Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology will enable simpler user interfaces, which will help banks create a more human-like customer experience. The technology has become efficient in gaining extensive data analytics and customer insights, which will help banks to create a more personalised customer experience, according to Aspect Software. Four in five bankers believe AI will "revolutionise" the way in which banks gather information as well as how they interact with their clients, said the Accenture Banking Technology Vision 2017 report as customers are looking for a fast, efficient solution to their queries. The new report revealed that AI will become the primary way banks interact with their customers within the next three years, according to three quarters of bankers surveyed and also found that, while the number of human interactions in bank branches or over the phone was falling and would continue to do so, the quality and importance of human contact would increase. Stephen Ball, SVP Sales, Europe and Africa at Aspect Software, suggests that as the banking world continues to change with the adoption of new technologies, and a growing number of'challenger banks' and fintech providers emerging to shake up the established order, traditional banks are responding by improving their customers' experience.

In late February, the UN-Secretary General held a press conference, highlighting the risk of starvation in East Africa and the necessity to raise funds to address the emergency situations in Somalia and South Sudan. Drought has been back in these countries and their neighbours since 2016, leading to a huge current food crisis. While governments are trying to handle the situation, how could technology innovations help prevent starvation and improve agriculture management in the future? We met with Laurent Rivière, a French 30 years-old entrepreneur, who shared with us his view on the subject with a combination of engineer pragmatism and changemaker idealism . Founder and CEO at Sunbirds for two years, he explained to us how his "bird of the sun," his solar drone, is addressing the agriculture challenges of the 21st century.

In March, robot programming students took part in the 2016-17 FIRST LEGO LEAGUE competition (FLL) with the theme'ANIMAL ALLIES'. FIRST LEGO League (FLL) is a program that supports children and youngsters and introduces them to science and technology in a sporty atmosphere. The theme of this year's FLL competition was to explore the relationship between people and animals. Today, it's time to think about how we can help each other. What might become possible when we work together with our ANIMAL ALLIES?

Amazon's Alexa can summon an Uber and satisfy a four-year-old's demand for fart noises. Siri can control your Internet-connected thermostat. Each serve millions of users each day. But a lucky group of around 10,000 people, mostly in California, know that Facebook's assistant, named M, is the smartest of the bunch. Recommend and reserve a romantic hotel in Morocco that's also suitable for small children?

Facebook could be prosecuted in the UK for failing to remove child abuse images posted to the site despite being made aware of them, according to a new report. "Dozens" of illegal images and videos were allegedly flagged to the social network's moderators by a reporter using a fake profile, according to the Times. The illegal content is said to include a video of an apparent sexual assault on a child, "violently paedophilic cartoons", an "Islamic State beheading" and propaganda posters "glorifying recent terrorist attacks in London and Egypt". However, they reportedly only took some of them down, concluding that the majority didn't breach the site's Community Standards, which states, "We remove content that threatens or promotes sexual violence or exploitation. This includes the sexual exploitation of minors and sexual assault."

Facebook uses satellite imagery machine learning and AI to prepare maps for locating unconnected communities across the world. Maps tell us so much more than how to get from A to B, or where C is in relation to D. They can be tools of power and snapshots of history; they can give urban planners the information to plan infrastructure. After a disaster, population density and crisis maps help to direct aid and aid workers. Throughout time, different cultures and industries have produced radically different images of the world. Today there are more than 7 billion humans sprawling across Earth.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is commonly associated with science fiction films and some distant future scenario where the world is run by psychotic robots. However scary it may seem, we are already interacting with self-teaching technology in our everyday lives. Bradley Elliott, director of digital agency Platinum Seed, discusses the ways that AI or machine learning enhances business and ordinary life. Major corporations are increasingly turning to smart machines to make their businesses more impactful and relevant to their customers. Gaining a global competitive edge is vital to the survival of any commercial entity, especially in a world of increasing product parity.

Computers are playing spot the difference in the Serengeti. An image-recognition algorithm that can identify different species could make it easier to track animals in the wild. Using a database of 3.2 million photos taken by hidden camera traps in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, Jeff Clune at the University of Wyoming in Laramie and his colleagues trained the deep-learning system to distinguish between 48 animal species, such as elephants, giraffes and gazelles. In tests, it correctly identified the species present in an image 92 per cent of the time. Camera traps automatically take pictures of passing animals when triggered by heat and motion.

When you move to another country as an adult, the language flows around you like a river. Perhaps a child can immediately abandon himself to the current, but most older people will begin by picking out the words and phrases that seem to matter most, which is what I did after my family moved to Cairo, in October of 2011. It was the first fall after the Arab Spring; Hosni Mubarak, the former President, had been forced to resign the previous February. Every weekday, my wife, Leslie, and I met with a tutor for two hours at a language school called Kalimat, where we studied Egyptian Arabic. At the end of each session, we made a vocabulary list. In early December, following the first round of the nation's parliamentary elections, which had been dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, my language notebook read: On many days, I went to Tahrir Square, to report on the ongoing revolution. If I heard unfamiliar words or phrases, I brought them back to class. The following month, I learned "tear gas," "slaughter," and "Can you speak more slowly?" "Conspiracy theory" appeared in my notebook on the same day as "fried potatoes." Sometimes I wondered about the strangeness of Tahrir-speak, and what my Arabic would have been like if I had arrived ten years earlier. But it would have been different at any time, in any place: you can never step into the same language twice. Even eternal phrases took on a new texture in the light of the revolution. After I could understand some of the radio talk shows that cabbies played, I realized that callers and hosts exchanged Islamic greetings for a full half minute before settling down to heated arguments about the new regime. Our textbook was entitled "Dardasha"--"Chatter"--and it outlined set conversations that I soon carried out with neighbors, using phrases that would never be touched by Tahrir: "May peace, mercy, and the blessings of God be upon you." One of our teachers, Rifaat Amin, prepared a five-page handout entitled "Arabic Expressions of Social Etiquette." This supplemented "Dardasha," which also featured some lessons about social traditions, including the evil eye, the belief that envy can cause misfortune. In "Dardasha," icons of little bombs with burning fuses had been printed next to the kind of phrase that, even during a revolution, qualified as explosive: "Your son is really smart, Madame Fathiya."

JUDY WOODRUFF: The continent of Africa does not now hold many internationally well-known universities, but one man is trying to change that, a one-time Microsoft executive who was educated in the United States, Patrick Awuah. As special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports, as part of his Agents for Change series, one special focus of classes is to teach Africa's next generation of leaders about ethics. FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It looks like a pretty typical college campus, with students working in computer labs, studying at the library, or hanging out with friends. But Ashesi University, in the West African nation of Ghana, has embarked on an experiment which its founder hopes will help start to fundamentally change the entire continent. PATRICK AWUAH, President, Ashesi University: In the next three decades or so, the population of Africa is going to double, and something like 40 percent of working-age people are going to be Africans in the world.