H&R Block believes it can do better by enlisting IBM Watson's natural language processing to analyze tax documents and find deductions and credits, lower the amount of taxes people pay, and maximize their refunds. In doing so, they're combining over 60 years of tax expertise with Watson's cognitive computing technology to put all that knowledge at their employees' fingertips. Tesla drives engagement within its employee base to drive the company's business in innovative ways. IBM is also simplifying the process for employees by working with the third-party company, Best Doctors, a global medical information services company that helps collect medical and lab information and coordinates with the Watson services as appropriate.

"Watson is a joke, just to be completely honest," he said in an interview with "Closing Bell" on the sidelines of the Sohn Investment Conference in New York. Watson is named after IBM's first CEO, Thomas J. Watson. He recommended Tesla's convertible bonds at the 22nd annual Sohn Conference, pointing out that it was effectively like buying the equity but with the downside protection of a bond. At last year's Sohn Conference, Palihapitiya recommended Amazon, whose stock is up 40 percent in the past year.

Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx recently released a 116-page policy document that aims to guide automakers and technologists on best-practices when it comes to the manufacturing and deployment of autonomous vehicle features. Apple, which has been rumored to be building a car, recently laid off employees of its automotive project and pivoted from making a car to creating autonomous software, according to reports. Another aftermarket self-driving tech company recently completed a successful 120-mile beer delivery without anyone at the wheel. A big rig cab equipped with sensors made by Otto, a startup bought by Uber recently for $670 million, made the delivery of Budweiser beer while its driver rested in the sleeper berth during most of the trip down Colorado's Interstate 25.

Autonomous cars learn to drive with driving data using machine learning. The machine learning component of autonomous vehicles require millions of miles of actual driving data. A robust and enabling EV supply chain that makes diverse components and manufacturing supply chains that serve the mobile and consumer business are still developing in the EV sector. Apple doesn't have the manufacturing expertise to build an EV without a mature supply chain like the mobile supply chain behind it.

The road to self-driving cars got a little more crowded Tuesday, as Mobileye (MBLY) announced it will partner with General Motors (GM) supplier Delphi Automotive (DLPH) to jointly develop off-the-shelf autonomous driving technology for automakers. Mobileye, a Tesla supplier of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), last month disclosed that its partnership with Tesla was ending. Mobileye is a leader in the development and production in computer vision systems, mapping and machine learning, while Delphi, a General Motors spinoff, is a leader in automated driving software, sensors and systems integration. Mobileye recently announced that it would team with BMW (BMWYY) and Intel (INTC) to develop a fully automated driving system, a partnership that one analyst called a "turning point" for autonomous vehicles.

Tesla Motors is trying to see if it can make improvements in its Autopilot partial self-driving system, which may have been a factor in a recent fatal accident. He said "significant improvements" look possible that would be beamed to Tesla's electric cars wireless via over-the-air updates. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation. Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board sent its own team to look into the safety of the system.

The first ever death in an autonomous car happened in May this year, the US road safety administration revealed yesterday. In a press release, Tesla said the incident was a tragic loss, but noted that it was the first fatality in 130 million miles of Autopilot driving. "There will be questions as to why these semi-autonomous driving features are allowed in beta testing mode into consumers' hands, and whether they have been adequately developed and certified before being added as an option in vehicles – even with the disclaimers which drivers have to accept before activating the feature," he says. Instead, the software will run in the background, jumping in to prevent accidents that come from human error.

Elon Musk's concerns about the dangers of artificial intelligence have been well publicized, but the SpaceX and Tesla founder says that of all the companies currently working on self-aware computers, there's only one whose efforts actually worry him. Speaking on stage at Recode's Code Conference, Musk was asked by The Verge's own Walt Mossberg whether he was worried specifically about the efforts of big tech players like Google and Facebook currently pivoting to AI research. "I won't name names," Musk said, "but there's only one." Mossberg pressed the question, wondering whether the company that kept the Tesla boss up at night was not one currently preoccupied with developing its own car. With a wan smile and a lengthy glance at the floor, Musk repeated his answer, suggesting his eye was on Google.

Norm Jouppi, a distinguished hardware engineer at Google, detailed the company's public disclosure of the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) last week after the CEO Sundar Pichai's earlier announcement at Google I/O. Several questions came up around how the TensorFlow-optimized chipset could compete with publicly available hardware like Nvidia's Tesla P100 and even PaaS providers like Nervana that provide machine learning services. Google's public disclosure of the TPU may have been related to Nvidia's release of the Tesla P100 in April. Jouppi noted that Google wants to lead the industry in machine learning and make the innovation available to its customers, but didn't disclose specific plans or offerings to do so at this time.