Many industry experts consider Google to have made the most progress on the road towards fully autonomous driving, but at this year's CES, Microsoft is revealing its own plans for putting drivers in the passenger seat. The company, best-known for the Windows PC operating system, is partnering with five firms including insurance company Swiss Re on what it's billing as a "collective vision of safe and secure end-to-end mobility." And it's one where artificial intelligence takes a front seat. Specifically, AI bots will make real-time connections between traffic situations and pedestrian density via the current suite of sensing tools used in vehicles, from car-to-car (V2V) and car-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication, to radar, camera and LIDAR systems to optimise driver safety and engagement. What's more, the same tech will use information gathered from a driver's personal preferences and daily routine.

More than six billion dollars: That's how much health care providers and consumers will be spending every year on artificial intelligence tools by 2021--a tenfold increase from today--according to a new report from research firm Frost & Sullivan. AI will be everywhere--from diagnosing cancer to providing weight-loss coaching, says Venkat Rajan, who has the great title of global director for the company's Visionary Healthcare Program. "Prior to 2015, most of what was happening was sort of academic: pilot programs, exploratory, proof of concept-type stuff," he says. AI's ability to sort through scads of information, and remember everything it has ever seen, could enable a digital (and congenial) version of Dr. House, the brilliant diagnostician from the eponymous TV show, says Rajan. "At first, it's a complete mystery, it could be one of ten different things," he says, about the process in the show, and real life, called differential diagnosis. "And then he's able to sort through various issues, you know, illuminate certain factors on why it's not one of these other conditions, and he's able to pull something from memory that figures out ultimately what it is, and they can provide the appropriate treatment." Robots won't steal doctors' jobs, says Rajan, but they will spare overworked docs some of the dangerous fatigue that can lead to mistakes.

We like John's predictions for the new year although interested to hear what you think is hot and what's not in Big Data for 2017!? WIRE)--The market has evolved from technologists looking to learn and understand new big data technologies to customers who want to learn about new projects, new companies and most importantly, how organizations are actually benefitting from the technology. According to John Schroeder, executive chairman and founder of MapR Technologies, Inc., the acceleration in big data deployments has shifted the focus to the value of the data. In the 1960s, Ray Solomonoff laid the foundations of a mathematical theory of AI, introducing universal Bayesian methods for inductive inference and prediction. In 1980 the First National Conference of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) was held at Stanford and marked the application of theories in software. AI is now back in mainstream discussions and the umbrella buzzword for machine intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, and cognitive computing.

Yesterday's big news in the world of chatbots was Google acquiring Api.ai, a company which allows developers to integrate natural language processing and understanding into their applications. Think of it like talking to someone, but instead, that someone is now your phone, and it actually understands what you're saying. Services like Api.ai and Wit.ai are capable of processing human speech patterns and filtering useful data like intent and context from it. Now that Api.ai is owned by Google, the battle between Api.ai and Wit.ai will probably intensify, as Wit.ai has been Facebook's property since January 5th of last year. In this article, I will describe the outcome of an independent test I ran last week, without any knowledge of the acquirement of Api.ai by Google.

Lynx, a small white humanoid, gave yoga instructions as it slid its chunky leg back for the pose. A bright blue light flashed across the side of its round head to indicate activity. After a few more leg movements, it came back into standing position when Alexa's voice boomed: "Your next exercise is waist stretching." Ubtech Robotics, the Chinese company that launched the Alpha robot series and JIMU coding bots for kids, has partnered with Amazon to bring Alexa's voice-recognition capabilities to their latest robot called Lynx. Starting in Spring this year, you will be able to interact with the robot as if it were your personal assistant.

LG has unveiled an array of devices to make smart homes even smarter - including a radical ultrathin TV than can be hung on the wall with magnets. The ultrathin LG Signature OLED W television is just just 2.57mm thin in the 65-inch model, and mounts seamlessly to the wall to create the experience of'looking through a window into another world.' The company is set to market the device, which as yet has no price or release date, as a'wallpaper' TV. The ultrathin LG Signature OLED W television is just just 2.57mm thin in the 65-inch model, and mounts seamlessly to the wall to create the experience of'looking through a window into another world.' To avoid cables, it has a single cable that runs to a sound bar, which has all of the normal connectors.

This is computer-generated wordplay and an example of how the boundaries of artificial intelligence are shifting. If a computer can crack jokes, what other human activities could they start to replicate? What jobs could it take? Artificial intelligence has become an increasingly big issue for education - not least because many tech companies and publishers are circling around the huge commercial opportunities. But could students really get their answers from a robot rather than a teacher?

Toyota U.S. Senior Vice President Bob Carter shows off the company's Concept-i prototype at CES 2017 in Las Vegas. As auto and tech companies race to perfect automated driving, Toyota is equally fixated on how the relationship between driver and vehicle will evolve as advances in artificial intelligence give rise to motorized robots with personalities. An initial version of the automotive giant's vision for the next generation of mobility is the Concept-i, a small hatchback packed to the rafters with advanced technology and most importantly an onboard virtual assistant dubbed Yui designed to curate the experience for occupants. Given the rapid pace of high-tech changes coming to the auto market, it's essential to keep the connection between car and driver in mind when planning new products, Bob Carter, senior vice president of Toyota's U.S unit, said at a press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday. "It's really easy to lose sight of why we build cars: We make them for people," Carter said.

Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) search company Google continued to dominate the online search ads market in 2016. The company also made headway in its moon shot businesses, which span life sciences, self-driving cars, IoT and Internet Fiber businesses. Nevertheless, the investment outlay in these businesses continued to impact the profitability. In this note, we explore Alphabet's performance during the year. Trefis currently estimates that PC search ads, mobile search ads and YouTube ads contribute over 60% to the firm's value.

In 2016, I wrote about the transformation happening in human resources and I called it the "Consumerization of HR," referring to how companies create a social, mobile, and consumer-style experience for employees. Now, as we enter 2017, the next journey for HR leaders will be to apply a consumer and a digital lens to the HR function creating an employee experience that mirrors their best customer experience. Today, almost every company is undergoing a digital transformation. Cloud and mobile computing, artificial intelligence, and increasing automation have created the potential to transform nearly every aspect of a business. A survey of CEOs conducted by Fortune asked whether they thought their company was a "technology company" and 67% of CEOs said YES! The same can be said for forward looking HR departments like those at IBM and General Electric.