Japanese car giant Honda made its first annual loss in 70 years as its investments in the electric vehicle (EV) market failed to pay off. Demand for EVs has not been as strong as the company forecast, with Honda reporting a total operating loss for the year ending March 2026 of ¥423bn ($2.68bn: £1.99bn.). The firm said it was scrapping some of its EV production targets and would source parts from China, where prices are lower, to keep costs down. It cited changes in US policy as adding to its losses, including tax incentives having been taken away for US consumers purchasing EVs, and the imposition of tariffs. US consumers could previously receive up to $7,500 (£5,500) in tax credits if they purchased a new EV, but this was scrapped by President Donald Trump in September 2025.

In many industries, market forces influenced by the pandemic accelerate the need for AI-driven insights. Here's why and what to do about it.

Recent surveys, studies, forecasts and other quantitative assessments of the progress and impact of AI highlight the growing respect for data and its uses by businesses everywhere and the increasingly positive--but still mixed--attitudes towards AI by US consumers. The second wave of AI, right now, is soon going to fail because too much trickery and even self-trickery is used"--Simone Teufel, University of Cambridge "What's happening right now is not'AI.' That was an intellectual aspiration and that's still alive today as an aspiration… the dreams and aspirations are five hundred years from now--that's like the Greeks sitting there and saying it would be neat to get to the moon someday. We have no clue how the brain does computation"--Michael I. Jordan, University of California, Berkeley

Google has released new behavioural insights into 2019 holiday shoppers, with tips on how to sell to US consumers. According to Google's data, mobile searches for "best deals" have grown by 90%. So it should come as no surprise that the #1 factor when consumers decide where to buy is whichever retailer has the lowest price. Consumers also appreciate being able to do what they want all on their own. It's also interesting to note that searches around "rewards apps" and "Black Friday deals" are up 200% this year.

Recent surveys, studies, forecasts and other quantitative assessments of the progress of AI highlighted the growth in consumers' acceptance of chatbots, especially for help with routine tasks; questions about medical AI algorithms missing the worst patient outcomes; and new predictions for 2020 and beyond about the future of AI and work. Manpower France collects 1.3 million invoices from 80,000 companies annually. After nine months of testing Sidetrade's Aimie, a traditional machine learning-based tool, Manpower found that its collections increased 12% [Fortune] The first eight IT teams at Fannie Mae to receive Moogsoft's AIOps tool have seen a 35% reduction in IT incidents over the past 12 months; the teams using the AIOps tool have cut the time needed to resolve problems by between 25% and 75%, depending on the issue; Fannie expects that when it deploys the AI system to all business units and the system gets better at pinpointing root causes, monthly incidents will decline by 50% to 60% over the next year [WSJ] Familial hypercholesterolaemia or FH is a common genetic disorder that carries a 20-times higher risk for life-threatening cardiovascular disease, but today less than 10% percent of the 1.3 million Americans born with FH are diagnosed. The FIND FH screening algorithm was trained on data from 939 clinically diagnosed individuals and 83,136 individuals presumed free of FH. The model was then applied to a national health-care encounter database (170 million individuals) and an integrated health-care delivery system dataset (174,000 individuals).

Recent surveys, studies, forecasts and other quantitative assessments of the progress of AI highlighted US consumers' interest in AI working alongside their physicians, the current porn-heavy state of deepfakes, the potential business benefits of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and the impact of automation on incomes and employment. The internet is home to at least 14,678 deepfakes, according to a new report by DeepTrace. Funds run by computers that follow rules set by humans account for 35% of America's stockmarket, 60% of institutional equity assets and 60% of trading activity. Exchange-traded funds (etfs) and mutual funds automatically track indices of shares and bonds--in September 2019 these vehicles had $4.3trn invested in American equities, exceeding the sums actively run by humans for the first time [The Economist] Only 16% expect to reduce training budgets; 52% of the U.S. employees surveyed believe they have the necessary skills to be successful in an AI-enabled workplace, 20% saying they do not possess the right skills, and 28% reporting they aren't sure; 25% of employers and 20% of employees see a definite gap in workers' skills; 63% of U.S. employees expressed willingness to use a virtual or digital assistant to help them self-manage tasks and deadlines [Genesys surveys of 303 employers and 1,001 employees] Only 29% of finance departments that have deployed Robotic Process Automation (RPA) have utilized the technology for financial reporting; the average amount of avoidable rework in accounting departments can take up to 30% of a full-time employee's overall time. The first comprehensive review of studies published since 2012 comparing analysis of medical images by healthcare professionals and deep learning systems found humans and machines are on a par.

Smart speakers are rapidly becoming a fixture in our households. That's according to Adobe, which found in a poll of US consumers that nearly half could own a smart speaker by the end of the year. In fact, smart speakers are already in roughly a third of US households, meaning we're not far off from hitting the 50 percent mark. Smart speakers are becoming a fixture in our households. That's according to Adobe, which found in a poll of US consumers that nearly half could own one by the end of the year Smart speaker use has already experienced a rapid increase in just the past few months, Adobe said.

The future is looking bright for New Zealand businesses when they begin integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and new technologies into products, NZTech chief executive Graeme Muller says. A recent United States survey found 80 percent of consumers are excited about the way AI and machine learning will change their lives. US consumers are optimistic about technology developments in smart machines, AI, and robotics. The report from global creative consultancy firm Lippincott surveyed 2000 leading edge US consumers to determine their emotional state around technology, and draw conclusions about what the customer of the future will be looking for from businesses. A number of events are being held this week, as part of NZTech's national Techweek, to discuss AI and its implications.

Science-fiction visionaries have long promised us all kinds of futuristic transportation options, and while jetpacks and teleportation are still some ways off, the technologies are finally in place to make self-driving cars a reality. It's time for automakers to put the pedal to the metal as they compete with technology companies and other industry disruptors to put partially or fully autonomous vehicles on American roads. The auto industry has a head start: After decades of investments, today's vehicles offer many partially autonomous features like lane departure systems, adaptive cruise control, and emergency braking. Emerging technologies could enable even more vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure connectivity, making the leap to fully driverless cars even smaller. In fact, executives from several leading automakers foresee advanced self-driving technology being available by 2021 or even sooner;1 some envision vehicles without steering wheels or pedals to be driven by advanced technology and sensors and not people.

US consumers appear to be warming up to the idea of using of chatbots as a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, according to new research from Aspect Software Research. In its online survey of more than 1,000 18- to 65-year-old US consumers, 44% said that if a company could get the experience right, they would prefer to use a chatbot or automated experience for CRM. That's up four percentage points from the share of respondents who noted the same response in 2015. Chatbots can best be thought of as software programs that use messaging as the interface to carry out various tasks for users. They're generally integrated into messaging apps to capitalize on these apps' vast reach and the conversational interaction they promote.