Brits can now ask their iThings to give them a brief update on what's happening in the world with the command: "Hey Siri, give me the news." Siri doesn't actually read the news, though, and instead will automatically play the latest podcast from a trusted source of your choice. I was treated to a 2-minute bulletin from BBC News when I said the magic words to Siri this morning, which also offered Sky News and LBC up as alternative sources. As Apple prepares Siri for life inside its HomePod smart speaker, it first added the news briefing feature to the beta version of iOS 11.2.5 -- limiting it to the States at that point, too, where The Washington Post, Fox News, NPR or CNN provide the updates. In a matter of weeks, however, it's now graduated out of beta to become a standard Siri feature in iOS 11, whilst rolling out to new territories.

Dutch carrier KLM, already an airline industry leader in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to field customer service inquiries through social media channels, can now deal with many social media interactions without a live agent. The enhancement allows it to answer more questions in a shorter period of time. "This is exactly what the customer needs," said Air France-KLM senior vice president of digital Pieter Groeneveld. KLM said its team of 250 social media service agents engage in approximately 30,000 conversations each week, double the volume they were handling just 13 months ago. On average, conversations consist of five or six questions and answers.

Black Mirror might be intent on warning us about the dangers, but artificial intelligence does indeed appear to be taking over our lives. Most of us seem pretty happy about it though, with voice technology increasingly growing in popularity. According to Kantar Worldpanel, 2.7m households in the UK currently own an Amazon Echo or Google Home device. Across the pond, usage is also on the up, with 55% of US households predicted to own one of these devices by 2020. So, what are the opportunities for brands and consumers alike?

Switzerland's largest bank is expanding a site in Ticino to specialize in artificial intelligence. The move will create 80 new jobs in southern Switzerland. The University of Lugano IDSIA institute has advanced to a recognized research center for machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Many decisions in our lives require a good forecast, and AI agents are almost always better at forecasting than their human counterparts. Yet for all these technological advances, we still seem to deeply lack confidence in AI predictions. Recent cases show that people don't like relying on AI and prefer to trust human experts, even if these experts are wrong. If we want AI to really benefit people, we need to find a way to get people to trust it. To do that, we need to understand why people are so reluctant to trust AI in the first place.

Scientists have created a robot that is implanted into the body to treat a rare birth defect which prevents food reaching a baby's stomach. Around one in 4,000 babies are born with oesophageal atresia in the USA and Europe - a serious condition which is fatal if not treated. It occurs when the upper and lower parts of the oesophagus don't connect, which means food can't pass from the throat to the stomach. Doctors currently treat the condition using the Foker technique, which involves pulling slightly on the broken ends of the oesophagus, to encourage them to grow towards each other. The robot is a small device which is attached to the oesophagus by two rings.

Artificial intelligence (AI) will in future be used to help reduce human error in physical safety in workplaces such as laboratories, operating theatres or building sites, pending the results of a UK government-funded trial of AI and video networking technology. Every conference this year contains a dead human genius reincarnated as software system or a robot. Yes, there is a lot of hype, but there is real worth in AI and Machine Learning. Read our counseling on how to avoid adopting "black box" approach. You forgot to provide an Email Address.

Where the smart money is International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that by 2020 organizations that analyze both structured and unstructured data, that is all relevant data, and deliver actionable information will achieve an extra $430 billion in productivity gains over their competitors that do not perform such data analysis. And businesses that understand this are not waiting until 2020. An executive at a multinational insurance company based in Germany refers to unstructured data as their greatest risk. They understand the numbers involved, and are working to ensure they're not caught off-guard by writing insurance policies that expose them to liabilities they could have avoided.

With great technology comes great risk; hospital administrators and staff have been coming to terms with this parallel for the last couple of years, as EHR, healthcare tech, and IT infrastructure improvements have flourished, while simultaneously cyberattacks and breaches have risen in the field. The rate of breaches is so high that, according to Julie Spitzer writing for Becker's Hospital Review, it's nearly exceeding the rate of one breach per day. "In fact, the Identity Theft Resource Center found the U.S. medical and healthcare sector experienced roughly 336 data breaches as of Nov. 29th, which represents 28% of the total 1,202 breaches," writes Spitzer. "That equates to 4.93 million records exposed, or 2.9% of the total 172 billion records that have been exposed so far in 2017." It's a predicament, to say the least, but it's not all bad.

Bike sharing has a lot going for it. It's mass transit that's ultra-cheap, burns body fat instead of fossil fuels and is adored by venture capitalists. But the business model has hit a major snag: parking. Stringent laws against sidewalk clutter -- and cultural sensibilities that are easily offended -- make the problem more acute in Japanese cities than in places like Munich or Melbourne, where bicycles are piling up outside subway stations or turning up under bridges, sometimes to the dismay of neighbors and city officials. Bike sharing took China by storm in 2016, quickly becoming a novel tech export, and is now facing a backlash even in environmentally friendly places where you'd expect it to be embraced.