Having trounced humans at everything from chess and Go, to StarCraft and Gran Turismo, artificial intelligence (AI) has raised its game and laid waste world champions at a physical sport. The latest mortals to feel the sting of AI-induced defeat are three expert drone racers who were beaten by an algorithm that learned to fly a drone around a 3D race course at breakneck speeds without crashing. Developed by researchers at the University of Zurich, the Swift AI won 15 out of 25 races against world champions and clocked the fastest lap on a course where drones reach speeds of 50mph (80km/h) and endure accelerations up to 5g, enough to make many people black out. "Our result marks the first time that a robot powered by AI has beaten a human champion in a real physical sport designed for and by humans," said Elia Kaufmann, a researcher who helped to develop Swift. First-person view drone racing involves flying a drone around a course dotted with gates that must be passed through cleanly to avoid a crash.

Computers are getting better at generating fake images and video of people saying or doing things they never did in real life. The latest work from chip maker Nvidia takes this a step further by generating convincing-looking images of people who never existed in the first place--they're AI creations, but they look incredibly real. Machine-learning enthusiasts have been freaking out about the results of Nvidia's latest work--published to the arXiv preprint server this week--and for good reason. Not only do the images produced by the AI program look crystal clear and hyper-realistic, but the process for creating them was rather novel and opens up some mind-blowing possibilities. The researchers combined the typical design of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)--computing architecture that very loosely mimics the human brain and "learns" from source images to generate new ones--with tips from the world of AI style transfer.

RE•WORK's fifth global Machine Intelligence Summit kicked off today in Hong Kong, hosted alongside the AI in Healthcare Summit, which saw a mix of researchers, industry experts and startups explore the latest machine learning, AI tools and techniques. With two tracks, a full day of presentations, workshops, networking and a VC session, there was plenty to capture everyone's attention. Leading minds from NASA, eBay, and HSBC lead the way on topics such as deep learning for eCommerce and using GANs in algorithmic trading. The morning began with attendees grabbing breakfast and sitting down to listen to the Deputy Government CIO at The Government of the HKSAR speak on how they are using big data and AI to develop Hong Kong as a smart city. Their main goal is to use AI to make more informed decisions which will improve both the quality of public services and the quality of life of Hong Kong's citizens.

On Monday's St. Louis on the Air, world-renowned author Dan Brown, most famous for "The Da Vinci Code," joined host Don Marsh to discuss his most recent novel, "Origin." The book, featuring the famous character Robert Langdon again, will be released on Oct. 3 and centers heavily on new technology. "I've spent a lot of time talking to scientists in the field talking about artificial intelligence, and they really disagree about whether it will be a boon for humanity," Brown said. "Will it solve problems like scarcity, pollution, over population? A.I. could have a very positive role. At the same time, it could have an ominous role. It is powerful and could get more powerful. Will this technology be used for harm?" Brown said that, starting book, he knew very little about artificial intelligence.

Baidu, the world's No. 3 force in online advertising after Google and Facebook, sees artificial intelligence as the next big thing. And it's using AI to power advertising, voice recognition technology and self-driving cars. During its annual conference Thursday in Beijing, the search giant announced news on the autonomous vehicle front, saying it had won clearance from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test its cars there. It also signed a partnership with U.S. chip-maker Nvidia to work on self-driving cars together. Despite all the investment on futuristic projects, Baidu got nearly 93% of its revenue in the last quarter from online marketing.