What if instead of searching through menus within programs like Microsoft Excel, our computers could understand the problem we're trying to solve and write the software to solve it? It's a hyper-futuristic idea, but one that has recently seen progress from Microsoft Research and the University of Cambridge. In a November 2016 paper (pdf), which gained notoriety after being accepted into one of the year's largest artificial intelligence conferences, Microsoft and Cambridge built an algorithm capable of writing code that would solve simple math problems. The algorithm, named DeepCoder, would be able to augment its own ability by also looking at potential combinations of code for how a problem could be solved. However, this doesn't mean it steals code, or copy and pastes it from existing software, or searches the internet for solutions, as some reports have claimed. "We're targeting the people who can't or don't want to code, but can specify what their problem is," says Marc Brockschmidt of Microsoft Research, a co-author of the paper, likening the work to Excel formulas that could take simple commands to solve for answers without being given the mathematical equation.

Abstract: We live in a "Post App Era" where Conversation would be the next interface! An artificial agent having the ability to communicate like humans is believed to be one major step towards realizing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). The multi-fold increase in the use of conversational dialogue systems and its research incorporating all innovations of neural networks and linguistic models in the recent years has led to huge investment from industry that now see potential in multifarious applications and development of end to end tool-kits. This introductory talk started off with the applications, basic concepts and gradually moved towards the advanced topics in Dialogue Systems (not limiting to Deep Learning), the key players and the current research gaps. Finally to conclude, I discussed one such approach towards building an end to end Dynamic Dialogue System.

Space exploration aficionados experienced the thrill of anticipation in the hours before President Trump's speech Tuesday night, with advance word that he was going to call for a return to the human exploration of space. Sure enough, in his closing words Trump declared that for a country soon to celebrate its 250th anniversary, "American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a dream." Trump's brief, offhand comment had the tone of an impulsive notion that, like so many of his other policy pronouncements, won't get any follow-through. Let's hope so, because the idea of sending humans to explore distant worlds is loopy, incredibly wasteful, and likely to cripple American science rather than inspire it. And that's assuming that Trump's notion doesn't have the ulterior motivation of diverting American scientists from their Job One, which is to fight climate change right here at home.

A VENERABLE mobile phone saw its reputation for survival further enhanced this week. Nokia's reboot of its 3310 model, first released way back in 2000, was the star of annual tech event Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The updated model has a colour screen and camera, but still offers classic game Snake. Whether it proves as indestructible as its predecessor remains to be seen. "The updated Nokia 3310 has a colour screen and camera, but still offers classic game Snake" The event also saw the latest smartphones unveiled, such as Sony's Xperia XZ Premium, the first handset to feature a high-resolution 4K HDR screen.

Over the past week, we've highlighted a lot of big, impressive robots. Now it's time to pay homage to their teeny, tiny counterparts. These tiny robots will someday "have a major impact" on disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention, according to a new review in Nature Robotics from a top nanoengineering team at the University of California, San Diego. The review highlights four areas of medicine where tiny robots have been successfully used in proof-of-concept studies: targeted delivery, precision surgery, sensing of biological targets, and detoxification. Of those, "active drug delivery is primarily the most promising commercial application of medical microrobots," said paper co-author Joseph Wang, chair of nanoengineering at UCSD, in an email to IEEE Spectrum.

Scientists are already growing muscles, bones, and mini-organs in the lab. But these tissues are generally small, simple, and kinda wimpy. That's partly because a Petri dish is no match for the human body. Take, for example, skeletal muscle. Bioreactors--typically warm, moist vats where cells are grown--might induce some simple movements in lab-grown muscles, but it's nothing like the multidirectional bending and stretching of the human body, which helps our muscles grow and get stronger.

A question that would have been thought of as ridiculous 25 years ago, has now become an actual worry for many workers across the world. The AI revolution is well underway and soon it will not only be the simplest tasks done by machines, but professions such as banking, law and medicine also under threat from superior machine intelligence. When it comes to the automated workforce, people are mainly worried that robots will take their job (a 31 per cent chunk to be exact). The next big worry about the future implications of AI is humans will end up relying on robots (selected by 23 per cent) which could end in disasters that used to be confined to dystopian sci-fi films – Think The Terminator series. Additionally, 20 per cent of those surveyed said they were anxious that robots will play a bigger role in the military.

Oxford University researchers have estimated that 47% of U.S. jobs could be automated within the next two decades. But which ones will robots take first? First, we should define "robots" (for this article only) as technologies, such as machine learning algorithms running on purpose-built computer platforms, that have been trained to perform tasks that currently require humans to perform. With this in mind, let's think about what you'll do after white-collar work. Oh, and I do have a solution for the short term that will make you the last to lose your job to a robot, but I'm saving it for the end of the article.

The UK government has made AI development a key pillar of its digital strategy following a year-long delay to take into account Britain's decision to leave the European Union. In that time there has of course been a change at the top with Theresa May becoming prime minister and Matt Hancock replacing Ed Vaizey as digital minister. Now that the dust has settled the finalised document identifies areas of opportunity and commercialisation for the UK's burgeoning AI research field, including the development of robots by the University of Manchester capable of autonomous operation in hazardous environments and surgical micro-robots by Imperial College London. The review also champions plugging the digital skills gap by training up the workforce with the knowledge necessary to participate in this new economy, amidst fears of a looming recruitment crisis exacerbated by immigration restrictions. Those who have been privy to an early draft of the document have been critical of its ambition, pointing out that much of its content is a rehash of prior initiatives leading to fears that government is too preoccupied by Brexit to give the digital economy its full attention.

Managing and, preferably, optimizing your full financial portfolio, an investment portfolio, a pension plan and so on is traditionally a human task. It is done by various possible people such as investment managers, wealth managers, financial advisers and even accountants. Since just a few years a range of new fintechs hit the market with so-called robo-advisers or automated financial advice tools. They have been popping up (and keep popping up) in no time and some already even dissapeared. Automated financial advice and optimization is a hot and diverse market with the launch of several platforms, digital and/or mobile in a really short timeframe.