Child care is a hard job, but somebody, or something, has got to do it. Japanese researchers have developed androids to meet that need, which includes happily reading that fairy tale again and again and again. The androids, which were created by a team of education and robotics specialists at a research facility in Abiko, Chiba Prefecture, are part of a larger system called RoHo Care. Short for Robotic Hoikujo (day care center), RoHo is being touted as a high-tech solution to the staffing crisis that forced the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry to announce emergency measures this week. "I never thought I'd see this day, but we're now confident that RoHo could blaze a trail for child care worldwide," said team leader Makoto Hara.

The company said Thursday its staff pledged to reduce hierarchical practices, unnecessary meetings and excessive working hours in a "Startup Samsung" ceremony held at its headquarters in Suwon, South Korea. Requiring all its executives to sign a statement promising to scrap the company's traditional authoritarian ways. Samsung is searching for new business strategies as a father-to-son leadership transition looms. Lee Jae-yong, 48, is expected to succeed his ailing father, Lee Kun-hee, at a time when Samsung's mainstay semiconductor and phone businesses face intensifying competition from Chinese rivals. Samsung has its eye on expanding into health care and pharmaceuticals, but has lagged Silicon Valley in embracing trends such as autonomous driving and artificial intelligence.

David Shing, or simply'Shingy,' is well-known in technology circles. And for good reason, he's AOL's energetic and up-beat'Digital Prophet' – oft jetting around the world to talk about the future of technology. But how long will Shingy's (and other similar roles) survive? Not all that long perhaps, if McCann's hiring of an artificially intelligent creative director in its Japanese office is anything to go by. This year's edition of TNW Conference in Amsterdam includes some of the biggest names in tech.

Facebook launched a concierge service called M through its Messenger app in 2015. M can purchase items, get gifts delivered, book restaurants, and make travel arrangements for the user. There is an element of the Mechanical Turk about it at the moment as it is powered by a combination of AI and real-life people. Siri has been around for a few years but has been upgraded in that time. It's now capable of showing the user specific photos he or she has taken, ordering things via ecommerce apps and giving directions.

Russian combat engineers arrived Thursday in Syria on a mission to clear mines in the ancient town of Palmyra, the military said. The Defense Ministry said the sapper units were airlifted to Syria with an array of equipment, including state-of-the art robotic devices, to defuse mines at the 2,000-year-old archaeological site. Russian television stations showed Il-76 transport planes carrying the engineers landing before dawn at the Russian air base in Syria. Sunday's recapture of Palmyra by Syrian troops under the cover of Russian airstrikes was an important victory over Islamic State extremists who operated a 10-month reign of terror there. Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of the military's General Staff said that Russian military advisers had helped plan and direct the Syrian army's operation to recapture Palmyra.

The crash of oil prices and slowdown of China's economy have fetched headlines in media off late. The subject has encouraged me to understand economic reasons and relate the implications for Indian services industries. It would be good to preempt a discussion on the topic whether what could happen to Chinese manufacturing or to Middle-East Oil industry could repeat for Indian IT? If so, what should India do to prepare itself today to face this future? You are in the final lap of your early morning dream and the alarm goes off at 6AM.

CAMBRIDGE – How can we improve the state of the world? How can we make countries more competitive, growth more sustainable and inclusive, and genders more equal? One way is to have a correct theory of the relationship between actions and outcomes and then to implement actions that achieve our goals. But, in most of the situations we face, we lack such a theory, or if we have one, we are not sure that it is correct. Should we postpone action until we learn about what works? But how will we learn if we do not act?

Right after its millennial Tay bot turned genocidal might not seem like the best time for Microsoft to pin its future on bots, conversations and artificial intelligence, but that's exactly what Satya Nadella announced at Build 2016 last night. The Redmond CEO claimed that "we are on the cusp of a new frontier that pairs the power of natural human language with advanced machine intelligence". Microsoft wants to bring conversation into so many places that it becomes the next stage of the GUI; "we want to take the power of human language and apply it more pervasively to all computing interfaces," Nadella said. Conversations as a Platform, as Microsoft calls it, envisions a world where you ask Cortana to block out the week you'll be at a conference in your calendar and she tags in the bot from your favourite hotel to book a room for the right dates. This bot, by the way, already knows what kind of room you prefer, and suggests a message to send to a friend who lives nearby letting them know when you'll be in town.

In the field of robotics, innovations and developments are taking place constantly. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most popular areas and has caught the fancy of not only scientists, but the common man as well. According to computer scientist, John McCarthy, "AI is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs." A robot which has artificial intelligence can behave like a human being and learn from its surroundings, like the robot Baymax, in the movie, Big Hero 6. Here are some popular real-life robots that use AI.

The Japan eSports Association, which promotes the competitive playing of video games, is nudging the sector toward professional status. JeSPA uses the term e-sport to refer to video games ranging from shootout arcade games to team-based tournaments set on a virtual pitch. It is hard to put a figure on the number of enthusiasts worldwide, but around 100 million are thought to play regularly and seriously. The tournament wound up with finals in five games on March 12 and 13 in the Tokyo neighborhood of Toyosu. The finale was a round of the fighting game "Guilty Gear Xrd -Sign-," which attracted 350 players and roughly 1,000 spectators, while more than 10,000 people followed it on Dwango's Nico Nico Live website. The winner -- who goes by the name of Dogura -- told The Japan Times he considers video games to be "sport performed with your brain."