Game Theory: Is Moroccan football in its Golden Era? For decades, football's talent pipeline has flowed from Africa to Europe. But Morocco is reversing that trend. Samantha Johnson looks at how Morocco's football ecosystem can challenge football's traditional hierarchy. What's behind bans on away fans?

Labor shortages during the Great Resignation have led companies to pursue AI opportunities to aid current employees and...

In the face of high inflation and unemployment, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been repeatedly telling voters that India is just beginning a "golden era" that will run for the next quarter century. "On the first morning of this amrit kaal I am filled with pride to see such an immensely endowed nation," Modi said Monday in a speech to mark the 75th anniversary of independence from British rule, delivered from the ramparts of the 17th century Red Fort in the Indian capital. The phrase "amrit kaal" first made a prominent appearance in a Modi speech on the same day last year, when he described it as a journey of a "new India" for the next 25 years. This could be due to a conflict with your ad-blocking or security software. Please add japantimes.co.jp and piano.io to your list of allowed sites.

Many experts have already started contemplating that the damage due to COVID19 that is apparently visible today; may its economy, social, political or other aspects of our lives, is just the tip of the iceberg, and the gigantic submerged part is yet to be realized by the world and will be visible gradually post-COVID. I am praying that this prediction comes out wrong, otherwise it's not going to be any less than a horrible nightmare for all of us. On the contrary, probably the biggest positive aspect that COVID has attributed and initiated so far is that, it acted as a wakeup alarm for the entire world to focus on the healthcare systems. It brutally proved that healthcare and medicine today is far behind to fight against a pandemic or any biological warfare, the possibility of which cannot be ignored in the future. COVID has proven that in this highly connected world we should be concerned about everything that is happening even in the remotest corner of the world, because the same can come and knock at your door the very next day.

Bebot is your AI guide based in Tokyo Station. Tokyo Station, the train hub of Japan's capital and home to the world famous Shinkanshen bullet trains, is one of the busiest railway station in the country and many tourists may need help to navigate it. Now they may not fear being lost in transit as Bebot, the AI chatbot concierge, has started working there as a'guide'. Bebot, built by Tokyo-based Bespoke Inc., acts as a personal concierge for travellers. It was launched in April last year, and is already providing services in Narita and Haneda international airports and hotels globally.

With artificial intelligence applications in the retail industry, China's convenience stores have great market potential and will usher in a golden era, per a report the China General Chamber of Commerce released today. Smart retailing services with AI advanced quickly last year, and more plans for the efficient operation of unstaffed convenience stores will surface in the next three to five years, the report said. The Chinese gross domestic product's growth rate will remain around 6.7 percent, while retail sales of consumer goods will increase by 10.1 percent, CGCC said. The effects of rising household consumption will expand further, and such consumption will be a major contributor to China's economic growth, the report said. Spending on tourism, sports, culture, entertainment, wellness and pensions will grow rapidly this year, and the retailing and catering sectors will develop steadily while integrating with the aforementioned fields, CGCC Vice Chairman Fu Longcheng said.

Fans of a golden era of 90s gaming can rejoice, Yooka-Laylee is here to offer a trip down memory lane without the need to dust off your old N64 controller. Billed as a spiritual successor to the likes of Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong Country, the game was brought to life by a group of ex-Rare staffers and hundreds of nostalgic 20-somethings who pumped £2 million into their Kickstarter. With its cheeky script, googly-eyed talking objects, and catchy soundtrack, this is a third Banjo game in all but name. You play as both Yooka amd Laylee, a patient lizard and mouthy bat who rounding up missing Pagies to keep them from the grasp of baddie Capital B, a Donald Trump-esque publishing mogul who's stealing books for profit. Tracking these down sees the duo explore a series of ever-expanding worlds, including an icy castle and gloomy bog.

Ginni Rometti, the CEO of IBM, called on health IT leaders to go on the offensive and embrace the potential of cognitive computing to achieve transformational change in areas including, but not limited to, precision medicine, population health management, genomics, diagnosis and clinical decision making. She described cognitive computing as offering the potential to open up a new "golden age" in healthcare, but acknowledged much had to be done to allay people's concerns about privacy, transparency and artificial intelligence costing them their jobs. In her opening keynote at HIMSS 2017 conference in Orlando on Monday, Rometti, said: "I feel this is a profoundly hopeful time." She added: "I hope to persuade you that cognitive healthcare is real and here and can change almost everything about healthcare". Describing IBM's multi-billion investment in Watson cognitive computing as "our next moonshot", she said, "I'd never be so arrogant as to say we can do all of it but working with partners we can and are now helping change parts of healthcare. I think we can transform many parts of healthcare, whether its epidemiology or personalised healthcare.".

A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry. At the recent Code Conference, Jeff Bezos made a rather provocative statement when he said that when we talk about technology, we are on "the edge of a golden era." When it comes to artificial intelligence, Bezos said, "It's probably hard to overstate how big of an impact it's going to have on society over the next 20 years." He also said that Amazon has 1,000 people working on its Alexa platform, which powers the company's popular voice-controlled Echo device. Of course, Bezos is hardly alone with this line of thinking about artificial intelligence and its impact.

Artificial intelligence is on the verge of changing our life, tech entrepreneurs say. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant "neural laces" in their brains to keep up, Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told a crowd of tech leaders this week. While Musk's description of an injectable human-computer link may sound like science fiction, top tech executives repeatedly said that artificial intelligence (AI) was on the verge of changing everyday life during a discussion at a tech industry conference in California this week. It is no secret that tech companies are diving into AI analytics research, an industry that is forecast to grow to US70 billion ( 96.9 billion) by 2020 from just US8.2 billion in 2013, according to a Bank of America report. Big launch: "The future of electric cars is looking bright", says Elon Musk. AI, which combs through large troves of raw data to predict outcomes and recognise patterns, is already used in web search systems, marketing recommendation functions and security and financial trading programs.