When most people think of artificial intelligence (AI) they think of HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey," Data from "Star Trek," or more recently, the android Ava from "Ex Machina." But to a computer scientist that isn't what AI necessarily is, and the question "what is AI?" can be a complicated one. One of the standard textbooks in the field, by University of California computer scientists Stuart Russell and Google's director of research, Peter Norvig, puts artificial intelligence in to four broad categories: The differences between them can be subtle, notes Ernest Davis, a professor of computer science at New York University. AlphaGo, the computer program that beat a world champion at Go, acts rationally when it plays the game (it plays to win). But it doesn't necessarily think the way a human being does, though it engages in some of the same pattern-recognition tasks.

Having a robot for a boss could afford you many benefits and could even help with your career advancement. Most that work for any Company have someone within this entity that they must answer to. It could be a team leader, supervisor or manager. Then for the executive management level it is usually the company owner itself. This means that most have to rely on human nature to lead them to success in the Company that they work for.This can come with a lot of challenges, but what if that leadership were in the form of robots?

This article is a part of an evolving theme. Here, I explain the basics of Deep Learning and how Deep learning algorithms could apply to IoT and Smart city domains. Specifically, as I discuss below, I am interested in complementing Deep learning algorithms using IoT datasets. I elaborate these ideas in the Data Science for Internet of Things program which enables you to work towards being a Data Scientist for the Internet of Things (modelled on the course I teach at Oxford University and UPM – Madrid).

Tesla Motors missed its vehicle delivery target for the second consecutive quarter and is on track to fall short of its annual target, suggesting the US electric car maker is still wrestling with production issues as it looks to transform itself into a mainstream, high-volume manufacturer. Elon Musk's self-driving evangelism masks risk of Tesla autopilot, experts say Tesla, led by Silicon Valley star Elon Musk, delivered 14,370 vehicles during the second quarter, missing its target of 17,000 vehicles, it said in a statement on Sunday. The company blamed an unusually large number of vehicles still in transit to customers and an "extreme" production ramp that led to almost half of the quarter's vehicles being made in the last four weeks. Tesla said it expects to deliver about 50,000 vehicles during the second half of the year. Having delivered only 29,190 vehicles in the first two quarters, even if it hits that target, it would leave the company just short of the low end of its earlier expectation of 80,000 to 90,000 deliveries this year.

Some people choose to see the limitations of this world, the dead ends. We here at TechCrunch choose to see the possibilities. Looking back at the first season of Westworld, I have to say I'm impressed at the nuanced approach Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan take to artificial intelligence. Reveries, backstories and even the idea of hosts training on other hosts all give a nod to real AI research. Building a Westworld host is kind of like putting together a piece of IKEA furniture while on hallucinogenics -- directions are pretty much useless.

"When it comes to A.I., we may be worried about the wrong things," says Amy Webb, a forecaster of digital trends and author of "The Signals Are Talking." Rather than the cliche of artificial intelligence that goes to war against humanity, Webb says we might worry about A.I. that too accurately mimics humanity. As artificial intelligence continues to develop, Webb, the founder of the Future Today Institute and an adjunct professor at NYU, says her greatest concern is that A.I. is created by humans, and so reflects back our own beliefs, values, and biases. She offers as an example Tay, an A.I.-powered chatbot released on Twitter earlier this year. It only took 24 hours for Tay to start posting racist and xenophobic messages all across the internet.

So there you have it – 5 free eBooks (plus a bonus book) for your summer reading. It would be great if you would leave brief reviews of these books in the comments below – I'm sure all the authors would appreciate your comments and shares. Join the debate below and let me know your thoughts... About the Author Lee Baker is an award-winning software creator with a passion for turning data into a story. A proud Yorkshireman, he now lives by the sparkling shores of the East Coast of Scotland. Physicist, statistician and programmer, child of the flower-power psychedelic '60s, it's amazing he turned out so normal! Turning his back on a promising academic career to do something more satisfying, as the CEO and co-founder of Chi-Squared Innovations he now works double the hours for half the pay and 10 times the stress - but 100 times the fun! He also wanted to be rich, famous and good looking.

'Tis the season for the public relations exercise known as "here's what we think (or hope) will happen in the tech sector next year," flooding my inbox with predictions for 2017. No one knows what will happen tomorrow, let alone over the next 12 months, but the exercise yields interesting insights into what's hot (and what's not) in technology today. Artificial intelligence (and machine/deep learning) is the hottest trend, eclipsing, but building on, the accumulated hype for the previous "new big thing," big data. The new catalyst for the data explosion is the Internet of Things, bringing with it new cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The rapid fluctuations in the relative temperature of these trends also create new dislocations and opportunities in the tech job market.

A year ago I wrote that I had seen the future. I had attended the IBM Insights conference in Las Vegas, an entire conference devoted to the Internet of Things, analytics, cognitive marketing and related topics. And if the concept of Moore's Law (that technology doubles every year – or every 18 months or two years, depending on what you read) holds true, then a lot has happened since then. While last year's future is now a history lesson, what is currently happening in the World of Watson is moving at warp speed! This past week more than 17,000 people attended IBM's World of Watson, the new name of the conference devoted to cognitive technology.

If you thought Siri was smart, wait until you get a load of Spaun. Created by neuroscientist Chris Eliasmith at the University of Waterloo in Canada, Spaun is "the world's largest simulation of a functioning brain," according to a report from Canada.com. Spaun is able to recognize numbers and memorize lists and patterns and reproduce them on command. This makes Spaun unique among its virtual peers, since other large-scale models of the brain "don't do anything," Eliasmith said. Spaun, which stands for Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network, has 2.5 million simulated neurons organized into subsystems to resemble the prefrontal cortex, basil ganglia, thalamus and other cognitive machinery in the brain.