Backed by sleek devices and powered by intelligent software and apps, smartphones are shaping the future of healthcare. The latest development in medical apps is the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze data and offer a diagnosis within seconds. ResApp Health, a digital healthcare solutions company based in Australia, is developing an app that can diagnose respiratory conditions with a smartphone's microphone, which acts as a stethoscope, according to MobiHealthNews. The ResAppDx app applies specially developed machine learning algorithms to the sounds, including cough sounds, which automatically identify potential respiratory conditions, including pneumonia, asthma, bronchiolitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Another company utilizing artificial intelligence advances is Beyond Verbal, which has launched a research platform that's attempting to identify biomarkers in users' voices to detect a range of health issues, including heart problems, ALS and even Parkinson's disease.

CoverGirl has released what it claims is the first influencer chatbot marketing campaign, using a program designed to emulate a real person's conversational style. The make-up brand, which was spun off to Coty from Procter & Gamble in October, invited fans to use the teen-focused messaging app Kik to interact with a chatbot version of Kalani Hilliker, a 16-year-old American dancer, model and TV personality. The chatbot was created by influencer marketing platform The Amplify and chatbot developer Automat, companies that became part of the 18-month-old network You & Mr Jones in mid-2016. "Mobile commerce will be colossal using bots," said David Jones, former Havas global CEO and founder of You & Mr Jones. "In 12 months there will be thousands of these. Traditional ads can cost thousands per click -- this is a conversation on Kik." Results so far include 14 times more conversations with the chatbot than with an average post by Ms. Hilliker, 91% positive sentiment, an average of 17 messages per conversation, 48% of conversations leading to coupon delivery and 51% click-through on coupons delivered, according to Mr. Jones.

If Hollywood is to be believed, the development of super-intelligent AI will spell the end of civilization as we know it and spark an unwinnable war between man and machine. It doesn't make for nearly as exciting entertainment, but artificial intelligence also offers tremendous upside, from the potential to deliver customized education to everyone, to improving disease diagnosis and treatment and eradicating poverty. Although AI researchers are focused these beneficial outcomes, the dystopian vision portrayed in so much science fiction is also a real possibility. At the recent Singularity University (SU) New Zealand Summit we talked with Neil Jacobstein, the former president and current chair of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Track at SU, about how the outcomes feared by so many can be avoided.

One of the biggest obstacles to the adoption of autonomous vehicles (AVs), is safety. The misconception that artificial intelligence is unsafe is mostly driven by media and is thankfully changing. AVs do certainly pose an original problem to insurance companies. And with the autonomous vehicle industry set to grow exponentially in the next 20 years, insurance companies are going to have to figure out a solution to the challenge, fast. The reality is that the definition of autonomous is still very gray.

CoverGirl has released what it claims is the first influencer chatbot marketing campaign, using a program designed to emulate a real person's conversational style. The make-up brand, which was spun off to Coty from Procter & Gamble in October, invited fans to use the teen-focused messaging app Kik to interact with a chatbot version of Kalani Hilliker, a 16-year-old American dancer, model and TV personality. The chatbot was created by influencer marketing platform The Amplify and chatbot developer Automat, companies that became part of the 18-month-old network You & Mr Jones in mid-2016. "Mobile commerce will be colossal using bots," said David Jones, former Havas global CEO and founder of You & Mr Jones. "In 12 months there will be thousands of these. Traditional ads can cost thousands per click -- this is a conversation on Kik." Results so far include 14 times more conversations with the chatbot than with an average post by Ms. Hilliker, 91% positive sentiment, an average of 17 messages per conversation, 48% of conversations leading to coupon delivery and 51% click-through on coupons delivered, according to Mr. Jones.

Don't worry about the robots, worry about the humans. There's a huge difference between the modest aims of the artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning being used today, and the grand ideas of creating an artificial general intelligence that could match -- and then rapidly exceed - the capabilities of a human mind As they develop, AI and machine learning will be able to take on even more complicated tasks, but it could still be half a century or more before AI capable of human-level intelligence is built. And, then, even longer before the sort of super-intelligence emerges that excites some, terrifies others and has provided plot lines for science fiction for decades. One may (eventually) lead to the other, but conflating today's AI and machine learning with tomorrow's Skynet is not helpful. Indeed, that confusion has encouraged many to exaggerate the short-term potential of existing (and often somewhat mundane) AI and machine learning technologies.

Alibaba has gone from an ecommerce company to its own economy. The Tmall Global Shopping day recorded 120.7 billion RMB (17.8 billion USD) is sales on one day. At their Single's Day event earlier this year, they revealed some interesting plans for the coming future. Robotics, AI, AR, and VR will be adopted across sectors like ecommerce, logistics, service sector, and finance to make user's daily life smarter. YunOS, a cloud-based data and service oriented operating system for the Internet of Things, will power a wide range of smart devices including smartphones, wearables, Internet cars, robots, and smart household appliances.

UPDATE: 12:52 p.m. EST - Following user reported outages across the globe, Blizzard Entertainment said Wednesday a Distributed Denial of Service, or DDoS, attack has stopped and encouraged users of its games to attempt to log back into their systems. The DDOS attacks against network providers that we were monitoring have ended. If you are still unable to log in try https://t.co/Mce1fu5ZI9 Original story - Blizzard Entertainment, the maker of wildly popular video games like "World of Warcraft" and "Diablo," announced Wednesday that a Distributed Denial of Service, or DDoS, attack had affected connections to its games. We are currently monitoring a DDOS attack against network providers which is affecting latency/connections to our games.

More of Earth's surface is covered by liquid water now than three decades ago. But some countries in Central Asia and the Middle East have lost more than half their surface water, satellite images show. There have also been losses in the US and Australia. The changes are mainly a result of activities such as irrigation and dam building, but climate change is playing a part too. Previous studies of surface water have largely relied on how much water countries estimate they have..

Richard Lee's attempt to renew his passport was blocked after he submitted the picture to an online passport photo checker run by New Zealand's department of internal affairs. The automated system told the 22-year-old engineering student the photo was invalid because his eyes were closed, even though they were clearly open, according to a copy of the notification posted on social media site Facebook. "No hard feelings on my part, I've always had very small eyes and facial recognition technology is relatively new and unsophisticated," Lee told Reuters. "It was a robot, no hard feelings. I got my passport renewed in the end."