Everyone is talking about artificial intelligence (AI) right now- with many predicting that AI will lead the next wave of economic growth and productivity for the next couple of decades at least. AI refers to the use of data to simulate human intelligence processes including learning, reasoning and self-correction by machines. AI is making its way into almost every industry. With IDC predicting that worldwide spending on AI will be nearly $98 Billion in 2023, the implications of this technology are massive. And this has not been ignored by Wall Street. Analysts say that plenty of compelling investments can be found within this space.

The world of autonomous cars is coming. Maybe it's a utopian future where all the vehicles drive themselves, while traffic jams and road rage are made a thing of the past. Or maybe it's just a bunch of fancy robo-taxis (and hopefully buses) that ensure city commuting is less of a pain. No matter how it plays out, it's coming and BMW wants to be prepare, establishing its own autonomous driving campus. In Unterschleißheim (near Munich, Germany) the automaker opened the facility that it says will help with the "systematic development of highly- and fully-automated driving at the BMW Group."

Charles William "Charlie" Bachman, the "father of databases" who received the ACM A.M. Turing Award for 1973 for creating the first database management system, died June 13 at the age of 92. Born in Manhattan, KS, in 1924, Bachman earned his B.S. in mechanical engineering in 1948, as well as an M.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He went to work for Dow Chemical in 1950, using mechanical punched-card computing devices to solve networks of simultaneous equations representing data from Dow plants. In 1957, Bachman became head of Dow's Data Processing Department, through which he became a member of Share Inc., and a founding member of the Share Data Processing Committee. In 1960, Bachman joined the General Electric (GE) Production Control Services Group in New York City, using a factory in Philadelphia to test designs for a system to automate factory planning, scheduling, operational control, and inventory control.