moving towards -- a fuller implementation of machine learning. It is being explored in a variety of verticals. Ford announced last week that it is investing $1 billion in startup Argo AI aimed at developing a brain for connected, autonomous vehicles. Consumers are getting comfortable with the concept of AI in their homes. Amazon has said that it sold millions of its Echo devices, which rely on Amazon's Alexa AI for user interactions.