There are two conflicting visions of where artificial intelligence will take humankind. Some people worry that when robots become capable of programming themselves, they’ll realize that humans are useless and do away with us. Others think that on the day when robots become sentient — that is, the moment of the singularity — humans will be one with the ...

  This summer, Bill Winters completes two years at Standard Chartered Plc, the emerging-markets lender whose share price is still 32 percent below where it was when the former JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive took over as CEO. While the bank’s drop in first-quarter impairment costs is making investors optimistic about asset quality, further upside will depend on Winters becoming ...

  Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be moving ahead for plan to establish safe zones in Syria backed by peacekeepers with a high degree conviction. And to achieve this, there is marked change in the interaction between major powers supporting rivals in the Syrian conflict. Putin secured the US backing for the proposal to create safe zones in Syria ...

When President Xi Jinping announced in 2015 that China would pump $46 billion worth of investments into Pakistan, the recipients of his largesse seemed less surprised than one might have expected. The military and political elites of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan have long extracted aid from outside powers in return for keeping a lid on things at home. As ...

  The plumber who’ll sort out India’s bad-loan mess is about to get powerful new tools, and an overflowing toilet will soon be clean. Or that’s how investors are reacting to weaker-than-expected quarterly earnings from the country’s largest private-sector bank by assets. How sentiment changes. At the end of 2015, when concerns over Indian lenders’ balance sheets reigned supreme, ICICI ...

  A hacker who has unsuccessfully tried to hold Netflix for ransom has achieved an unexpected result: His failure shows that subscription-based business models in content distribution is making piracy pointless. Intellectual property owners’ slowness in adopting these models is the only reason content is still being pirated. Someone calling himself (or herself, or themselves) TheDarkOverlord stole most of the ...

  Bloomberg Royal Dutch Shell Plc showed it has adapted to a world of lower oil prices, generating a surge in cash that allowed it to pay dividends while reducing debt. The Anglo-Dutch company’s first-quarter performance helps validate Chief Executive Officer Ben Van Beurden’s $54 billion purchase of BG Group Plc — for which some shareholders complained he overpaid — ...

  Bloomberg Natural gas in balmy Texas is feeling the chill of California’s snowy peaks 1,200 miles away. West Coast power producers are ditching gas in favor of cheap, plentiful hydroelectric power, which is surging after the wettest year ever across the Northern Sierra Nevada range. Much of that moisture fell as snow which is now melting, soaking fields, filling ...

  Bloomberg Oil resumed its decline as US production increased for an 11th week in the longest run of gains since 2012. Futures lost as much as 1.1 percent in New York after climbing 0.3 percent. Crude output rose to 9.29 million barrels a day, the highest level since August 2015, according to the Energy Information Administration. US inventories fell ...

  Bloomberg Sunrun Inc., the largest independent US rooftop company, fell the most in more than 11 months after the Wall Street Journal reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether the company adequately disclosed how many customers canceled contracts. The San Francisco-based rooftop installer dropped 8.8 percent to $4.75 at the close in New York, the most ...