GreenWaves Technologies (GreenWaves), a fabless semiconductor start-up designing disruptive ultra-low-power AI embedded processors for battery-operated edge devices, announced today that it has been named a Gartner "Cool Vendor" based on the April 29, 2019 report "Cool Vendors in AI Semiconductors," authored by Alan Priestley, VP Analyst, and Saniye Alaybeyi, Senior Director Analyst. The report states, "[t]he deployment of products with AI capabilities continues to gain momentum but requires increasingly sophisticated semiconductor devices to enable this new generation of smart things. This report highlights three semiconductor vendors delivering innovative AI-enabled chips to facilitate this trend." GreenWaves Technologies, and its flagship GAP8 IoT application processor, is listed as one of these three vendors. "We believe that Gartner's Cool Vendor reports represent some of the most cutting-edge, innovative and pioneering brands and technologies. We also believe that to be included as a Cool Vendor in AI Semiconductors is a true testament to GAP8 and the company's commitment to delivering AI at the very edge," said Loic Lietar, GreenWaves' co-founder and CEO.

When turkeys strut, their leg muscles work as shock absorbers to boost energy efficiency. That gam action inspired a prosthetic exoskeleton for humans: The lightweight contraption is outfitted with a spring and clutch that take the impact off the user's calf muscle. In experiments, a person wearing the braces while walking expended 10 percent less energy. Neurons along the creature's spinal cord can act independently via signals called central pattern generators, or CPGs. A slithering machine inspired by the lamprey, the AmphiBot, has 10 body modules, each with its own onboard computer that mimics a CPG.

There's no denying that human intelligence makes our species stand out from other life on Earth. Our modern brain is an evolutionary feat more than 520 million years in the making, and it is the key to everything that makes us human. But while human brains are extraordinary, we don't have a monopoly on intelligence. "Reserving the term'cognition' for typically human problem-solving abilities ... and dismissing simpler behavior as mechanistic, reflexive, and hard-wired does not do justice to the behavioral complexities of even the simplest of organisms," University of Gronigen psychologist Marc van Duijn and his colleagues write in a widely cited 2006 paper on cognition. You might think of tool use as an exclusively human activity, but macaques on an island off Thailand have learned to use stones as tools to shuck oysters.

A sad cycle has overtaken the gadget business. It starts this week at CES, tech's biggest annual convention, where inventors compete to connect the most random things to the Internet. This year's "smart" stuff includes pillows, air fresheners and even toilets. A few months from now we'll see different headlines: That smart thing you bought is actually spying on you. Sooner or later, the story gets worse: Your smart thing has been hacked.

Samsung today announced a new consumer product strategy based in artificial intelligence technology during its keynote speech at CES 2018 in Las Vegas. Head of Samsung's research H.S. Kim today announced every product the company makes would connect to the IoT cloud and have baked-in artificial intelligence by 2020. The company previously committed to connecting all of its devices to the internet by 2020, effectively creating a "smart" everything. This change indicates all Samsung products will soon feature an AI that learns over all of your devices. Kim stated the company would engage in a three fold pillar to simplify all of its products using a single-cloud approach which includes connectivity, cloud, and intelligence.

Technology companies have been saying for years now that it's the era of the smart home. But there have been a few barriers that kept all but the most tech-savvy and patient among us from signing on. But this may be the year to get "smart." The prices of smart home devices are coming down. And companies are focused on making everything simpler to set up.

If your aging iPhone is too old or damaged to trade in for whatever you think it's worth, here's some good news: As long as it can still connect to a wireless network--and every iPhone from the original 2007 model to today's iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus still can--there are plenty of ways to use it that don't require a cellular data plan. Here are TIME's picks for the smartest ways to get the most out of an old Apple smartphone. You can use your iPhone as a dedicated music player either by streaming songs from a service like Spotify when connected to Wi-Fi, or by downloading tunes straight to the device. This can be handy in any number of scenarios, especially if you want to listen to music without draining your primary phone's battery, say during a lengthy commute. You don't need to buy an Amazon Echo or Google Home to retrieve information without reaching for your phone.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the hottest topics right now across a range of industries. The trouble with a hot topic is that it's often accompanied by a lot of hot air. We look at the current state of Artificial Intelligence; specifically, what it is, how it's being used by marketers to impact customer experience and where it's going. As conversations around AI continue to grow, so do the links it has to automation and algorithms. The important distinction between these terms is that AI is engineered to learn from its previous actions, often changing the way it works to maximise its chance or improve the way it completes a certain objective.

A new press release out of the company reports, "Software AG today shared its predictions for the Internet of Things (IoT) in 2017, derived from our expertise, customer insights, and market observations. Bart Schouw, Internet of Things Solutions Director at Software AG observed: 'There is a lot of buzz around the Internet of Things and especially increased device-to-device communication. Much of this mobile, virtual and instantaneous connectivity is built on seamless integration, cloud computing and networks of data-gathering sensors--building new'Smart Things.' And all of this is going to make our lives easier and more efficient'." The release goes on, "'Smart Things' have their own needs – drones need landing areas and docking stations for recharging, robots want their own elevators – and architects are realizing that buildings have to accommodate them. Whereas they do not yet fully understand the implications, once they do we will see substantial changes to the layouts of buildings. Architects will turn to hardware and software vendors to gain a better understanding. Form follows function becomes form follows digital functions."

There's been quite the spate of discussion of late about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and adaptive learning. You've no doubt seen the commercials where Watson conducts conversations with talents from Bob Dylan to teacher Ashley Bryant, the latter in which great learning outcomes are proposed. And I think it's important to know what is real, where we are, and where we are going, if we're to plan accordingly. We've previously touched on AI, but it's worth going deeper. To start, we need to clarify what AI really is.