In April 2016, Uber announced the acquisition of Otto, a San Francisco-based startup that has developed a kit that can turn any big rig into a self-driving truck. The Otto technology enables complete autonomy on highways: trucks can navigate, stay in their lane, and slow or stop in response to traffic conditions completely without human intervention. Otto's equipment currently costs about $30,000, but that is certain to fall significantly in the coming years. Otto is by no means alone. Massive automated vehicles are already commonly used to move materials for the Australian mining industry.

There's been a lot of chatter in banking circles lately about chatbots. Of course, as with most things in nascent technology, that chatter is a bit divided on whether chatbots are ready for primetime. Barclays, Societe Generale, USAA, BBVA, and Capital One have begun actively experimenting with them. Bank of America has said it will roll out a chatbot named "erica" this year. As she demoed erica at Money 2020 this year, Michelle Moore, the bank's head of digital banking, said it will be "the trusted adviser to our 45 million households."

Twitter appears to be placing temporary usage restrictions on accounts it detects "potentially abusive behaviour" from. Several users of the micro-blogging site claim to have received a message from the site, telling them that their account has been limited for 12 hours. The penalty cuts the reach of the user's updates, making them visible to their followers only, and not the wider Twitter community. Twitter's user guidelines identify violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct, multiple account abuse, impersonation and the publishing of other people's private information as activities that could warrant suspension. "We believe in freedom of expression and in speaking truth to power, but that means little as an underlying philosophy if voices are silenced because people are afraid to speak up," it says.

The world's first fleet of self-driving cars could be deployed thousands of miles from where they were invented. The city of Dubai will have 200 of Tesla's self-driving, electric taxis on its roads by 2020. The cars will initially be used on'autopilot', meaning a human driver has to be behind the wheel for emergencies, but will come with the hardware needed for full self-driving capability. The world's first fleet of self-driving cars could be deployed a long way from where they were invented. The city of Dubai will have 200 self-driving Tesla taxis, including Tesla's Model S pictured here, on its roads by 2020 Tesla announced an updated version of their autopilot hardware in December last year, named HW2.

An "entrepreneurial" seven year old wrote to Google for a job and its CEO replied. After discussing her father's work, Chloe Bridgewater decided she would like to work for Google and penned a letter beginning "dear Google boss". It was only the schoolgirl's second letter, after her first missive to Father Christmas, but the search engine's CEO Sundar Pichai wrote back. Her father Andy said the girl "took it all in her stride". "We were gobsmacked, but I don't think Chloe could understand the magnitude of the reaction she'd got afterwards," said father Andy, a sales manager from Hereford.

Reddit has tweaked its front page to show more different posts – and exclude those from political forums. New users to the site and those who aren't logged in will be treated to a range of different posts than before, after the site made a tweak to what it will show. The change appears to be a response to the site's growing popularity – and fears that same popularity might be warping the kind of things that get shared and seen on the internet. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

Each winter, hundreds of AI researchers from around the world convene at the annual meeting of the Association of the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Last year, a minor crisis erupted over the schedule, when AAAI announced that 2017's meeting would take place in New Orleans in late January. The dates happened to conflict with Chinese New Year. The holiday might not have been a deal breaker in the past, but Chinese researchers have become so integral to the meeting, it could not go on without them. "Nobody would have put AAAI on Christmas day," says current AAAI president Subbarao Kambhampati.

Sounds like a self-help group for frustrated call center employees. Rather, it's a catch-all term for how companies manage customer interactions and data. It covers strategies involving everything from customer service to sales. Each incoming phone call or email may contain an overwhelming amount of data that a mere human in today's hyper-competitive, tech-intensive environment can't handle alone. Time to bring in some help with artificial intelligence.

Baidu is furthering its push into artificial intelligence after it announced the acquisition of Raven Tech, a Chinese startup that developed an AI voice assistant platform. Baidu confirmed it has bought the startup's tech, product and staff of 60. The deal comes a month after Baidu hired noted AI expert Qi Lu, formerly with Microsoft, as its COO and Group President. Baidu didn't reveal how much it is paying for Raven Tech, which is an alumni of the Microsoft Venture Accelerator and Y Combinator and has raised $18 million from investors like DCM Ventures and Zhenfund. Raven Tech's Flow product was likened to a Chinese version of Siri, but it has failed to take off.

"Using IoT (internet of things), AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning technologies, we will provide vehicle owners in India and across the world a safe, productive and fun driving experience," Anant Maheshwari, President at Microsoft India, said.