Chatbots continue to make an impact around the world, from major players in big-bucks verticals to helping fans get involved in their favourite sports. That's as developers are building the next big thing in chat. See what news is making summer even hotter for chatbots. Starting in Asia, insurance giant Prudential continues to roll out its bots with four now operating across Hong Kong, China, Singapore and Vietnam. They help consumers and businesses in the increasingly automated sector where around 60% of new business is submitted electronically and 51% is auto-underwritten.

The University of Sydney's Brain and Mind Centre will partner with the Sydney Neuroimaging Analysis Centre to improve diagnostic neuroimaging of brain ailments such as multiple sclerosis and dementia. The Brain and Mind Centre is an institute within the University researching and developing treatments for conditions of the brain and mind. According to the report released by the University, funding amounting to A$ 2.36 million will be awarded to the project through the government's Cooperative Research Centre-Project (CRC-P) Program as announced by Assistant Minister for Science, Jobs and Innovation the Hon Zed Seselja. The CRC-P Program is a competitive merit-based program supporting industry-led, outcomes-focused partnerships between industry, researchers and the community. The investment made by the government is matched by nearly A$ 2.8 million of cash and in-kind contributions by the project partners of both the University and the Brain and Mind Centre, including Sydney Neuroimaging Analysis Centre (SNAC) and the I-MED Radiology Network.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Thursday the world is watching closely to see if recent optimism over North Korea leads to the elimination of its nuclear weapons program. In an interview with The Associated Press, Ardern also said New Zealand is among many nations concerned about the tit-for-tat trade war between China and the U.S. She said the idea of New Zealand becoming a republic is not a priority for her government. Ardern spoke with the AP at her home in Auckland as she prepared to return to the capital, Wellington, after six weeks of leave following the birth of her daughter, Neve. Ardern, 38, is just the second elected world leader in recent history to give birth while holding office.

A new study has shown how computers and robots powered by artificial intelligence can read human eye movements to'read' human personalities. The eyes, they say, are the windows to the soul. And if that is true, computers and robots powered by sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms may soon have the ability to peer into your soul. That is the result of a new study on the connection between eye movements and personality, conducted by neuroscience researchers based at the University of South Australia and published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Neuroscience. "Eye movements during an everyday task predict aspects of our personality," wrote the researchers, led by University of South Australia neuroscientist Tobias Loetscher, whose team follows 42 study subjects around the university campus recording their eye movements, then determines their personality traits with "well-established questionnaires" for deterring personality type, according to a summary of the study published by the site Science Daily.

Scientists have developed a new artificial intelligence system that can track a person's eye movements to identify their personality type. Researchers, including those from the University of Stuttgart in Germany and Flinders University in Australia used state-of-the-art machine-learning algorithms to demonstrate a link between personality and eye movements. Their findings show that people's eye movements reveal whether they are sociable, conscientious or curious, with the algorithm software reliably recognising four of the Big Five personality traits: neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Researchers tracked the eye movements of 42 participants as they undertook everyday tasks around a university campus, and subsequently assessed their personality traits using well-established questionnaires. The study provides new links between previously under-investigated eye movements and personality traits and delivers important insights for emerging fields of social signal processing and social robotics.

The Queensland Artificial Intelligence Centre will be a centre to promote AI skill development and innovation in Queensland. Our aim is not only to assist newcomers and partners to easily learn and engage with the field of AI but to enable our unique AI community in Queensland to develop world class expertise in AI.

HEX-programs are an extension of answer set programs (ASP) with external sources. To this end, external atoms provide a bidirectional interface between the program and an external source. The traditional evaluation algorithm for HEX-programs is based on guessing truth values of external atoms and verifying them by explicit calls of the external source. The approach was optimized by techniques that reduce the number of necessary verification calls or speed them up, but the remaining external calls are still expensive. In this paper we present an alternative evaluation approach based on inlining of external atoms, motivated by existing but less general approaches for specialized formalisms such as DL-programs. External atoms are then compiled away such that no verification calls are necessary. The approach is implemented in the dlvhex reasoner. Experiments show a significant performance gain. Besides performance improvements, we further exploit inlining for extending previous (semantic) characterizations of program equivalence from ASP to HEX-programs, including those of strong equivalence, uniform equivalence and H, B -equivalence. Finally, based on these equivalence criteria, we characterize also inconsistency of programs wrt. extensions. Since well-known ASP extensions (such as constraint ASP) are special cases of HEX, the results are interesting beyond the particular formalism. Under consideration in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP).

A New Zealand artificial intelligence company has become a world leader, and is about to list on the NZX. Arria NLG works in natural language generation and has been identified as one of two companies with artificial intelligence products ready for commercialisation. NLG chief executive Sharon Daniels told Mike Hosking the technology will increase the productivity of businesses. "Instead of having a fear around the technology taking over, it's mainly there to increase people's capabilities."

The deal is with Paltac Corporation, the biggest supplier to drugstore-style shops in Japan. It begins modestly, with a single pilot store in the city of Sendai, about four hours north of Tokyo, set to open in early 2019. Then it ramps up fast: The plan is to outfit over 3,000 stores in time for the Tokyo Olympics in July 2020. "The government is pushing its stores and its companies to put their best digital foot forward for the Olympics," says Michael Suswal, Standard Cognition's COO and one of the Bay Area startup's seven cofounders. Partnering with Paltac, which supplies most of Japan's small retail industry, allows Standard Cognition to reach a diverse market.

Google's high quality Home Max speaker is coming to Australia. The company's most expensive audio product, which boasts sound 20 times more powerful than the standard Google Home, will be available in the country from August 9. The Australian release supports Assistant's latest features, such as Multiple Commands, as well as Home Max's biggest draw, Smart Sound, which automatically adapts to the environment of a room. Home Max launched in the US in December 2017, and Canada earlier this year -- international availability of Google's products is notoriously slow, although the regular Google Home and Home Mini are already available in the Australian Google Store. The Home Max will also be available from JB Hi-Fi, Harvey norman, David Jones, The Good Guys and Officeworks, and will cost $550.