Salesforce.com Inc. CRM 2.82 % 's annual Dreamforce customer conference, set to blanket downtown San Francisco next week, will be an unusual blend of business, technology, entertainment, philanthropy and personal empowerment. The conference, which is the world's largest tech get-together sponsored by a single company, will be an expression of the business-software provider's socially conscious corporate culture and the idiosyncratic character of its Chief Executive Marc Benioff. The event, which is expected to draw 170,000 attendees--17% more than last year--comes as Salesforce, whose public profile to date has been confined largely to salespeople and marketers, is stepping onto a larger stage. The company on Thursday vowed to block Microsoft Corp. MSFT -0.57 Meanwhile, Salesforce is considering a bid for the consumer-focused messaging service Twitter.

The shift in the startup world from apps to A.I. is, in essence, moving from making tools to making people. An app enabled a user to perform a function; at its heart it is DIY. Therefore, apps can be judged by their utility. Does the app help the user solve their problem? If so, then it is a good app.

Artificial intelligence (AI) made the leap from science fiction to the corporate world some time ago. Amazon and Netflix use it routinely to make purchasing recommendations, iPhone users speak to Siri every day, and banks give investment advice or calculate risks thanks to these technologies. But these are only the first hesitant steps of AI, which is due to have a major impact on the financial sector, as revealed in this report in the magazine Euromoney, and featuring an interview with Marco Bressan, Chief Data Scientist at BBVA. Artificial Intelligence has been present in the financial industry for many years now, Marco Bressan, Chief Data Scientist at BBVA, tells Euromoney: "Currently it denotes a vision of the future; an aspect of the sci-fi imagination; something that you still can't do. But the truth is senior financial executives have been doing AI-related work, research and deployment of products for years", he notes. When we talk about Artificial Intelligence we refer to a set of technologies –many created decades ago– rather than one single product or system.

Andre van Rüschen has no memory of the day he lost all feeling in his legs. After a car accident in Germany, he had a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the waist down. When he woke up from a coma in a hospital in Hamburg, the doctors told him he would never walk again. But now, thirteen years later, van Rüschen is back on his feet, and he is training to compete as a pilot in the Powered Exoskeleton race at the Cybathlon in Zurich this month. In a high-rise office building on Leipziger Platz in Berlin, he slides out of his wheelchair onto a black leather pouf where a ReWalk exoskeleton sits folded.

A recent explosion of neuroscience techniques is driving substantial advances in our understanding of the brain. Combined with developments in engineering, machine learning and computing this flowering has helped us enhance our cognitive abilities and potential. In fact, new research into the extraordinary machine in our skulls is helping us keep pace with the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. Exciting new advances are everywhere, but worth putting front and centre are findings made in the relatively new area of social neuroscience. Research by Molly Crockett at Oxford University has demonstrated how we might influence the social brain and examine the effects of neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, and hormones, such as oxytocin, on social cognition and social interactions. This includes the most fundamental aspects of our daily lives: trust, punishment, moral judgement, conformity and empathy.

No one did more to put Los Angeles theater on the map than Gordon Davidson. The founder of the Mark Taper Forum, he was one of the city's cultural founding fathers, a mild-mannered but determined revolutionary who built Center Theatre Group into the prodigious theatrical institution it is today and, even more important, built an audience with an appreciation for serious drama in this town. It is impossible to do justice to the dimensions of such a legacy. Davidson's influence on Los Angeles is twinned in my mind with the architectural landmark just down the street from his old Music Center headquarters -- Walt Disney Concert Hall. The reason is that I believe Davidson, who died Sunday at age 83, has done as much to transform the city's conception of itself as a cultural capital as Frank Gehry's magnificent building.

Neither artificial intelligence nor fintech – or even the union of the two – is really anything new, despite the recent buzz regarding all of the above. With that being said, we are indeed approaching that point where the underlying technology begins to make a noticeable difference in people's lives. From there, it won't be long before we begin to wonder how we ever lived without artificially intelligent financial advisors implementing our own personal monetary policy. Well, did you know that digital camera technology has been around since the 1970s but simply wasn't good enough to get mainstream traction until decades later? Don't worry, Kodak didn't see it coming, either.

A truck struck the center divider of the 101 Freeway in Hollywood early Monday morning, sending debris into lanes and briefly causing a full freeway closure. The crash was reported at about 3:08 a.m. on the northbound freeway, south of Cahuenga Boulevard, said California Highway Patrol Officer Elizabeth Kravig. There were no reported injuries, she said. Northbound and southbound lanes were closed, but the southbound lanes, shut down by debris on the roadway, reopened around 4:26 a.m. Northbound lanes remained closed as of 5:45 a.m. as a tow truck tried to upright the truck, which is possibly a taco truck, Kravig said.

Indian and Pakistani troops fired at each other in disputed Kashmir on Monday, as Indian troops searched an army camp elsewhere in the region where suspected militants killed an Indian paramilitary soldier. Indian army Lt. Col. Manish Mehta said Pakistani troops fired without provocation using small arms and mortar shells in the Poonch sector of the Line of Control separating the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir. Pakistan's army said in a statement that its troops were responding to unprovoked firing by Indian soldiers. Both sides said the exchange of fire was continuing. In Islamabad, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met with the leaders of all Pakistani political parties to discuss the ongoing clashes.

Salesforce.com Inc. CRM -0.38 % 's annual Dreamforce customer conference, set to blanket downtown San Francisco next week, will be an unusual blend of business, technology, entertainment, philanthropy and personal empowerment. The conference, which is the world's largest tech get-together sponsored by a single company, will be an expression of the business-software provider's socially conscious corporate culture and the idiosyncratic character of its Chief Executive Marc Benioff. The event, which is expected to draw 170,000 attendees--17% more than last year--comes as Salesforce, whose public profile to date has been confined largely to salespeople and marketers, is stepping onto a larger stage. The company on Thursday vowed to block Microsoft Corp. MSFT -0.75 % 's 26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn Corp. LNKD 0.22 %, after failing in its own effort to buy the online network of 450 million mostly professional members. Meanwhile, Salesforce is considering a bid for the consumer-focused messaging service Twitter.