As the market for apps is maturing and artificial intelligence advancing, text-based services, or chatbots, are poised to take off. Chatbots are essentially software programs that use messaging as the interface to carry out various tasks. Venture Beat estimates that the bots landscape currently consists of over 170 companies that have attracted some US 4 billion in funding. One particular area where entrepreneurs and market observers are optimistic about, is their use to deliver financial services. Already, a number of banks have dived into this emerging trend, building and delivering solutions on instant messaging and popular social networks (think Facebook Messenger and Twitter) to deliver basic banking needs such as checking your banking account balance, finding nearby ATMs, and even make payments, have launched this year.

The ethics of driverless car technology is . . . A report [in June] in the journal Science found that most people surveyed think that it would be more moral for a driverless car to be programmed to crash into a wall and sacrifice its passengers rather than hit a larger number of pedestrians, if it only had those two choices. If you don't brake, you will kill the squirrel. However, you happen to know that the squirrel is on his way to kill two other squirrels. What if the two other squirrels are known arsonists? It would be easy for you to adjust your software so that the dashboard "change oil" icon lights up only when the car is in reverse and your owner is looking over his shoulder.

Researchers at Stanford University are utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to identify areas of poverty in hard-to-reach places. Publishing their research in Science Magazine, the team consisting of Neal Jean, Marshall Burke, Michael Xie, Matthew Davis, David Lobell, and Stefano Ermon used deep learning algorithms to sort through millions of satellite images to identify economic conditions in five African countries. This research supports a forecast Tractica made over a year ago in our Artificial Intelligence for Enterprise Applications report, that spending on AI software by philanthropy organizations will grow dramatically over the next 10 years. Traditionally, philanthropy organizations have conducted door-to-door surveys to identify people living in poverty, but these surveys are imprecise, time-consuming, and expensive. Many international aid organizations including the World Bank have been trying to use satellite surveys to gather data remotely on developing countries, but the expense of gathering and analyzing this data using conventional methods has proven prohibitive.

Package Name: International Stocks Forecast Length: 7 Days (08/28/2016 – 09/04/2016) I Know First Average: 6.85% The highest returning stock for the 7 days period was. The package's overall average return was 6.85%, providing investors with a 6.35% premium, over the SP500's return of 0.50%, during the same period. Mechel Sp ADR (MTL) engages in mining and steel businesses in Asia,the Russian Federation, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Europe, the Middle East, the United States, and internationally. Mechel PAO works in three different sectors,Mining, Steel, and Power.

Beauty pageants have always been political. After all, what speaks more strongly to how we see each other than which physical traits we reward as beautiful, and which we code as ugly? It wasn't until 1983 that the Miss America competition crowned a black woman as the most beautiful woman in the country. So what if we replaced human judges with machines? As shallow as the whole thing is, would a computer at least be able to see past skin colour and look at, potentially, more universal markers of attractiveness?

A grainy video uploaded to YouTube appears to show a small object flying over the SpaceX rocket moments before it exploded. SpaceX said an'anomaly' had occurred while the rocket was being loaded with fuel. No was injured in the blast. The rocket's payload, an Israeli-built communications satellite for Facebook due to launch on Saturday, was also destroyed. A video of the blast, posted to the site by Steve Svensson, appears to show a silver spherical object flying close to rocket when the blast happened.

Nairobi, Dec 19 (PTI) The WTO talks entered the fifth day today as a deadlock continued over reducing farm subsidies and on providing protection to poor farmers of developing nations, such as India, in case of import surge. The 10th WTO Ministerial was originally scheduled to end last night but developed and developing countries failed to iron out differences on these issues. "The meeting is still on since last night," sources said, adding that a small group of countries -- India, the US, EU, China and Brazil - are discussing the issues. India has made it clear that it would not compromise the interests of farmers and agri-related sectors. It has also asserted to include the public stockholding issue for food security purposes in the preamble of the Nairobi declaration. It also wants that special safeguard mechanism (SSM) should be delinked from market access.

There's one recurring obsession that keeps haunting almost every marketing and ad agency executive. It's in nearly every Powerpoint deck and on every marketer's mind… Millennials: the oh so documented and ubiquitous M Word!. For many years, most marketers (and their agencies) relied on the same old recipe. Brand awareness and reach were the only metrics that mattered. Problem is, the recipe started to turn sour.

Israel is planning to bolster its high-tech arsenal by deploying fully autonomous military vehicles along the country's dangerous border with Gaza. "This is the future -- the border is a very dangerous place," an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) official told FoxNews.com, citing the threat of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), snipers, anti-tank missiles and terrorist tunnels. "Sending unmanned vehicles to do these patrols means that troops lives' are not at risk." Working with Israeli defense specialist Elbit Systems, IDF has equipped Ford F-350 pickup trucks with specialized remote driving technology. The trucks, dubbed Border Protector Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs), are also fitted with four driving cameras and a 360-degree observation camera to help operators identify threats.

Dubai: In keeping with the global decline the growth of assets under management (AuM), the Middle East also witnessed a sharp fall in the total AuM last year, according to a study by Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Globally, AuM stalled with marginal growth last year. The BCG report shows the global value of AuM rose just 1 per cent in 2015, to 71.4 trillion (Dh262 trillion) from 70.5 trillion in 2014, after growing 8 per cent that year, and at an average annualised rate of 5 per cent from 2008 through 2014. In contrast, the Middle East's AuM declined 10 per cent and net new flows of assets, revenue growth, and revenue margins all dipped lower in 2015. In absolute terms the region's AuM plummeted from 1.4 trillion in 2014 to 1.3 trillion in 2015.