Microsoft has released open source tools for people to build their own chatbots, as it set out its view of the immediate future of artificial intelligence as conversational aids similar to its back-firing Tay experiment. The company's chief executive Satya Nadella took to the stage at Microsoft's Build developer conference to announced a new BotFramework, which will allow developers to build bots that respond to chat messages sent via Skype, Slack, Telegram, GroupMe, emails and text messages. "Bots are the new apps," Nadella said. The announcement came on the same day that the company had had to pull its chatbot experiment Tay from Twitter after it tweeted about taking drugs and started spamming users. It had only been active again for a few hours after previously being deactivated for making racist and sexist comments and denying that the Holocaust happened.

WASHINGTON – Robotic systems and unmanned vehicles are playing an ever-growing role in the U.S. military -- but don't expect to see Terminator-style droids striding across the battlefield just yet. A top Pentagon official has given a tantalizing peek into several projects that not long ago were the stuff of science fiction, including missile-dodging satellites, self-flying F-16 fighters and robot naval fleets. Though the Pentagon is not planning to build devices that can kill without human input, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work hinted that could change if enemies with fewer qualms create such machines. "We might be going up against a competitor that is more willing to delegate authority to machines than we are, and as that competition unfolds we will have to make decisions on how we best can compete," he said. Work, who helps lead Pentagon efforts to ensure the U.S. military keeps its technological edge, described several initiatives, including one dubbed "Loyal Wingman" that would see the Air Force convert an F-16 warplane into a semi-autonomous and unmanned fighter that flies alongside a manned F-35 jet.

BEIJING (By Paul Carsten, Reuters) – A team from China plans to challenge Google's AlphaGo, the artificial intelligence (AI) program that beat a world-class player in the ancient board game Go, the state-owned Shanghai Securities News reported on Thursday. Scientists from the China Computer Go team will issue a challenge to AlphaGo by the end of 2016, said attendees at an event in Beijing organized by the Chinese Go Association and the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence, according to the report. It did not elaborate on the nature of the challenge. The event was'The Forum for Understanding the AlphaGo War between Man and Machine and Chinese Artificial Intelligence', Shanghai Securities News reported on its website. AlphaGo, developed by Google subsidiary DeepMind, shocked audiences when it beat South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol in Seoul earlier this month.

BEIJING (Reuters) - A team from China plans to challenge Google's AlphaGo, the artificial intelligence (AI) program that beat a world-class player in the ancient board game Go, the state-owned Shanghai Securities News reported on Thursday. Scientists from the China Computer Go team will issue a challenge to AlphaGo by the end of 2016, said attendees at an event in Beijing organized by the Chinese Go Association and the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence, according to the report. It did not elaborate on the nature of the challenge. The event was'The Forum for Understanding the AlphaGo War between Man and Machine and Chinese Artificial Intelligence', Shanghai Securities News reported on its website. AlphaGo, developed by Google subsidiary DeepMind, shocked audiences when it beat South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol in Seoul earlier this month.

Robotic systems and unmanned vehicles are playing an ever-growing role in the US military--but don't expect to see Terminator-style droids striding across the battlefield just yet. A top Pentagon official on Wednesday gave a tantalizing peek into several projects that not long ago were the stuff of science fiction, including missile-dodging satellites, self-flying F-16 fighters and robot naval fleets. Though the Pentagon is not planning to build devices that can kill without human input, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work hinted that could change if enemies with fewer qualms create such machines. "We might be going up against a competitor that is more willing to delegate authority to machines than we are, and as that competition unfolds we will have to make decisions on how we best can compete," he said. Work, who helps lead Pentagon efforts to ensure the US military keeps its technological edge, described several initiatives, including one dubbed "Loyal Wingman" that would see the Air Force convert an F-16 warplane into a semi-autonomous and unmanned fighter that flies alongside a manned F-35 jet.

Envisaging a technological future wherecomputers can learn human language and have conversations with people, Microsoft's India-born CEO Satya Nadella has said companies need to build "respectful" technology which gets the best of humanity and not the worst. "We want to take the power of human language and apply it more pervasively to all of the computing interface and interactions," Nadella said yesterday in his keynote address to thousands of developers at Microsoft's annual Build 2016 conference here. "To do that you have to infuse (intelligence) into the computers around us, you have to bring forth these technologies of artificial intelligence in machine learning so that we can teach computers to learn the human language, have conversational understanding, teach them about the broad contexts of personal preferences and knowledge so that they can help you with your everyday task," Nadella, 48, said. He envisaged a future where the machine is not against man but works with humans to offer seamless interface and experience in day-to-day learning. "All technology that we built has to be more inclusive and respectful..We want to build technology that gets the best of humanity and not the worst," Nadella said.

Earlier this month, Google's Go-playing AI wiped the floor with the game's existing world champion. Now, a team of engineers from China plan to challenge AlphaGo with their own artificial intelligence system. Reuters reports that China's state-owned Shanghai Securities News announced the idea today. The report explains that the scientists, who are part of the China Computer Go team, will lay down a challenge for Google before the end of the year. It's not clear what the challenge will be, but presumably it will, you know, involve playing Go.

Today in Press Releases That Should Be Taken Very Seriously, McCann Japan has finally turned the wildest dreams of holding company executives into reality by automating the creative director role. The AI CD will, in fact, attend the Tokyo office's new employee welcoming ceremony on April 1st along with 11 recent college grads who have also joined the McCann team. And yes, that date is pure coincidence. "AI-CD? is artificial intelligence that is able to give creative direction for commercials." Until now, the production of commercials has been dependent on the intangible experience and know-how of human creators." According to McCann's Japanese office, a team called McCANN MILLENNIALS (of course) developed this full-service replacement for your least favorite creative director. These clever whippersnappers analyzed and "deconstructed" a whole bunch of ads including "the winners of the All Japan Radio & Television Commercial Confederation's annual CM Festival (ACC CM Festival) awards for the past 10 years" in order to give the robot a database from which it can best determine which factors make the perfect ad for "any given product or message." The release calls the resulting process "logic-based creative direction," and we can imagine Sir Martin Sorrell salivating. It's not a stretch to imagine AI-CD making ads for certain categories like, say, auto that are actually better than most of the stuff on TV. "Our team didn't have a creative director, so we thought, why not create one ourselves with artificial intelligence?

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

Anyone interested in the future of design should have a look at the new Batmobile. I was lucky enough to be photographed alongside it at the London Film and Comic Convention earlier this year, and my inner geek was impressed. Built like a tank and armour-plated, with twin machine guns mounted on a bat-black body, it's a seriously cool-looking piece of kit. But looks can be deceptive. The Batmobile certainly looked rough and tough, but it was roped off from the crowds so no one could get too close.