Artificial intelligence sounds cool in theory, and as Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at the Google I/O event on Wednesday, the company wants to "help you get things done" with AI. But one example that Google used to showcase its AI at Google I/O on Wednesday was anything but exciting. Using its new messaging app called Allo, Google showed how easy it is to find restaurants and make reservations, or find a movie and buy tickets. Allo is designed so you can do those things by having a conversational texting session, as you would with a friend, with a bot called @google that uses the company's new AI platform called Google Assistant. There were some other examples, like recognizing the context of messages and pictures you send between your friends and coming up appropriate short replies so you don't have to come up with the response yourself.

In the past few weeks, you may have noticed a mysterious message popping up on your iPhone after hours of non-use. A seemingly new prompt requires users to enter a passcode to access their phone, even though they have Touch ID enabled – but only if it hasn't been unlocked using its passcode in six days, and the Touch ID hasn't been used within the last eight hours. Though Apple has said the feature was added with the release of iOS 9, users have just now begun to see it, causing many to speculate about its connection to the firm's recent tensions with the FBI. A seemingly new prompt requires users to enter a passcode to access their phone, even though they have Touch ID enabled – but only if it hasn't been unlocked using its passcode in six days, and the Touch ID hasn't been used within the last eight hours According to the iOS Security Guide published earlier this month, there are a number of situations in which you may have to use your passcode to unlock your iPhone or iPad even if Touch ID is enabled. According to Macworld, the message reads'The passcode has not been used to unlock the device in the last six days and Touch ID has not unlocked the device in the last eight hours.'

Artificial intelligence sounds cool in theory, and as Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at the Google I/O event on Wednesday, the company wants to "help you get things done" with AI. But one example that Google used to showcase its AI at Google I/O on Wednesday was anything but exciting. Using its new messaging app called Allo, Google showed how easy it is to find restaurants and make reservations, or find a movie and buy tickets. Allo is designed so you can do those things by having a conversational texting session, as you would with a friend, with a bot called @google that uses the company's new AI platform called Google Assistant. There were some other examples, like recognizing the context of messages and pictures you send between your friends and coming up appropriate short replies so you don't have to come up with the response yourself.

At I/O this year, Google displayed its vision for a more ubiquitous and conversational way of interacting with technology. Its Assistant is chattier, answering natural language queries with a more human voice, and it's found its way into several new Google products: the messenger Allo and the Echo-like speaker Home. Uber as finally released the first official photo of the self-driving cars that it is testing on the streets of Pittsburgh, almost a year to the day since reporters in that city first spotted an earlier prototype. Paris startup Shift Technology raises 10 million to help insurers fight fraud with artificial intelligence by venturebeat.com Shift Technology, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that leans on artificial intelligence (AI) to help companies combat insurance fraud, has raised 10 million in a round led by Accel, with participation from existing investors Iris Capital and Elaia Partners.

Partnering with Chinese internet company NetEase is what's made this development possible, the very same NetEase that operates games like World of Warcraft and Hearthstone in China already. There's no official release date yet and no further information on what kind of alterations to the main game are even warranted for the Chinese market. What we do know is the Chinese version will only launch for PC and mobile devices, not consoles, when it finally makes an appearance. "We are excited to bring Minecraft to Chinese audiences, and expect our large online community to embrace this preeminent game," William Ding, CEO and founder of NetEase, Inc. announced. "With our deep understanding of the Chinese market and our ability to successfully launch world-renowned online and mobile games, we offer a strong platform for the introduction of Minecraft to China's vast user base."

The ability of video games to entrance people for hours on end have made them the stars of Sony's balance sheet. Now, the company's embattled film studio is hoping a movie based on a mobile game can change the score at the box office. Rovio Entertainment's "Angry Birds" was released in 2009 and has since been downloaded more than 3 billion times, but seven years is a long time in the world of pop culture. Sony Pictures Entertainment hopes there's still enough magic in the video game to make it the foundation of a true and much-needed children's film franchise for a studio still reeling from a high-profile computer hacking incident and some tepid recent movies. But Sony's been on a hot streak with its console gaming business, and it may be a game-based film that has enough worldwide appeal to reset its box office performance.

The self-driving car is far more imminent than people realize. Think of all the truckers who will be out of a job, if you thought Taxi drivers had it rough. It's also going to change Uber and transportation in general. That's a lot of work-hours spent in commuting, valuable time which we will be able to be more productive. Can you imagine what driverless cars will do to the automobile insurance agency?

It is hard to miss the warnings. In the race to make computers more intelligent than us, humanity will summon a demon, bring forth the end of days, and code itself into oblivion. Instead of silicon assistants we'll build silicon assassins. The doomsday story of an evil AI has been told a thousand times. But our fate at the hand of clever cloggs robots may in fact be worse - to summon a class of eternally useless human beings.

Like iPhone's Siri on steroids, ROSS promises to cut down the time it takes to retrieve complex legal data from hours to minutes. He also learns and gets better with each use. ROSS is not a physical bot in the office but a complex AI system; it doesn't have the physical presence of an R2-D2 or Wall-E, but could easily outmaneuver them mentally. "Before, the human had to go through (and) read all the cases. The case could be 30 pages to find those three, four sentences they needed," said Arruda.

The Chinese government produces 488 million'fake' social media posts a year to distract citizens from news critical of the Communist Party, a new study has revealed. According to the study, written by Harvard University professor Gary King, the goal of the secretive army of commenters is to "distract the public and change the subject" in online discussions which paint the government in a negative light. The study is reportedly the first of its kind to show concrete evidence of the existence of the '50 Cent Party', a name which references the 50 cents each worker is thought to be paid for a post. During the study, co-authored by Stanford University's Jennifer Pan and UC San Diego's Margaret E. Roberts, machine learning techniques were used to analyse millions of social media posts, based on leaked emails and databases which detail the work of the group. The research revealed co-ordinated commenting efforts, usually timed to coincide with government announcements or patriotic public holidays.