As a natural response to Facebook's push to get more pages to use Messenger as a platform, brands are developing chat bots to handle customer service. How well is this working? At the Socialbakers Engage conference in Prague earlier this month, experts talked about the future of chat bots. The chat bots companies are starting to develop are more like the first step of a customer interaction, allowing them to take care of low-level inquiries, and then provide information to a human to complete the process. We're going to see a lot more intelligent bots out there.

Researchers disagree on when artificial intelligence that displays something like human understanding might arrive. But the Obama administration isn't waiting to find out. The White House says the government needs to start thinking about how to regulate and use the powerful technology while it is still dependent on humans. "The public should have an accurate mental model of what we mean when we say artificial intelligence," says Ryan Calo, who teaches law at University of Washington. Calo spoke last week at the first of four workshops the White House hosts this summer to examine how to address an increasingly AI-powered world. Although scholars and policymakers agree that Washington has a role to play here, it isn't clear what the path to that policy looks like--even as pressing questions accumulate.

Over the years, researchers and companies have invented plenty of devices to help people with visual impairments avoid objects such as a desk or chair. Many of these gadgets used ultrasonic sensors to detect such hazards. Just to name a few, there was the discontinued Pathsounder (which hung around a person's neck), the cumbersome NavBelt (worn around the waist), and the wheeled GuideCane. However, there's another type of obstacle that lurks underfoot--slight depressions in the ground such as steps, curbs, or divots that can cause a person to stumble or a wheelchair to suddenly turn awry. "There's nothing in existence that we know of that detects non-protruding hazards," says Elaine Wong, an electrical engineer at Australia's University of Melbourne.

Asus has just unveiled what's likely to be the most talked about product at this week's Computex trade show in Taipei, a cute talking robot for the home priced at 599. Called Zenbo, Asus pitched it as a personal assistant that can help look after elderly relatives or read stories to the kids, but that might be selling it a bit short. The robot is about two feet high and rolls around on wheels, with a display that can show its animated face or be used for other things like making video calls and streaming movies. Asus Chairman Jonney Shih demonstrated Zenbo at a press conference in Taipei Monday, giving it voice commands and asking it questions is it rolled around the stage. "Hey Zenbo, is it true you can take pictures"?

Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.[/i][/i] When assessing a patient, medics look at snapshots of physiological data that are manually taken by doctors or nurses, and make decisions against patient history, family background and test results, as well as their own knowledge and experience. But what if this data was constantly being taken, every second of every day? And what if a system was clever enough to compare these readings to thousands of patients worldwide with a similar history and disorder, as well as all the current clinical guidelines and studies, and make clinical suggestions to doctors? In 2016, this kind of data-led decision-making will come ever closer.

Can a machine be creative? Google thinks so, and it has an entire team dedicated to teaching machines how to view the world a little more like us emotional humans. Think about computers as if they were children and it's simple to understand how coders can teach them to learn. Artificial intelligence is, at the beginning, very basic and simple. Human moderators instruct computers, showing them how to think and thus teach themselves.

In April 2016, Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd launched a banking app in India with in-built artificial intelligence (AI). In the past few months, many large banks such as ICICI Bank Ltd and HDFC Bank Ltd have also been looking at introducing AI technology in various services, including retail banking. Many of these are in the pilot or testing phases. The financial technology (fintech) space in India, too, has geared up towards AI and has seen interest from investors. For instance, Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus, Tata Sons Ltd, invested an undisclosed amount in Niki.ai, run by Techbins Solutions Pvt.

Set mostly in the Earth-like world of Azeroth, Warcraft follows the premise set forth by Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, the franchise's first release for PC in late 1994. Having destroyed their own planet with dark magic, the Orcs attempt to take over the world of humans, setting off an epic clash of clans. What follows onscreen is a live action/CGI mashup visually reminiscent of Avatar that opts for a kinetic pace of nonstop battles over deep character study and plodding narrative. Jones wasn't originally attached to this Warcraft adaption -- Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead) was. But, having been a longtime fan, he jumped at the chance to pick up where Raimi left off and build a film that lets audiences decide who the good guys are. In advance of the film's US release June 10th, I sat down with Jones to talk about his love of PC gaming, how spaghetti Westerns informed Warcraft's battles and his early sci-fi and fantasy inspirations.

Students from an all-female arts college in Philadelphia attended a conference for video game developers last year and, without even trying, they stood out. "We were basically the only girls in the room," recalled Lindsey O'Brien, 21, a rising senior at Philadelphia's Moore College of Art & Design. The male-dominated video game industry is changing as more women develop games, play games and take jobs reviewing games. While the ongoing cyber harassment of female gamers known as "Gamergate" indicates a reluctance by some to accept the growing number of women in the industry, mainstream institutions are welcoming all to the console. Moore's animation and gaming arts program will see its first class of game developers graduate next year.

Asus has just unveiled what's likely to be the most talked about product at this week's Computex trade show in Taipei, a cute talking robot for the home priced at 599. Called Zenbo, Asus pitched it as a personal assistant that can help look after elderly relatives or read stories to the kids, but that might be selling it a bit short. The robot is about two feet high and rolls around on wheels, with a display that can show its animated face or be used for other things like making video calls and streaming movies. Asus Chairman Jonney Shih demonstrated Zenbo at a press conference in Taipei Monday, giving it voice commands and asking it questions is it rolled around the stage. "Hey Zenbo, is it true you can take pictures"?