I recently started to follow an exciting and mind-bending philosophy online course at MIT called Minds and Machines. The course is a thorough, rigorous 12 Weeks Learning Path introduction to contemporary philosophy of mind, exploring consciousness, reality, artificial intelligence (AI), and more. It is definitively one of the most in-depth philosophy courses available online that I ever frequented. The first effect of starting study philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology is that I'm asking more challenging questions… the second effect is that I'm writing more about those questions. I'm in this moment, exploring the relationship between the mind and the body, the capacity of computers to think, the way we perceive reality, and the perspective of the existence of a science of consciousness. As a first result, I've started to pay particular attention to one specific question that definitively has a lot to relate to my daily work as an AI expert: what is intelligence?

T-Mobile USA CEO John Legere has surfaced as the possible new CEO at WeWork, where he would follow the troubled tenure of co-founder Adam Neumann. The Wall Street Journal reported that Legere is in discussions with the office-sharing startup, which was bailed out recently by SoftBank Group. The topic of succession at T-Mobile came up during a sit-down Legere had with USA TODAY's Ed Baig last week, fresh off the announcements that T-Mobile would be flipping the switch on its 5G network on Dec. 6, Legere was joined in the conversation by T-Mobile president and COO Mike Sievert to discuss the remaining obstacles to T-Mobile's pending merger with Sprint and to make the case that the merger will result in more, not less competition, and more jobs. SoftBank already holds a major stake in Sprint. The Journal article stated that there's no guarantee Legere would take on the WeWork challenge.

The constant collection, sharing and analysis of personal data means companies, governments, groups and even individuals can know more about your private life than ever before. You have to have a supreme sense of irony, or be in major denial, to call Monday, Jan. 28, Data Privacy Day. Given the current state of big data collection and "sharing" (selling) by online giants and telcos, combined with the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to draw intrusive inferences about us from all that data, it would be much more accurate to call it Privacy is Dead Day. Because the modern threats to privacy are not just that your credit card or bank account could get compromised. It is that your life – everything about your life – can be collected and analyzed by companies, governments, groups and even individuals in a way that, collectively, starts to sound very much like Big Brother.

The market for AI is so overhyped, virtually anybody looking for a fast buck can repackage an old abacus and sell it as a "machine learning" platform. Misinformed people buy the idea and the mounting frustration makes it extremely difficult for legitimate AI companies to get their message heard above the din. To successfully stand out in a crowded market, creative marketers have found it critical to create unconventional educational content and enlist the support of credible B2B influencers in their space. In the ever-shifting AI solutions ecosystem, even expert-led and well-thought-out marketing campaigns can fail -- and often do. To reduce costs and save time, marketers of AI products need to learn as early as possible what works.

Jennifer Jolly reviews the first vacuum shoe designed by the automotive company Denso. A lot of gadgets are announced at CES, but many of them are too impractical or expensive for most consumers. Here are four new products we found that we'd actually consider purchasing. Columnist Jennifer Jolly tries out Alexa on the Ford, peers at TVs held to walls by magnets, and tests a'smart bike'. Products that have chips that allow connectivity to the internet and that learn user's habits grab attention at CES in Las Vegas.