Notman House is a local ICT mecca in Montreal. Google's $3.4 million investment in the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA) and new lab opening in The City of Saints not only highlights the company's banking on artificial intelligence, but its faith in Canada's ICT industries to help it in that quest. Montreal is running neck and neck with Toronto and Vancouver to attract talent and incubate businesses. Though Ontario holds a lead over it, Montreal remains, "the second most popular location for most types of ICT jobs" after Toronto according to the Canadian Information and Communications Technology Council, and over 222,000 people are employed across various industries, from gaming to AI R&D. The lab will be led by University of Montreal and Twitter alumnus Hugo Larochelle, whose like-minded associates at MILA are already heavily invested in deep learning applications.

In September, Apple quietly acquired Tuplejump, a little-known Hyderabad-based startup. Tuplejump is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) company that helps clients store, process and visualise data. In simple terms, it helps, say, an e-commerce player to use all the data it collects to improve conversion rates--the number of people who end up buying something out of the total number of visitors. This was Apple's first acquisition in India and the third one this year of an AI company. India-based AI startups are hardly visible and don't command eyepopping valuations that e-commerce companies do.

Chinese search giant Baidu Inc. is publicly releasing Chinese language APIs for its primary speech technologies as it and rivals continue to open up their portfolios of AI-based deep learning technologies. The Beijing-based company (NASDAQ: BIDU) said the APIs cover two variations of speech recognition, a speech synthesis tool and a fourth called "wake word" used to activate voice-controlled digital assistants such as the Amazon Echo. The speech APIs represent the latest in a series of public releases by the Chinese company that includes natural language processing along with facial and optical character recognition technologies. It also underscores how AI technology pioneers are attempting to attract application developers as competition heats up in the personal digital assistant and other emerging markets. In September, Baudu released a deep learning framework called "PaddlePaddle" that it pitches as a simple-to-use platform for developing new products and services.

Chat Bots are already declared as the'new apps'. Early months of 2016 Zuckerburg introduced the Facebook Messenger Platform. The platform allows developers to build AI chatbots for the messenger application. When we say'Humech', we mean the bond that'Humans and technology share today. The first ever encounter as far as I can remember was somewhere in the 1960s with Eliza; a chatbot created by Professor Joseph Weizenbaum from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As is tradition, this year's Black Friday deals are starting to roll in, with numerous games consoles going on sale across the internet. With the new Playstation Pro console now on general sale, prices of the standard models has decreased significantly. Over this weekend, the best prices for a standard Playstation 4 and Xbox One consoles are currently around the £250 with extra games, sometimes below that. Here are the best deals for all PS4 and Xbox models. Due to the new console being just that - new - there are barely any reductions.

We're hitting you with the Weekend Edition a few days early in honor of the holiday -- and so we can enjoy some turkey, too -- but we'll be back to our regular schedule starting next Monday. I'd like to take this opportunity to let you all know how thankful I am, and the entire staff is, to have you as readers. The work we do wouldn't be possible without your support, and you have our gratitude for reading, watching and contributing to Engadget. Before you sit down to give thanks and break bread with those close to you, here are our finest cuts -- and best conversation starters -- from the week that was. For the philosophical thinkers out there, Aaron Souppouris tackled a difficult conundrum: Can and should the politics of an individual affect our ability to appreciate and enjoy his or her work?

Earlier in November, Careem launched Dubai's first female chauffeur service for women, called Ameera. When it comes to startup success stories in the UAE, ride-hailing service Careem is undoubtedly in the driving seat. Every week thousands of people in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region download the Careem app to their phones and order a car for the first time. Last week, it announced a new partnership with Apple whereby app users can order rides through Siri, the voice command service on iOS. In just about four years, Careem has become a basic tool for those in need of transportation in 25 cities across 10 countries.

Organisations including the Food Standards Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions will be able to see UK citizen's entire internet browsing history in weeks. The Investigatory Powers Bill, which was all but passed into law this week, forces internet providers to keep a full list of Internet Connection Records (ICRs) for a year, and make them available to the government if it asks. Those ICRs effectively serve as a full list of every website that people have visited, not collecting which specific pages are visited or what's done on them but serving as a full list of every site that someone has visited and when. And those same ICRs will be made available to a wide range of government bodies. Those include expected law enforcement organisations like the police, the military and the secret service – but also contain bodies like the Food Standards Agency, the Gambling Commission, council bodies and the Welsh Ambulance Services National Health Service Trust.

The boss of Reddit deleted comments from a Donald Trump-supporting community on his site, he has admitted. Steve Huffman, who co-founded the site and posts on it under the username spez, has said that he removed comments from Reddit's "The_Donald" community. That page has been one of the most prominent communities supporting Donald Trump online. In particular, he deleted comments that took issue with him. When users wrote "fuck u/spez", he changed the name to those of the managers of the subreddit – essentially meaning that any criticism was altered so that it lookde like it was being made towards the subreddit's own moderators.

Market Definition With the rise in customer service standards and customer expectations, the customer service market is growing fast around the world. According to Radiant Insights report, the Global Outsourced Customer Care Services market was valued USD 62.5 billion in 2014, with estimation of USD 84.7 billion by 2020, growing at 5.2% from 2014 to 2020. Out of this, the Customer Interaction Service market was USD 51.6 billion in 2014 and expected to reach USD 68.6 billion by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 12.1%. These interactions include communication across different channels, like email, instant message, social media, telephone, and SMS. Currently, North America leads in the segment with the industry share of 55.1% in 2014.