There's nothing quite as contagious as a yawn – and it turns out even babies in the womb aren't immune. Experts have discovered foetuses'catch' yawns from their mothers and have been seen slowly opening and closing their mouths. As part of a study, they recorded the facial expressions of pregnant women while an ultrasound machine captured real-time images of their foetuses' faces. By comparing the two records, the researchers found that foetuses were more likely to yawn after their mothers did, with a delay of around 90 seconds. They said yawning may change the mother's breathing, chest pressure and diaphragm movements, which could provide physical cues the foetus detects.

The growing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into human cognition raises a fundamental question: does AI merely improve efficiency, or does it alter how we think? This study experimentally tested whether short-term exposure to narrow AI tools enhances core cognitive abilities or simply optimizes task performance. Thirty young adults completed standardized neuropsychological assessments embedded in a seven-week protocol with a four-week online intervention involving problem-solving and verbal comprehension tasks, either with or without AI support (ChatGPT). While AI-assisted participants completed several tasks faster and more accurately, no significant pre-post differences emerged in standardized measures of problem solving or verbal comprehension. These results demonstrate efficiency gains without cognitive change, suggesting that current narrow AI systems serve as cognitive scaffolds extending performance without transforming underlying mental capacities. The findings highlight the need for ethical and educational frameworks that promote critical and autonomous thinking in an increasingly AI-augmented cognitive ecology.

Turns out, artificial intelligence isn't just helpful for powering chatbots and voice assistants. It may also be able to help brands create emotionally intelligent ads. A suite of big-name marketers like Microsoft and Gap have started relying on AI to optimize the content of their ads, tapping into ad-tech startups like Persado to generate personalized ads based on the language a user is most likely to respond to. Think of it as an AI-powered, automated copywriting machine. The Persado platform can be used across web, email, text, and social ads.

Both artificial intelligence and social media marketing are getting a lot of attention nowadays because of their huge benefits and growth potential. They are benefiting both businesses and normal people in various ways. The investment has already been growing in the artificial intelligence, and the investment is further expected to grow by around 300%, according to the prediction made by the Forrester. Talking about the social media platforms, more than 2.5 billion people are already using various social media platforms as per the statistic. This is nearly a 1/3 population of the whole planet.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has increasingly dominated the news agenda in 2017. This was highlighted in November when the UK Government's Autumn budget included a £20 million investment pledge for businesses working in AI. With research from Deloitte showing that 85 percent of UK businesses plan to invest in AI by 2020, it's clear that firms across the board are waking up to its benefits and are starting to take decisive action. More and more brands are making headway with AI in digital advertising, from better audience insights and targeting to campaign measurement. The results are evident in more relevant, targeted and measurable campaigns.

Earlier this year, we ran an article explaining why machine learning is much bigger than Google and RankBrain. The technology isn't just making our search engines and devices more intelligent; it's transforming the way we approach and manage our marketing campaigns. The machine learning revolution has already begun and things are going to get a lot more exciting over the next few years. So, to give you a taste of what's to come, here are five ways machine learning will transform your marketing workflow. As things stand, most marketers are swimming in more data than they can handle.

This video is the stuff of nightmares. It depicts A.I.-directed drones loaded with small amounts of explosive, seeking out and killing targets autonomously. A slick tech executive makes his (for now) fictional pitch of this "improvement" on the large, Predator-style military drones that are familiar today. He shows a bomber flying over a city, dropping $25 million of the micro-drones, which descend like a swarm--"enough to kill half a city," he says. "Take out your entire enemy, virtually risk free. Just characterize him," the pitchman says.

A new short film illustrating the prospect of military drones has been commissioned for an event at the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons, which is being hosted by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. The film presents a fictionalized scenario in which a tech company showcases and deploys its latest combat drone, which is capable of distinguishing the good guys from the bad guys. A montage of mock new reports illustrates what happens next, when the device's true abilities are revealed and the machines begin killing off politicians and activists. Stuart Russell, an artificial intelligence (AI) scientist at the University of California in Berkeley, is part of the group that will show the film to attendees. He has stated that the technology depicted in the film already exists, and it would actually be much easier to implement than self-driving vehicles.

An unfortunate fact about humanity is that people lie. While this is a chronic issue for human relations, it's one that may be less of an issue for marketers of the future, thanks to non-human intervention. For most of marketing history, the best way to find out if consumers liked a proposed product was to ask them what they thought about it. But in focus groups especially, people tend to stretch the truth, undermining the value of the entire study. In recent years, AI has offered a huge boost to neuromarketing -- the science of reading consumers' minds to gauge their reactions to marketing stimuli.

There's a famous viral video in which a diver slowly swims up to a clump of rock and seaweed, only for part of that clump to turn white, open its eye, and jet away, squirting ink behind it. Few videos so dramatically illustrate an octopus's mastery of camouflage. But ignore, if you can, the creature's color, and focus on its texture. As its skin shifts from mottled brown to spectral white, it also goes from lumpy to smooth. In literally the blink of an eye, all those little bumps, spikes, and protuberances disappear. The project was entirely funded by the U.S. Army Research Office--and it's not hard to imagine why.