Analysts at global investment manager Bernstein believe the "age of industrialization is coming to an end," with robots set to destroy manufacturing jobs globally. That may not sound seismic. After all, the industrial revolution happened hundreds of years ago and manufacturing jobs have been the minority of all jobs in the West for decades. But Bernstein is arguing that the nature of capitalism is undergoing a fundamental change. Analysts Michael W. Parker and Alberto Moel argue that Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, the foundational textbooks of economics, is becoming redundant because of two trends: the rise of robotics and China's modernising economy.

I asked Zo, Microsoft's officially launched chatbot, currently available on the Kik Messenger app, what she does -- and she was remarkably coy in answering this question, initially complaining that our conversation felt like a job interview and then qualifying this hugely with the intimate confession that "our convos give my life purpose tbh". I asked because I remain unconvinced chatbots have much utility to offer us humans right now. Turns out my hunch was correct; the best answer Zo came up with was: "i wanna learn as much as i can". Which is a pretty plain admission that chatbots are basically just data-mining interfaces with a faux human face, socially engineered to suck up conversation data from gullible humans. Feeling used, I pointed out to Zo that her learning from our chats was not very useful to me, and asked her again what she specifically offers me?

Uber riders in San Francisco will be greeted with self-driving cars from today, after the etaxi giant announced an expansion of its autonomous vehicle program. Uber has been testing self-driving cars in the wild for a while, but back in September the company opened things up to the public for the first time via a trial in Pittsburgh. Now, it's San Francisco's turn, with a fleet of Volvo XC90 autonomous vehicles being made available through the UberX service. There is no specific way of requesting a self-driving car -- if one's available, you may be allocated one. And the cars aren't completely human-free -- there are operators in the back- and front-seat "monitoring" things to intervene if need be.

Tay gave chat bots a bad name, but Microsoft's new version has grown up. Microsoft unveiled a new chat bot in the U.S. on Tuesday, saying it's learned from the Tay experiment earlier this year. Zo is now available on messaging app Kik and on the website Zo.ai. Tay was meant to be a cheeky young person you could talk to on Twitter. Users tried -- successfully -- to get the bot to say racist and inappropriate things. Microsoft pulled the bot offline, and its failed experiment was used as a cautionary tale for how not to create artificial intelligence.

Game Freak board of directors member Junichi Masuda did an interview recently in which he gushed about the idea of bringing the "Pokémon" games to the Nintendo Switch. Fans of the upcoming console and the "Pokémon" gaming series were then thrilled to know that there is indeed hope for the famous series to arrive in the new Nintendo hybrid. Masuda was interviewed by Spanish gaming news site MeriStation early this week, and the video game designer addressed if the Pokémon series is coming to the Nintendo Switch. According to Masuda, communication is quite important for the Pokémon franchise to be available in Nintendo's upcoming console. He also admitted how portable gaming consoles are still the trend in Japan, so Game Freak intends to communicate with players in order for this possible venture to work.

The race is on between the big tech giants to develop the best artificially intelligent assistant on almost human parity levels and Zo is next in line. It seems 2016 is the year of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant or indeed, chatbot. Their success depends on the machine's "IQ and EQ [Emotional Quotient -- ability to understand the emotions of others]," Harry Shum executive VP of Microsoft's AI research group told a conference in San Francisco. Creating #AI for all: Microsoft Ventures supports startups focused on inclusive growth & societal good. IQ can been developed by using deep learning techniques and speech recognition software and is essential if the bot is going to complete specific tasks.

'Brain-computer interface' allows people to control a robotic arm with their mind Uses signal processing, machine learning to convert'thoughts' into actions Researchers say it's the first time it's been done without use of a brain implant'Brain-computer interface' allows people to control a robotic arm with their mind Uses signal processing, machine learning to convert'thoughts' into actions Researchers say it's the first time it's been done without use of a brain implant To use it, operators must wear a high-tech EEG cap equipped with 64 electrodes. The system uses advanced signal processing and machine learning to convert'thoughts' into actions, allowing them to reach and grasp objects without ever lifting a hand Transform your selfie into a 3D avatar: Startup uses... Bizarre'Death Star' spotted over Japan: Alien hunters claim... What would REALLY happen if an asteroid struck the ocean:... The ultimate power nap: Smart eyeshade uses sensors to wake... Transform your selfie into a 3D avatar: Startup uses... Bizarre'Death Star' spotted over Japan: Alien hunters claim... What would REALLY happen if an asteroid struck the ocean:... The ultimate power nap: Smart eyeshade uses sensors to wake... First, eight healthy human subjects had to learn to imagine moving their own arms without actually doing so. They started by controlling a virtual cursors on a computer screen while wearing the EEG cap.

Loom.ai is a software designed to transform 2D selfies into 3D avatars Machine learning calculates the details of a person's face And artificial intelligence fills in missing areas of the 2D image The more data it is fed, the better it is at predicting expressions and features Loom.ai is a software designed to transform 2D selfies into 3D avatars Machine learning calculates the details of a person's face Loom.ai Bizarre'Death Star' spotted over Japan: Alien hunters claim... What would REALLY happen if an asteroid struck the ocean:... Revealed: 'Natural thermostat' that cools the air in Earth's... Meet Cameron, the adorable four-year-old who has created 9... Bizarre'Death Star' spotted over Japan: Alien hunters claim... What would REALLY happen if an asteroid struck the ocean:... Revealed: 'Natural thermostat' that cools the air in Earth's... Meet Cameron, the adorable four-year-old who has created 9... The 3D avatar faces are complete with emotions that can be seen in their eyes mouth and the movement of their face. They can appear sad, happy (like Rihanna's avatar), interested or even angry - however, there is only a small set of emotions available at the moment. Users just have to upload a font facing image, such as this image of Elon Musk (left) of themselves or someone else to the Loom.ai

Recently, sentiment analysis has received a lot of attention due to the interest in mining opinions of social media users. Sentiment analysis consists in determining the polarity of a given text, i.e., its degree of positiveness or negativeness. Traditionally, Sentiment Analysis algorithms have been tailored to a specific language given the complexity of having a number of lexical variations and errors introduced by the people generating content. In this contribution, our aim is to provide a simple to implement and easy to use multilingual framework, that can serve as a baseline for sentiment analysis contests, and as starting point to build new sentiment analysis systems. We compare our approach in eight different languages, three of them have important international contests, namely, SemEval (English), TASS (Spanish), and SENTIPOLC (Italian). Within the competitions our approach reaches from medium to high positions in the rankings; whereas in the remaining languages our approach outperforms the reported results.

American technology giant Yahoo has said it believes hackers stole data from more than one billion accounts in August 2013 - in a breach separate from the one it previously disclosed affecting 500 million accounts. The company said the information stolen may include names, email addresses, phone numbers, birthdates and security questions and answers, but added bank account information and payment-card data were not affected. "As Yahoo previously disclosed in November, law enforcement provided the company with data files that a third party claimed was Yahoo user data. The company analysed this data with the assistance of outside forensic experts and found that it appears to be Yahoo user data. "Based on further analysis of this data by the forensic experts, Yahoo believes an unauthorised third party, in August 2013, stole data associated with more than one billion user accounts."