Google has created a new, super-intelligent robot -- and it has provided answers to some of the questions that have troubled humans for centuries. Conversations are one of the most important and difficult tasks that artificial intelligence has to undertake. As such, the robots have tended to work only in either very restricted situations -- such as customer support when booking an airline ticket -- or by giving canned replies in response to specific questions. But Google hopes that its new system for robots could overcome some of those problems with existing chatting artificial intelligence, partly by making it able to learn through interacting with humans rather than being fed pre-written lines, though it has run into some problems during testing. The researchers began by asking fairly straightforward questions about technical support.

Dr. Yngvi Björnsson (right) and student Hilmar Finnsson (left) from Reykjavík University (RU) won the international General Game-Playing (GGP) Competition at the AAAI Conference in Vancouver, Canada, this week. The conference is one of the largest and most prestigious artificial intelligence (AI) conferences in the world and the GGP Competition, held for the third time this year, is one of several side events at the conference. Björnsson's and Finnsson's entry, the CADIA Player, fought for the first place against an entry from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The university placed second last year and won the competition in 2005. RU has never competed before.

The International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS) is the premier forum for researchers and practitioners in planning and scheduling - two technologies that are critical to manufacturing, space systems, software engineering, robotics, education, and entertainment. The ICAPS conference resulted from merging two bi-annual conferences, namely the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Planning and Scheduling (AIPS) and the European Conference on Planning (ECP). The primary objectives of ICAPS are to further the field of automated planning and scheduling through the organization of technical meetings, including the annual ICAPS conference, through the organization of summer schools, tutorials and training activities at various events, through the organization of planning and scheduling competitions, benchmarking and other means of advancing and assessing the state of the art in the field, by promoting the involvement of young scientists in the field through scholarships and other means, and by promoting and disseminating publications, planning and scheduling systems, domains, simulators, software tools and technical material. The ICAPS 2016 conference was held from June 12-17, 2016 in London, UK. Conference chairs are Andrew Coles and Daniele Magazzeni.

At Mobile World Congress on Monday, Sony unveiled a trio of smartphones as part of its new X series, which focus on the core smartphone features customers are most concerned about: camera, battery life and design. After the announcement, Jun Makino, senior product manager at Sony Mobile, told International Business Times that the next 12 months will be crucial for the company's smartphone division. "[In] 2016, we obviously need to deliver profit, and that is something the company is committed to," Makino says. Key to that success could be a range of new accessories, like the just-announced Xperia Ear, which promises an always-on, voice-activated digital assistant in your ear. Sony has confirmed it is working on a smartphone VR headset that will take on Samsung's Gear VR market-leading device.

The DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals 2014 has announced Google's SCHAFT robot will compete in the self-funded track. This move frees up funding for two more teams to the DRC Finals 2014, while a third team will compete as part of the self-funded track D. On March 21, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced Google's SCHAFT robot will switch to the unfunded Track D for the DRC Finals 2014, which allows for two more teams to compete in the robotics challenge. The robotics teams will compete for a grand prize of $2 million. Team THOR will use the DARPA funds, up to $500,000 for each team, to continue work on the Tactical Harzardous Operations Robot (THOR) at two universities. One team will continue work on THOR at the University of California Los Angeles while a second team will be stationed at the Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) at Virginia Tech.

BMW is overhauling its research and development activities to focus on self-driving cars, board member Klaus Froehlich told Reuters, a move which includes a revamp of its "i" sub-brand of carbon-fibre based electric vehicles. The company is updating its zero-emission vehicles after a lackluster response to its only fully battery-powered car, the i3, which recorded only 25,000 sales last year. By contrast, Tesla already has more than 370,000 orders for its Model 3. To help improve sales, BMW (BMWG.DE) is increasing the battery range of its i3 city vehicle by 50 percent this year. Its next full-fledged new electric car model is not due until 2021, but the Bavarian auto maker is also planning to build a new version of its i3 electric car to be released by 2018, a source familiar with the matter said. "It is a sportier brother for the i3," said the source, who declined to be named.

The Artificial Intelligence and Applications 2007 conference in Innsbruck, Austria has ended.

The conference will feature a main track for technical papers, a demonstration track, workshops, tutorials, a doctoral consortium and best paper prizes. The 16th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL 2017) will be held at King's College London from Monday, June 12 to Friday, June 16, 2017. The main Call for Papers can be found at: http://nms.kcl.ac.uk/icail2017/cfp.php The 2016 JURIX conference will take place on the beautiful French Riviera at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis on 14, 15 and 16 December 2016. We invite submissions of papers (long and short), technology demonstrations and proposals for workshops & tutorials.

It is small because it is not on the radar of most leaders today, not even as a potential threat of the future. What worries leaders is the economy in Europe and the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine involving Russia. What worries leaders is global warming, quantitative easing or China's rise as a superpower. At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave an address on global responsibilities in a digital age. But the digital referred to privacy, not artificial intelligence.

Betts is not the only auto expert Apple's recruited recently. Earlier this year, for example, the company also hired Paul Furgale, who specialized in researching and developing robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles in his previous posts at the Autonomous Systems Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, per the WSJ.