If someone asked you to define'intelligence,' how would you respond? The question elicits significantly different answers based on whom you ask. Ask people to define'artificial intelligence' and the conflicting answers only multiply. Not only are there multiple schools of thought within the field of AI, but the term itself stands on a word that we're still only beginning to understand. This was the elephant in the room at the Applied Artificial Intelligence Conference last week in San Francisco. Some speakers rejected the term AI altogether, and used a slew of replacements, while others couldn't get enough of it.

Dubai Police is reportedly planning to use robots and artificial intelligence in its policing of the city by 2020. Local publication Emirates 24/7 cited Dubai Police Smart Department general director Colonel Khalid Razooqi as saying robots could do the work of a police officer on the ground in some situations. "We are working on a similar project and it will be ready by Expo 2020," he was quoted as saying. This follows testing of a robot during the Gitex Technology Week event to gain user feedback. "The project we are working on will involve robots interacting with people and performing some responsibilities that of a police officer," Razooqi said, according to the publication.

Companies everywhere are looking for ways to improve customer service. For example, companies with call-in support centers might track how long agents take to answer calls, or how long customers stay on hold. While many companies are looking at every possible method to gain customer insights, many don't go far enough. How many businesses take facial recognition into account as a way to track the quality of their customer service efforts? Big data could make facial recognition for brick-and-mortar businesses just as ubiquitous as call tracking is for call centers. The growth of VoIP and cloud computing has sparked a revolution in customer service.

There's Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana and Amazon's Echo who serve as digital assistants in the home. Don't hold your breath for IBM's Watson to make an appearance anytime soon. IBM would prefer Watson, which garnered the spotlight when it competed -- and bested -- two "Jeopardy" champs on the popular television game show, to remain open so others could build devices and products that take advantage of its intelligence, said IBM CEO Ginny Rometty. Still, she believes artificial intelligence will have a big impact down the line. "There's no doubt in my mind that cognitive AI will impact everything in our lives in five years," Rometty said on Wednesday at Re/Code's Code conference in Ranchos Palos Verdes, California.

LifeBeam is launching a Kickstarter campaign for a personal trainer that is driven by artificial intelligence. Dubbed Vi, the assistant features AI embedded in your earphones and tells you what to do during your workout. If you are running behind your usual pace on a familiar run, for example, Vi will ask you politely if you want to speed it up. Or if your heart rate is getting too high, Vi will sense that and advise you to slow down. Vi may remind you of Scarlett Johanson's AI voice in the film Her.

If the battle between rival digital assistants can be summed up by the NBA championships, then Google's take would be the Golden State Warriors? That's assuming, of course, the record-setting Warriors beat the Cleveland Cavaliers to defend their NBA title. It's the analogy used by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who characterized the competition as more friendly than bloody. "This is not like'Game of Thrones,'" he said Wednesday at Recode's Code conference in Ranchos Palos Verdes, California. Artificial intelligence is already a hot topic at the conference, and it's a big part of Google's future.

In the future, you probably won't use your keyboard to get to this website. So predicts of one of the internet's top oracles, Mary Meeker, a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. On Wednesday Meeker, a long time investor and financial analyst, unveiled her annual predictions of the technology industry's future at a conference in southern California. The two big takeaways: people will do more talking to their computers and less typing on them. Oh – and the technology sector's days of easy, red-hot growth may be behind it because an increasing percentage of the Earth's population already owns a smartphone.

"If we can do it in the right and thoughtful way we are always open to it," said Pichai at the Code conference here. "I care about serving consumers everywhere." Google pulled out of mainland China and moved its Chinese-language search engine to Hong Kong in 2010 after a series of cyber attacks on Google originated in the country. Google also said it would stop censoring search results in China. The controversial move cut Google off from the fast-growing Chinese market, one that's been courted by rival Facebook and constitutes the second-biggest market for Apple.

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Children as young as four can learn to program robots, according to an expert at Queensland University of Technology. Queensland University of Technology's (QUT) Christina Chalmers, who specializes in the teaching and application of robotics in classrooms, says robotic coding is a growth area in a range of industries, a trend that increases the demands on educators to promote student education in robotics. "Preliminary findings from a current study have shown even pre-school students have gone beyond simply playing games with a NAO robot," Chalmers says. Coding and robotics were implemented into Queensland's state primary schools this year. "Research tells us that if kids don't form positive attitudes towards science, maths, and technology early in life they can find it difficult to engage later on," she says, adding robotics provides an engaging way for both students and teachers to work together.