Cameras and audio equipment are getting better all the time, but mostly through brute force: more pixels, more sensors, and better post-processing. Mammalian eyes and ears beat them handily when it comes to efficiency and the ability to only focus on what's interesting or important. Neuromorphic engineers, who try to mimic the strengths of biological systems in manmade ones, have made big strides in recent years, especially with vision. Researchers have made machine-vision systems that only take pictures of moving objects, for example. Instead of taking many images at a steady, predetermined rate, these kinds of cameras monitor for changes in a scene and only record those.

In a world first, a quadriplegic man can once again move his fingers after a chip was implanted in his brain. Ian Burkhart from Ohio in the US can even move individual fingers to play a guitar-based computer game. The chip reads brain signals, which are interpreted by a computer. It then precisely stimulates his muscles with electricity to restore movement. The researchers hope the technology will eventually help millions of people with paralysis, stroke or brain damage.

David Marcus, who heads Facebook's Messenger platform, tells Jefferson Graham how automated chat bots can improve the shopping and customer service experience, on #TalkingTech. SAN FRANCISCO - Clicking a buy button on a website is so 20th century. Now the next big thing is conversing with a computerized robot. Used by 900 million people, Messenger has a major new look and mission, thanks to former PayPal chief David Marcus, who left the payment giant in 2014 to transform Facebook's hugely popular Messenger app into a commerce engine. This week, Marcus did a major overhaul of Messenger.

David Marcus, who heads Facebook's Messenger platform, tells Jefferson Graham how automated chat bots can improve the shopping and customer service experience, on #TalkingTech. SAN FRANCISCO - Clicking a buy button on a website is so 20th century. Now the next big thing is conversing with a computerized robot. Facebook made a splash here at its F8 conference for developers by showcasing how businesses can participate in Messenger, the 900-million-person-strong communication tool for family and friends. Apps, Messenger chief David Marcus told us, are yesterday, while computerized shopping and customer service assistants are today, and very much tomorrow.

In the background, a few pedestrians are looking warily at a strange new contraption barely visible behind the crowds of equine transport. Imagine the same street, just 13 years later. To the right of the frame is a cart pulled by a single, perplexed-looking horse. The street--and the world--has changed forever. Anders Hjælmsø Svennesen, CIO at the DKK 327 billion ( 50 billion) Danica Pension in Denmark, uses these images in presentations to illustrate the speed at which technology can fundamentally change the way we live.

Over the past few years the field of Machine Learning has entered the general parlance. From free massive open online courses to image recognition benchmarks being broken and decades of Atari games being mastered. During the same period developers have witnessed the release of several popular open source frameworks and libraries. The chart below shows different open source machine learning projects by initial commit date and programming language. The size represents the popularity of a project based on number of Github stargazers.

RE•WORK will host its annual East Coast events on Deep Learning and the Internet of Things in Boston on 12 & 13 May. Over 300 machine learning and IoT enthusiasts and experts will come together to hear keynote presentations, panel discussions, fireside chats and to explore the startup showcase area. The Deep Learning Summit brings together leaders from industry, academia and startups to explore advances in deep learning methods and techniques, as well as their business applications in areas including finance, manufacturing, healthcare & transportation. Confirmed speakers and presentations include: -Keynote presentation from deep learning expert Yoshua Bengio, Full Professor at Université de Montréal Professor Bengio is also Head of the Machine Learning Laboratory, Co-director of the CIFAR Neural Computation & Adaptive Perception program, and editor of many prestigious machine learning publications. Daniel is also a Research Affiliate at the MIT Media Lab.

Chatbots are big news in Silicon Valley right now. "Bots are the new apps!" said Microsoft chief Satya Nadella recently, Facebook's just announced a large collection, while Wired's latest article on the subject puts the phrase "post-app internet" right up in the headline. In the short term, many chatbots are basically glorified search boxes. It's very early days, judging by the first wave of Facebook Messenger bots, which launched its chatbot platform this week. I've been chatting to six of them, and most provide information and links in response to keywords and/or selections from multiple-choice menus.

The match sent a shock wave around the world. AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence program developed by Britain-based Google DeepMind, defeated a top Go player. The Go board is larger than those used for chess and shogi, and many believed AI programs would defeat humans 10 years from now at the earliest. Remarkable technological development demonstrated ability in a field requiring a "wide perspective" to read situations every time a move was made. This is the third AI boom since the end of World War II. In the last two, AI programs could not do anything unless they were taught "knowledge" and "ways of thinking" by humans.

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