Google announced today that Google Assistant will start rolling out to devices running Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) and 7.0 (Nougat) later this week. Previously, the Assistant was only available on Google's Pixel phones, Home personal assistant, Allo messaging app and Android wear devices. Google is at the forefront of machine and deep-learning based natural language processing which they have used to power their vaunted speech recognition system. Google Assistant leverages this research to enable two-way, context-sensitive, conversational interactions between the user and the device. The Assistant syncs across devices and apps like Allo and Google Calendar and it allows voice-control of enabled smart-home devices.

With a connection this LG G6 can take advantage of the Google Assistant (Photo: Edward C. Baig) BARCELONA--The virtual Google Assistant is going to spread its voice beyond Google's own Pixel devices. Google announced that starting this week, it will roll out a software upgrade that brings the Assistant to all Android phones running Android 7.0 Nougat and Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Google Play Services. That's the software Google uses to update Google apps and services on Android devices. Google says the rollout will come first to English users in the U.S., followed by English users in Australia, Canada, India and the United Kingdom, as well as German speakers in Germany. More languages will be added over the course of the year.

Assistant might be the future of voice-controlled intelligence on our Google devices, but Google hasn't made it easy to get it. There are versions of it on Google Home, the new LG watches, or in Allo chats, but if you wanted the full mobile Assistant experience you had to commit to buying one of the Pixel phones. That's all about to change with a coming Play Services update. Right on the heels of LG's declaration that the G6 would be the first third-party phone to feature Assistant, Google announced that it would be bringing its voice-activated conceirge to all phones running Nougat and Marshmallow. As it is with the Pixel, users will be able to summon Assistant by saying OK Google or long-pressing on the home button.

OK, here we go again. A couple of days ago, Square reported the results of its Q4 and full year 2016 business results. The results and attendant guidance can be broadly characterized as another quarter of beat and raise. Interestingly to me, was that the raise part was more on earnings. The company is now forecasting growth of 30% in adjusted revenues but it expects adjusted EBITDA to more than double in 2017. Over the past year that I have been following the name, I have been particularly impressed with the company's strategy of being able to offer lots of pieces of IT services that merchants needed in order to be successful. The shares jumped 21% last week and have reached an all-time high since the company went public in late 2015.

A version of this article appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of strategy business. If you are an executive of an auto insurance company, pay attention -- you may not have a business in 20 years. You can blame the fundamental shifts in auto safety and data mining that connected car and autonomous vehicle technologies will bring. The remaining human drivers will be safer, thanks to collision-preventing sensors and analytics on board. Insurance claims will be rare, losses will be reduced, premiums will decline, and insurance companies will probably lose control of the data that makes their pricing models possible.

Technology is about change just about everything in healthcare--here's how. The future of healthcare is happening right now. While that future is just barely forming, we are beginning to see how technology is now scratching the surface of an entirely different landscape when it comes to healthcare delivery both within and outside of the U.S. According to PwC Health Research Institute's annual report, 2017 is the year to prepare for the arrival of several technologies poised to disrupt the industry. This myriad of tech-driven innovation will impact just about everything from supply chain and operations to business models and essential healthcare management practices and procedures. Here's a look at report's eight proposed technologies poised with the potential to change it all: We are already witnessing the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare through IBM's Watson, a supercomputer that first impressed us by beating Jeopardy opponents but is now tasked with beating a jeopardy of a different kind--cancer.

Despite banks' simultaneous excitement and fear of artificial intelligence as perhaps one of the most transformative technologies for their business, they've been quieter about IBM's Watson. Watson is a cognitive technology and super-computer comprising AI that "learns" how to draw conclusions from data, natural language understanding – which allows it to read and understand unstructured data, like social media posts and digital photos – and a search engine that can comb through millions of data points in seconds. It holds enormous promise in the long term for banks, who hold troves of customer data they're constantly studying and using to create better customer experiences as well as improve operational efficiencies. "What a Watson could deliver to banks would be tools to ensure sales people are selling the right things to the right people at the right time," Gilbert said. "Wells Fargo probably wouldn't have an eight financial product sales challenge if it had a Watson," because Watson wouldn't have allowed such rules to be set for employees to follow.

Open forms of global constraints allow the addition of new variables to an argument during the execution of a constraint program. Such forms are needed for difficult constraint programming problems where problem construction and problem solving are interleaved, and fit naturally within constraint logic programming. However, in general, filtering that is sound for a global constraint can be unsound when the constraint is open. This paper provides a simple characterization, called contractibility, of the constraints where filtering remains sound when the constraint is open. With this characterization we can easily determine whether a constraint has this property or not. In the latter case, we can use it to derive a contractible approximation to the constraint. We demonstrate this work on both hard and soft constraints. In the process, we formulate two general classes of soft constraints.

We already wrote about it earlier this week but here's a reminder: The Ghost Recon Wildlands demo marketing stunt open beta runs this weekend, so if you're bored on Saturday and want to give the game a spin before plunking down $60, now's your chance. What else happened this week? Overwatch teased a new hero, Battlefield 1 teased a new...something, Prey showed off its toilet paper physics, Humble decided to sell a billion hours of Civilization for $15, and someone installed Doom on a Porsche 911. If you've heard 25 years of Civilization praise and thought "I should play those games some day," I have one hell of a deal for you: Most of the Civilization games, packed into a bundle. A Humble Bundle, that is.

Robotics undoubtedly has the potential to improve lives in the developing world. However, with limited budgets and expertise on the ground, putting this technology in place is no small task. Step forwards WeRobotics, a new Swiss/American NGO dedicated to meeting this goal through the creation of in-country'flying labs'. Co-founder Adam Klaptocz explains all. Let's start with this: what is WeRobotics?