It's a confounding short science fiction film, with dialogue that often jumps around and doesn't always make much sense, but it's also shockingly coherent, with a throughline, a story of pain and regret. That's shocking for one reason: an artificial intelligence wrote the entire movie. Using technology comparable to predictive text on your smartphone, filmmaker Oscar Sharp teamed with Ross Goodwin to build a screenplay-writing computer. Goodwin's resulting piece of technology, an LSTM RNN Artificial Intelligence named Benjamin, was given hundreds of scripts from science fiction film and television. The AI read stories like 12 Monkeys, Blade Runner, the Alien films, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Ghostbusters, Interstellar, Looper, The Matrix, Star Wars, and The X-Files, then wrote a screenplay.

To learn more about this license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... This lecture was recorded on April 3, 2012, in Hameetman Auditorium at Caltech, Pasadena, CA, USA.

It's about the brain -- or more precisely, about consciousness -- and it's been going on for decades. Its central question: Is the brain fundamentally like a computer? The side that says no relies on some seriously outlandish thinking. On the more conservative side, there are researchers like Scott Aaronson, a respected theoretical computer scientist at MIT. His view, which is more widely accepted, is that because the brain exists inside the universe, and because computers can simulate the entire universe given enough power, your entire brain can be simulated in a computer.

Apple's Siri made a big splash when the wisecracking digital assistant debuted on the iPhone five years ago. But as other tech giants jockey to build intelligent "chat bots" and voice-controlled home systems capable of more challenging artificial-intelligence feats, Siri at times no longer seems cutting edge. On Monday, Apple is expected to demonstrate an upgrade to Siri's smarts as it kicks off its annual software conference. It's a potentially momentous time for the company; sales of its flagship iPhone are slowing, and AI is emerging as a key tech battleground. Apple, Google, Facebook and others are racing to create digital services that consumers will find indispensable for shopping, chatting, controlling other appliances and simply getting through their daily lives.

The next BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer big-data case study discussion focuses on the Tower of Babel problem for disparate data, and explores how Alation manages multiple data types by employing machine learning and crowdsourcing. We'll explore how Alation makes data more actionable via such innovative means as combining human experts and technology systems. To learn more about how enterprises and small companies alike can access more data for better analytics, please join Stephanie McReynolds, Vice-President of Marketing at Alation in Redwood City, California. The discussion is moderated by me, Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Gardner: I've heard of crowdsourcing for many things, and machine learning is more-and-more prominent with big-data activities, but I haven't necessarily seen them together.

Bots are showing themselves to be one of the darlings of adtech in 2016. They may potentially disrupt brand-consumer interaction as we know it, creating both opportunity and chaos for marketers. And yet, as with websites and apps, building an effective brand asset doesn't happen overnight -- or come without challenges. And that's certainly true for bots, whose technology is still very imperfect and will require extensive development before all is said and done. Even so, the benefits outweigh the risks, and brands should act now, as first movers will likely see major advantages. Previously, I spoke with more than a dozen executives to learn what bot implementations hold the most promise (See: 10 ways bots can surprise and delight your customers).

We met up with Régis Vincent, Head of Software at SRI Robotics, a unit of SRI International, which is a non-profit, independent research centre serving government and industry. Located in Menlo Park at the heart of Silicon Valley, SRI International runs projects for government agencies, notably the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) – the US Ministry of Defence agency which develops technologies for military use – as well as private sector players, both large firms and startups – intended to develop disruptive innovations. The stated aim of SRI International is to move R&D from the laboratory to the marketplace. SRI is hardly a household name, but the organisation has nevertheless been behind a large number of the devices which we now use in our daily lives. Since the research centre was founded 65 years ago, its engineers have been closely involved in the development of such innovations as colour television then colour photographic film in the 1950s, ultrasound for medical diagnostics in the 1980s, computers as we know them today, Arpanet, a 1960s precursor to the Internet, and more recently Siri – the first-ever virtual personal assistant, later acquired by Apple.

Scientists have shown how the brain anticipates all of the new situations that it may encounter in a lifetime by creating a special kind of neural network that is "pre-adapted" to face any eventuality. This emerges from a new neuroscience study published in PLOS Computational Biology. Enel et al at the INSERM in France investigate one of the most noteworthy properties of primate behavior, its diversity and adaptability. Human and non-human primates can learn an astonishing variety of novel behaviors that could not have been directly anticipated by evolution--we now understand that this ability to cope with new situations is due to the "pre-adapted" nature of the primate brain. This study shows that this seemingly miraculous pre-adaptation comes from connections between neurons that form recurrent loops where inputs can rebound and mix in the network, like waves in a pond, thus called "reservoir" computing.

Can EPFL do better than Paul the Octopus? That's what the developers of kickoff.ai are hoping, with a new website that uses artificial intelligence to predict the results of Euro 2016 soccer games starting with the very first round. According to their calculations, France should beat Romania in the opening game on Friday, and Switzerland should come out ahead of Albania in their game on Saturday. The three researchers – who are also avid soccer fans – developed their model at EPFL's Computer Communications & Applications Laboratory. Their model uses a combination of machine-learning algorithms and data mining, making it more accurate than most predictive systems currently out there. "A lot of websites aim to predict the winners of soccer games, but they draw on data about the past performance of each country's team.

Sending packages by airplane is nothing new, but the task could soon be taken over by drones. DHL recently completed of a three-month-long test of its automated drone delivery system, the Parcelcopter. It works with a combination helipad and mailbox dubbed Skyport, which can automatically load and unload the drone's payload when it lands and store it in one of the station's lockers. Testing took place between January and March of 2016 in Bavaria, Germany. The idea was to see if the drone could be used to deliver packages to areas that are remote and where standard delivery takes a long time.