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‘Davos in the desert’ offers glimpse of how Saudi Arabia is changing

Women and men sat together Tuesday as some 3,000 business people, investors and officials from dozens of countries gathered in the capital of highly conservative Saudi Arabia.

Dubbed “Davos in the desert” — a reference to the annual World Economic Forum in Switzerland — the conference is the first of its kind.


IMF director Christine Lagarde (left) and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (center) attend the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday. Faisal Al Nasser / Reuters.

This Company’s Robots Are Making Everything—and Reshaping the World

Amid the tumult, there’s one clear winner: the $50 billion company that controls most of the world’s market for factory automation and industrial robotics. In fact, Fanuc might just be the single most important manufacturing company in the world right now, because everything Fanuc does is designed to make it part of what every other manufacturing company is doing.


Fanuc, a secretive Japanese factory-automation business, might be the planet’s most important manufacturer.

In 5 Years, Batteries Will Blanket The U.S., Duke Executive Says

Five years. That’s how soon batteries can be expected to sprout all over the electric grid as utilities and homeowners drop in on a wave of falling prices, a Duke Energy executive said in Chicago Thursday.

“There’s going to be a lot of excitement around batteries in the next five years. And I would say that the country will get blanketed with projects,” said Spencer Hanes, a managing director of business development with the Charlotte, North Carolina-based utility.

“With the way that the cost curves are coming down it’s a big opportunity for all of us to deliver what customers want.”

Sucking CO2 from the atmosphere could save the planet — but it isn’t cheap

Should definitely be worked on. Eventually the same stuff could be used to reverse engineer/terraform Venus.


When politicians talk about the Paris Climate Agreement, it’s usually framed in terms of restrictions on emissions for states and businesses. But the Paris Agreement wasn’t just an agreement to regulate — it was also an agreement to innovate. That’s because most experts agree that the world won’t be able to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, unless there’s a way to physically remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

A Swiss startup called Climeworks has made that their goal, developing the most advanced carbon-capture technology to date. VICE News went to Switzerland to see how the technology works and hear how the business plans to tackle climate change. Problem is, what Climeworks is doing isn’t cheap.

This segment originally aired Oct. 16, 2017, on VICE News Tonight on HBO.

Bigelow Aerospace and United Launch Alliance Announce Agreement to Place a B330 Habitat in Low Lunar Orbit

Las Vegas, NV and Centennial, Colo. (Oct. 17, 2017) – Bigelow Aerospace and United Launch Alliance (ULA) are working together to launch a B330 expandable module on ULA’s Vulcan launch vehicle. The launch would place a B330 outfitted module in Low Lunar Orbit by the end of 2022 to serve as a lunar depot.

“We are excited to work with ULA on this lunar depot project,” said Robert Bigelow, president of Bigelow Aerospace. “Our lunar depot plan is a strong complement to other plans intended to eventually put people on Mars. It will provide NASA and America with an exciting and financially practical success opportunity that can be accomplished in the short term. This lunar depot could be deployed easily by 2022 to support the nation’s re-energized plans for returning to the Moon.

”This commercial lunar depot would provide anchorage for significant lunar business development in addition to offering NASA and other governments the Moon as a new exciting location to conduct long-term exploration and astronaut training.”

AI nano-machines could be injected into our brains within 20 years

AI machines injected into our bodies could give us superhuman strength and let us control gadgets using the power of THOUGHT within 20 years…


Humans could be ‘melded’ to machines, giving us huge advancements in brain power, experts told peers at the House of Lords Artificial Intelligence Committee (pictured, stock)

Growing the Artificial Intelligence Industry in the UK, an independent review of artificial intelligence recommended information about people’s health and lifestyles should be opened up to allow major advances to be made in developing artificial intelligence (AI).

It calls for the Alan Turing Institute, named in honour of the wartime codebreaker, to become a national centre for AI and said the Government should expand its support for businesses in the field.

What India’s hi-tech capital can learn from China

According to India’s Frontline magazine, anecdotal evidence from Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune and other cities suggests that a number of large IT service companies are shedding thousands of jobs as artificial intelligence, automation and deep learning technologies replace humans.


Bangalore’s outsourcing businesses may be on the wane, but cities like Hangzhou may indicate its best course for the future.

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 10 October, 2017, 10:00am.

UPDATED : Tuesday, 10 October, 2017, 10:00am.

The Business of Artificial Intelligence

Like so many other new technologies, however, AI has generated lots of unrealistic expectations. We see business plans liberally sprinkled with references to machine learning, neural nets, and other forms of the technology, with little connection to its real capabilities. Simply calling a dating site “AI-powered,” for example, doesn’t make it any more effective, but it might help with fundraising. This article will cut through the noise to describe the real potential of AI, its practical implications, and the barriers to its adoption.


What it can — and cannot — do for your organization.

Scotland’s wind turbines are becoming increasingly efficient at meeting the nation’s power needs

Wind turbines produced double the amount of power required to meet Scotland’s electricity needs Monday, according to researchers.

Environmental group WWF Scotland said Friday that analysis of data provided by WeatherEnergy showed the country’s wind turbines sent 86,467 megawatt hours of electricity to the National Grid on Monday.

That day, total electricity consumption in Scotland – including homes, industry and businesses – was 41,866 megawatt hours, WWF Scotland said, meaning that wind power produced the equivalent of 206 percent of the nation’s needs.