We have been hearing a number of rumors about Samsung's artificial intelligence assistant which will launch with the Galaxy S8, we previously heard it would be called Bixby. Now it would appear that Samsung has confirmed the Bixby name as it was recently listed on Samsung's website in Italy, although it looks like the reference to it has now been removed. As yet there are not many details known about what sort of functions the new Samsung Bixby virtual assistant will come with. The software will launch on the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus when they are made official later this month, Samsung is also expected to bring the software to other handsets in its range in the future/. Samsung are holding a Samsung Unpacked press event on the 29th of March where they will make the new Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus official, we are also expecting them to unveil Bixby at the event.

The Nintendo Switch, which has been all but unavailable for weeks, is finally coming back into stock. The new console was released on 3 March. But almost all shops had entirely sold all their pre-orders before then, and as soon as it went on sale it was unavailable again. But a number of retailers are now stocking the console, and others are offering pre-orders ahead of likely being restocked soon. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

A chess problem could help scientists finally unravel whether quantum theory can explain human consciousness. Sir Roger Penrose created the puzzle to prove the human mind can never be matched by a computer because it exhibits quantum effects. This means the brain doesn't follow the rules for the classical properties of matter, like a computer. Instead, it follows for a new concept of matter altogether that leaves cracks for consciousness and intuition to appear. Now, the Oxford university professor, who has set up a new institute, has invited everyday puzzle enthusiasts to pit their wits against the problem to test his theory.

Glance at last year's big releases and you might think video games have cracked the issue of diversity. Two of 2016's most acclaimed action adventures Mafia III and Watchdogs 2 both had black male leads, while Mirror's Edge 2, Uncharted 4 and indie game, Virginia, all featured women of colour. This year, we have flagship PlayStation4 title Horizon Zero Dawn as well as Gravity Rush 2, Nier Automata and Tacoma, all showcasing female protagonists. But look beyond the games and into the companies that make them, and you get a very different picture. Representation is still very much a problem.

I live with a very big cat. He likes to sprawl across my lap when I play games. I often wonder what's going on behind his big wide eyes. So perhaps it's not surprising I fell so hard for Trico, the house-sized, big-eyed feline in The Last Guardian. Trico is obviously fake – he can fly and shoot lightning from his tail.

The moment of the next revolution in the history of mankind is fast approaching – the difference between this and all previous revolutions, both social and economic, is that this time we won't be in it alone. We will be accompanied by complex computer systems carrying out activities, which, due to our cognitive abilities, were previously reserved only for human beings. The era of artificial intelligence is here. Probably the most famous examples of the application of artificial intelligence, though rather simplistic, were the chess duels between grandmaster Garry Kasparov and IBM computer Deep Blue in 1996 and 1997. These duels were supposed to show that a machine can not only perform certain actions similar to a human being, but also outperform its human counterpart.

As artificial intelligence becomes more powerful, people need to make sure it's not used by authoritarian regimes to centralize power and target certain populations, Microsoft Research's Kate Crawford warned on Sunday. In her SXSW session, titled Dark Days: AI and the Rise of Fascism, Crawford, who studies the social impact of machine learning and large-scale data systems, explained ways that automated systems and their encoded biases can be misused, particularly when they fall into the wrong hands. "Just as we are seeing a step function increase in the spread of AI, something else is happening: the rise of ultra-nationalism, rightwing authoritarianism and fascism," she said. All of these movements have shared characteristics, including the desire to centralize power, track populations, demonize outsiders and claim authority and neutrality without being accountable. Machine intelligence can be a powerful part of the power playbook, she said.

Nearly three years ago, Leka won the Grand Prize at the 2014 Robot Launch competition for their robotic toy set on changing the way children with developmental disorders learn, play and progress. Leka will be the first interactive tool for children with developmental disorders that is available for direct purchase to the public. Designed for use in the home and not limited to a therapist's office, Leka enables streamlined communication between therapists, parents and children easier, more efficient and more accessible through its monitoring platform. Leka's co-founder and CEO, Ladislas de Toldi, writes about Leka's progress since the Robot Launch competition and where the company is headed in the next year. Since winning the Robot Launch competition in 2014, Leka has made immense progress and is well on it's way to getting in the hands of exceptional children around the globe.

Thousands of Twitter accounts have been posting horrifying messages in Turkish, and there is nothing their owners can do about it. Many of the world's biggest publishers, companies and personalities have had their accounts taken over and used to post Nazi swastikas and references to Germany and the Netherlands. The messages are written in Turkish, make reference to the country's political situation and come amid heightened tensions between Turkey and the Netherlands after the latter kicked out two Turkish ministers and banned them from rallying. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

BigML is bringing Boosted Trees to our ever-growing suite of supervised learning techniques. Boosting is a variation on ensembles that aims to reduce bias, potentially leading to better performance than Bagging or Random Decision Forests. In our first blog post of this series of six posts about Boosted Trees, we saw a gentle introduction to Boosted Trees to get some context about what this new resource is and how it can help you solve your classification and regression problems. This post will take us further, into the detailed steps of how to use boosting with BigML. To learn from our data, we must first upload it.