Apple will take a significant step toward disclosing more of its artificial intelligence research this week by becoming a member of a non-profit AI research consortium founded by five of the tech industry's biggest players. Last September, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and IBM publicly announced The Partnership on AI, an organisation established "to study and formulate best practices, to advance the public's understanding of AI, and to serve as an open platform for discussion and engagement about AI and its influences on people and society". As one of the biggest researchers in AI, Apple's name was conspicuously absent, but that looks set to change in the coming days, following a Bloomberg report on Thursday that Cupertino is ready to add its name to The Partnership's list of corporate heavyweights. According to its website, the Partnership on AI intends to conduct research, organize discussions, share insights, provide thought leadership, consult with relevant third parties, respond to questions from the public and media, and create educational material that advance the understanding of AI technologies including machine perception, learning, and automated reasoning. Apple's imminent membership is just the latest indication that the company is prepared to reveal more of its work in areas of artificial intelligence.

A team from the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory set up a machine-learning AI to teach itself to diagnose cancer by looking at skin lesions just as a doctor would during an exam. The team tested the algorithm against 21 board-certified dermatologists, and it performed just as well as its human counterparts. "We realized it was feasible, not just to do something well, but as well as a human dermatologist," Sebastian Thrun, an adjunct professor in the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, said in a statement. "That's when our thinking changed. That's when we said, 'Look, this is not just a class project for students, this is an opportunity to do something great for humanity.'"

I have the opportunity to review a lot of different technology products and I tend to put them into one of three categories. First, there are those products that really impress me and make me thankful for living in the Digital Age. The second category is made up of some useful and fun tech products that aren't very original, but enjoyable. The third category includes tech products that are poorly made, unoriginal or serve no purpose. Recently, I determined I should create a fourth category after a friend asked an intriguing question. He knows I'm a techie and always testing the latest, greatest tech products and gadgets.

Created by Bjørn Karmann at CIID, Objectifier empowers people to train objects in their daily environment to respond to their unique behaviours. It gives an experience of training an artificial intelligence; a shift from a passive consumer to an active, playful director of domestic technology. Interacting with Objectifier is much like training a dog – you teach it only what you want it to care about. Just like a dog, it sees and understands its environment. Using computer vision and a neural network, Objectifier allows for complex behaviours to be associated with your command.

The Next Tsunami AI, Blockchain, IOT, and Our Swarm Evolutionary Singularity @DinisGuarda - Founder and CEO 2. AI is going to change everything? This concept is employed in work on artificial intelligence and needs to be taken in consideration as we evolve with AI and tech. The expression was introduced by Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang in 1989, in the context of cellular robotic systems. In this complex ecosystem what is our human singularity? What is creativity in a digitalised, blockchain, nano technology - IoT AI evolutionary swarm world?

The researchers tested the AI against 130,000 images, comparing the results to diagnoses of 21 clinicians. They say the result showed the software could detect the cancer with a high degree of accuracy. The findings were published in the academic journal Nature. "We realized it was feasible, not just to do something well, but as well as a human dermatologist," said Sebastian Thrun from the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, in a statement published by the university's website. "That's when our thinking changed. That's when we said, 'Look, this is not just a class project for students, this is an opportunity to do something great for humanity.'"

Moving beyond a back-end tool for the enterprise, artificial intelligence (AI) is taking on more sophisticated roles within technology interfaces. From autonomous driving vehicles that use computer vision, to live translations made possible by machine learning, AI is making every interface both simple and smart–and setting a high bar for how future experiences will work. AI is poised to act as the face of a company's digital brand and a key differentiator – and become a core competency demanding of C-level investment and strategy.

Sears is rolling out a new Web and mobile application that uses artificial intelligence to help customers pick and purchase tires for their car. The move makes use of Sears' continued investment in artificial intelligence to streamline the retail process. The app asks questions and uses machine learning to learn and remember customer preferences. "The Digital Tire Journey is an innovative service that helps customers cut through the clutter while integrating digital, mobile and online with in-store shopping," said Brian Kaner, president of Sears Auto Centers. Digital Tire Journey For most retail transactions, the process is fairly simple.

A new computational model performs at human levels when subjected to standard intelligence test, making artificial intelligence (AI) system at par with human understanding capabilities. Researchers from Northwestern University built the new computational model on CogSketch, an artificial intelligence platform, that has the ability to solve visual problems and understand sketches in order to give immediate and interactive feedback. "The model performs in the 75th percentile for American adults, making it better than average," said Ken Forbus of Northwestern University, adding "The problems that are hard for people are also hard for the model, providing additional evidence that its operation is capturing some important properties of human cognition." Researchers noted that developing artificial intelligence systems that have this ability not only provides new evidence for the importance of symbolic representations and analogy in visual reasoning, but it could potentially shrink the gap between computer and human cognition. "Most artificial intelligence research today concerning vision focuses on recognition or labelling what is in a scene rather than reasoning about it," Forbus noted.

Farming is, by far, the most mature industry mankind has created. Dating back to the dawn of civilization, farming has been refined, adjusted and adapted -- but never perfected. We, as a society, always worry over the future of farming. Today, we even apply terms usually reserved for the tech sector -- digital, IoT, AI and so on. So why are we worrying?