The second AI ZA meetup was held on 21 June 2016 at Entelect's headquarters in Melrose Arch, Johannesburg. The event was packed with over 50 attendees eager to learn about artificial intelligence and machine learning. The goal of this meetup was to continue with a more in depth classification problem as well as run through the introductory concepts for all those that were new to the meetup. Rishal Hurbans and Hennie Brink gave a short talk on classification algorithms. The uses, advantages, and disadvantages of classification algorithms were covered.

The tech paradigm has been changing, or at least, we are made to believe so. We are slowly yet steadily moving towards bots, and that doesn't necessarily mean away from apps, not yet at least. Leading tech companies who usually decide tech trends have made it clear at their respective annual tech events that bots are coming! Chatbots can be described as automated programs to help communicate with businesses, and also make purchases online. With tech businesses' increasing interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning, bots are believed to take the centre stage when it comes to users communicating with said businesses.

You may have heard about the Donald Trump bot army and the Twitter bots that have influenced elections in Latin America, but there are other bots out there, bots that connect citizens to services, bots that plan to crowdsource the election of a president or act as your personal assistant in government. They're going to change civil society, how people interact with government, and the self-governance of free societies. Here are five example of bots that have already impacted or will impact democracy. Dirty Water VT sends a tweet each time a sewage spill occurs in the state of Vermont. Trib IL CampaignCash sends a tweet any time a campaign contribution is made above 1,000 in the state of Illinois.

In a rare move, the largest sports arena in Columbus, Ohio, relaxed a key policy for an event in April, allowing attendees to freely exit and reenter a game in progress. Nationwide Arena simply couldn't expect fans to stay seated for nine hours of action. It's among the accommodations event spaces across the country are making in bids to capitalize on the rise of arena-packing video-game contests, which they hope will attract a new generation of event-goers -- and with them increased ticket and concession sales. For owners, operators and concessionaires of venues, e-sports are the biggest new mass-spectator events since raves, the Ultimate Fighting Championship and the X Games. An estimated 47 million North Americans will tune into e-sports this year, according to research firm Newzoo.

Starship Technologies of Greenwich in London has built a robot that is starting trials delivering meals, groceries and parcels. Four firms in Britain and Germany are involved. But will the robots be able to navigate safely between business and customer?

SINGAPORE – More than half of workers in five Southeast Asian countries are at high risk of losing their jobs to automation in the next two decades, an International Labour Organization study found, with those in the garment industry particularly vulnerable. About 137 million workers or 56 percent of the salaried workforce from Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, fall under the high-risk category, the study showed. "Countries that compete on low-wage labor need to reposition themselves. Price advantage is no longer enough," said Deborah France-Massin, director for the ILO's bureau for employers' activities. The report said workers have to be trained to work effectively alongside digitalized machines.

She's a blast to have around. She's especially fun to shop with. That's when her bubbly, happy-go-lucky personality really comes through. Usually, we walk down an aisle – any aisle will do – and all of a sudden you can see her get excited about something she sees – a product, a sale price, whatever. I tease her that she's like a squirrel – always getting distracted by the next "shiny object". Rats do! She'll kill me if I compare her to a rat, though!)

At first glance, it seems counterintuitive. To learn more about how cells go awry causing disease, it seems logical to focus on the minutiae of a cell's molecular components: the specific genes, proteins, and small molecules that change over time leading to a disease state. Instead, Ernest Fraenkel, MIT associate professor in the Department of Biologic Engineering, first takes a macro view for finding new ways to understand and cure diseases. "When you are faced with making any sense of the 10,000 or 20,000 molecules that are present within a cell and evolve during disease, you need an entirely new approach to figure out what is really important among all the changes you see," Fraenkel explains. He develops computational and laboratory experimental methods to uncover the molecular pathways that go awry in disease and search for new strategies and intervention targets.

It could change the workplace, our culture, our sense of humanity, and our relationship not only to one another, but to machines. We are joined by Lucy Suchman, professor of Anthropology of Science and Technology at Lancaster University. Also joining us are Nathaniel Popper a business reporter at the New York Times, and Zeynep Tufecki an associate professor at the University of North Carolina and a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times.