Samsung is all out to join the artificial intelligence (AI) race as the South Korean giant has agreed to acquire Viv Labs, the startup behind Viv an AI assistant system which is "radically simplifying the world by providing an intelligent interface to everything." Interestingly, Viv was co-founded by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham, the creators of Apple's Siri. The trio founded Viv in 2012, which is an intelligent assistant and an open platform wherein any developer can add more knowledge and capabilities to it. Viv was unveiled at Disrupt NY tech conference in New York back in May. The news about Samsung acquiring Viv Labs was confirmed by TechCrunch, and also through a blog post by Kittlaus.

Artificial intelligence has always been a hot topic. The problem of creating a machine that can think, make its own decisions and at the same time lacks human limitations, has always aroused controversies. Because what is the artificial intelligence, what do we know about it? Is it going to be human's best friend or maybe the worst enemy? We all remember what the infamous Skynet has done to our planet in Terminator series, right? We can also recall this nasty feeling of a cold shiver running down our spines when Neo has woken up from the Matrix.

Samsung has joined the race to develop an artificially intelligent assistant for its gadgets after buying the firm behind Apple's Siri. The South Korean tech firm announced its plans to buy Viv Labs, which helped to develop the iPhone's voice assisted software. According to Samsung, it wants to incorporate the Californian firm's Viv AI assistant into its Galaxy smartphones and expand voice assistant services to home appliances and wearable technology devices. Samsung has announced plans to buy Viv Labs, which helped to develop the iPhone's voice assisted program. San Jose-based Viv Labs Inc was one of the firms which helped to develop Apple's voice assisted program, Siri.

SEOUL: Tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Thursday it is acquiring U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) platform developer Viv Labs Inc, a firm run by a co-creator of Apple Inc's Siri voice assistant programme. Samsung said in a statement it plans to integrate the San Jose-based company's AI platform, called Viv, into the Galaxy smartphones and expand voice-assistant services to home appliances and wearable technology devices. Technology firms are locked in an increasingly heated race to make AI good enough to let consumers interact with their devices more naturally, especially via voice. Alphabet Inc's Google is widely considered to be the leader in AI, but others including Amazon.com, Apple and Microsoft have also launched their own offerings including voice-powered digital assistants. Samsung, the world's top smartphone maker, is also hoping to differentiate its devices, from phones to fridges, by incorporating AI.

Stocks extended their winning streak to a fourth session on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Thursday, backed by the yen's further drop against the dollar and a brighter U.S. economic outlook. The Nikkei average rose 79.86 points, or 0.47 percent, to finish at 16,899.10. On Wednesday, it gained 83.59 points. The Topix index closed up 6.12 points, or 0.45 percent, at 1,353.93, after climbing 7.60 points the previous day. The Tokyo market opened sharply higher thanks to the weaker yen and gains on Wall Street.

Jin Kawaguchiya gave up a career in finance to help revive Japan's ailing dairy industry, one robot at a time. In a country that relies increasingly on imported foods like cheese and butter, Japan's milk output tumbled over two decades, touching a 30-year low in 2014. Costs rose faster than prices as the economy stagnated, eroding profit, and aging farmers quit the business because they could not find enough young people willing to take on the hard labor of tending to cows every day. But technology is altering that dynamic. On Hokkaido, Japan's top dairy-producing region, Kawaguchiya transformed the 20-cow farm he inherited from his father-in-law 16 years ago into Asia's largest automated milking factory.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

Up until now, marketing and advertising investments have been targeted at individuals, of the human kind. In the age of artificial intelligence, more and more buying decisions will be taken by virtual personal assistants, based on algorithms defined or even learned from their'bosses', namely consumers as we know them today. Back in STEP2016, Luca Allam, Managing Director of PHD UAE, took us through a journey into the future of advertising where optimization is not set to human eyes and minds but to the machine, with all the implications this has on skill sets and disciplines.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. on Thursday said it agreed to acquire Viv Labs Inc., the company behind open artificial intelligence platform Viv. The financial details of the transactions were not disclosed by the company. With Viv, Samsung will be able to unlock and offer new service experiences for its customers, including one that simplifies user interfaces, understands the context of the user and offers the user the most appropriate and convenient suggestions and recommendations, the company said in a statement. As part of the acquisition, the founding team will work closely with Samsung's Mobile Communications business, but continue to operate independently under its existing leadership, the statement added. Viv was founded by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham, the original creators of Siri, in 2012.

A small drone taught itself to judge distances using only one eye during trials aboard the International Space Station, ESA-backed researchers have reported. Although humans can effortlessly estimate distances with a single eye, robots still lack this capability. "It is a mathematical impossibility to extract distances to objects from one single image, if the object has not been encountered before," explains Guido de Croon from Delft University of Technology, one of the investigators. "But if we recognise something to be a car, then we know its physical characteristics, and we can use that information to estimate its distance from us. A similar logic is what we wanted the drone to learn during our experiment."