Already, as of 2010, a quarter of Americans (24 percent) had posted product reviews or comments online, and 78 percent of internet users had gone online for product research. But those are ancient stats. More recently, BrightLocal found in 2016 that 91 percent of consumers regularly or occasionally read online reviews, with 47 percent taking sentiment of local-business reviews -- the tonality of a review's text -- into account in purchasing decisions. Breaking out the figures, 74 percent of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more, and 60 percent say that negative reviews make them not want to use a business, according to BrightLocal. So reviews are important, and the feelings expressed are key.

As it goes every year, one hot feature sets a trend in technology, and suddenly every company boasts some variation of which that is uniquely theirs. This year, that feature is AI. Hot on the heels of Alexa's and Google Assistant's holiday successes, Artificial Intelligence on phones has become the de facto must-have feature – whether consumers know it or not. In any case, manufacturers seem not to realize that AI doesn't mean "Anything Intuitive" – that's just how operating systems are supposed to be. Yet it seems that OEM's are eager to label nearly any vaguely intuitive feature as AI.

SANAA, Yemen – U.S. forces launched a raid in central Yemen on Sunday, security and tribal officials said, landing troops off of aircraft and killing three alleged senior Al Qaeda leaders in a battle that was the third such U.S. ground engagement against the extremist group in Yemen. The surprise dawn attack in Bayda province killed Abdul-Raouf al-Dhahab, Sultan al-Dhahab, and Seif al-Nims, they said. The al-Dhahab family is considered an ally of Al Qaeda, which security forces say is concentrated in Bayda province. A third family member, Tarek al-Dhahab, was killed in a previous U.S. drone strike years ago. It was not immediately clear whether the family members were actual members of Al Qaeda.

In 1872 a British general named Alexander Cunningham, excavating an area in what was then British-controlled northern India, came across something peculiar. Buried in some ruins, he uncovered a small, one inch by one inch square piece of what he described as smooth, black, unpolished stone engraved with strange symbols -- lines, interlocking ovals, something resembling a fish -- and what looked like a bull etched underneath. The general, not recognizing the symbols and finding the bull to be unlike other Indian animals, assumed the artifact wasn't Indian at all but some misplaced foreign token. The stone, along with similar ones found over the next few years, ended up in the British Museum. In the 1920s many more of these artifacts, by then known as seals, were found and identified as evidence of a 4,000-year-old culture now known as the Indus Valley Civilization, the oldest known Indian civilization to date. Since then, thousands more of these tiny seals have been uncovered.

HDFC Bank Ltd., today announced the launch of IRA, its interactive humanoid, at the Kamala Mills branch in Mumbai. IRA, which stands for Intelligent Robotic Assistant, will help branch staff in servicing customers. With this launch, HDFC Bank becomes the first bank in the country to introduce a humanoid for customer service. Developed using Robotics and Artificial Intelligence technologies, IRA will be positioned near the Welcome Desk, where it will greet customers and guide them to the relevant counter in the branch such as Cash Deposit, Foreign Exchange, Loans, among others in the first phase. Upon entering the Kamala Mills branch, IRA will greet the customer, before displaying a list of banking services he can avail at the branch.

John McCarthy coined the term Artificial Intelligence in 1955. Since then, the AI industry at large has seen dramatic ups and downs -- progress and promise mixed with disappointment and disillusion. But now with the convergence of Megatrends on massive data, lightning fast processing speeds, and renewed competitive fever from the American MAFIA (Microsoft, Alphabet, Facebook, IBM, Amazon), AI is poised to cause disruption on a scale that could surpass the Internet itself. As we prepare for a wave of AI first companies (@sundarpichai) and AI natives (Ryan Hoover), every person in the innovation economy will need to understand how AI will (or will not) change their industry and their lives. These titans shape the conversation and have the most ability to move the entire AI industry.

Persistence Market Research delivers pertinent insights on the growth of the Cognitive Computing Market and identifies key market dynamics impacting this growth. New York City, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/27/2017 -- In the ever changing world of information technology, business organizations are left with humongous amount of data with them. This data includes very critical information for business use, but business organizations are only able to utilize 20% of whole data available with them with the use of traditional data analytics technology. To process and interpret the reaming 80% of the data that is in the form of videos, images, and human voice (also called as dark data), there is a need of cognitive computing systems. Cognitive computing systems are typical combination of hardware and software that constitute natural language processing (NLP) and machine language, and have capability to collect, process, and interpret the dark data available with business organizations.

While robots are starting to be used to greet you at stores, Panasonic looks to put them to real work. The company's HOSPI robot is undergoing trials at Narita Airport in Chiba, Japan, where it's collecting used plates from restaurants and food courts in addition to serving drinks and providing directional information to customers. The cheery Dalek-in-training was originally designed for shuttling medical samples and files to doctors in hospitals and is used in four hospitals around the country, according to Panasonic. Along with its mapping information and high-performance sensors, the robot has advanced collision-detection tech, meaning that no guidance equipment needs to be put into walls or ceilings. Panasonic is evidently keen to have robots do our bidding, recently trialling robotic checkout machines in Osaka.

Reports are out that a Chinese robot has written and published its first newspaper article. The news comes the same month as a Japanese insurance company announced it was replacing 34 workers with an artificial intelligence system. "This is absolutely a wake-up call," said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with ZK Research, who added that it's time for people to think about their careers and if a robot or A.I. system could easily replace them. "We are the beginning of robots taking jobs," he added. But the fact is, we've had other revolutions -- like the birth of the assembly line."

"I think that everyone recognizes that for IoT to really realize its full potential and value that it is about creating ecosystems and marketplaces and that no single vendor is able to support what is required," explained Esmeralda Swartz, VP, Marketing Enterprise and Cloud at Ericsson, in this SYS-CON.tv Internet of @ThingsExpo, taking place June 6-8, 2017 at Javits Center, New York City, is co-located with 20th International @CloudExpo and will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the most profound change in personal and enterprise IT since the creation of the Worldwide Web more than 20 years ago. All major researchers estimate there will be tens of billions devices - computers, smartphones, tablets, and sensors - connected to the Internet by 2020. This number will continue to grow at a rapid pace for the next several decades.