The driver in a car accident takes a picture of the damaged vehicle and sends it to an insurer for a coverage quote on the spot. A hat retailer uses data analytics to tweak its marketing formula and more than 60 percent of recipients suddenly open their messages in an email campaign. A hotel guest checks in and issues voice commands to an in-room personal assistant, ordering a rental car from the guest's preferred company that shows up outside the lobby a half-hour later. Is this the future of artificial intelligence, or is it a mad vision of computers run amok? In fact, these are all actual use cases presented during Dreamforce 2018 in San Francisco this week (pictured), and they underscore a theme that occupied much of the conversation among 170,000 attendees.

Swiss engineering company ABB is considering acquisitions to increase its capabilities in artificial intelligence, CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer said March 29. "We will continually further expand the portfolio of ABB," he said, speaking on the sidelines of the company's annual general meeting in Zurich. This would include investment in organic growth in artificial intelligence (AI), and partnerships with other companies to accelerate areas such as linking AI to industrial robots. ABB, whose products also include charging stations for electric cars and massive converters for continent-spanning transmission systems, would also invest selectively in start-up companies, Spiesshofer said. He was speaking after ABB gave a slightly more upbeat assessment about the development of its markets for 2018, saying conditions had brightened.

Swiss engineering company ABB is considering acquisitions to increase its capabilities in artificial intelligence, CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer said March 29. "We will continually further expand the portfolio of ABB," he said, speaking on the sidelines of the company's annual general meeting in Zurich. This would include investment in organic growth in artificial intelligence (AI), and partnerships with other companies to accelerate areas such as linking AI to industrial robots. ABB, whose products also include charging stations for electric cars and massive converters for continent-spanning transmission systems, would also invest selectively in start-up companies, Spiesshofer said. He was speaking after ABB gave a slightly more upbeat assessment about the development of its markets for 2018, saying conditions had brightened.

ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss engineering company ABB (ABBN.S) is considering acquisitions to increase its capabilities in artificial intelligence, Chief Executive Ulrich Spiesshofer said on Thursday. "We will continually further expand the portfolio of ABB," he said, speaking on the sidelines of the company's annual general meeting in Zurich. This would include investment in organic growth in artificial intelligence (AI), and partnerships with other companies to accelerate areas such as linking AI to industrial robots. ABB, whose products also include charging stations for electric cars and massive converters for continent-spanning transmission systems, would also invest selectively in start-up companies, Spiesshofer said. He was speaking after ABB gave a slightly more upbeat assessment about the development of its markets for 2018, saying conditions had brightened.

Here's a surprise: at our Disrupt Berlin event, Ulrich Spiesshofer, the CEO of 125-year old automation giant ABB, argued that automation is nothing to fear. "I think we need to take this fear extremely seriously and get people out of this fear," he said. In his view, automation and robotics has allowed millions of people to move beyond the extreme poverty line and it's the countries that embraced automation -- including the likes of China and India -- that are doing much better than some of their counterparts that have resisted automation. "Technology can be really good if you play it right," Spiesshofer noted. "The truth is that the countries with the highest robot density -- South Korea, Germany, Japan -- have the lowest unemployment rates."

We can run the world without consuming the earth. That was a sentiment expressed multiple times at ABB Consumer World this week in Houston, and it was one that ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer highlighted during his morning keynote early in the week. An airplane can now fly around the world without consuming a single drop of fuel. That was achieved for the first time last year by Solar Impulse 2, Spiesshofer noted, and it's just one indication of what can be achieved as technology advances. Advancing technologies also include the sheer connectedness of devices.