Of course, some of this is because Facebook was wise enough to seed its SDK to developers months in advance. But it's also because the company laid out its groundwork for bots in Messenger as early as last year. In 2015, Facebook unveiled its Messenger for Businesses program, which would allow consumers like you and me to talk with businesses on Messenger. You could chat with Hyatt to ask for more towels in your room or with Sprint to find out why your network was slow. Of course, you'd be speaking to a customer-support agent rather than a bot, but it was a starting point. On top of that, Facebook has been working with partners like Uber, Lyft and KLM to try out an early version of a bot system where you could request a car or book a flight through Messenger.

Intel is in transition right now: An executive shakeup this month laid the path for new boss Venkata Renduchintala to put his imprint on the company's PC, Internet of Things and software operations. So no wonder the vibe at this week's Intel Developer Forum in Shenzhen was mellow. Intel kept the show a low-key affair, choosing not to bring it to the attention of a worldwide audience, unlike previous years. But IDF Shenzhen remains an important event on Intel's calendar. China is a huge market, and it's also a place where the chip maker encourages small hardware shops in the alleys of Shenzhen to experiment with PC, mobile and now, IoT ideas.

There has been some grumbling amongst industry folk who traveled to CinemaCon this year that studios aren't really showing anything new. In an age where fans clamor for teasers and trailers to debut earlier and earlier online, Hollywood has started giving sneak peeks of their films many months -- and sometimes years -- in advance of a movie's release. That wasn't the case with Universal Pictures, whose chairman Donna Langley told the crowd of movie theater owners gathered here on Wednesday that all material the studio would be sharing was "created specifically for CinemaCon." A majority of that material involved the studio's animated slate -- more on that here. But Universal also gave conference-goers a first glimpse at some of its most anticipated live-action releases.

Pop quiz: is the following statement true or false? Canada is the birthplace of a transformative technology set to disrupt countless industries and potentially lead the next wave of global economic growth. Most Canadians aren't aware of it, but artificial intelligence (more specifically its subset, deep learning) -- the inspiration for scores of dystopian science-fiction movies -- is a made-in-Canada technology that will become profoundly important over the next few years. Deep learning was the name given to a group of complex mathematical models that came out of the University of Toronto in 2006. In a nutshell, the technology mimics the neural networks of a human brain, giving machines the capacity to learn on their own and discover previously undetectable patterns within massive data sets.

The last place you want to learn you have heart failure is where it often winds up being diagnosed: in the emergency room. Researchers analyzing electronic health records are using artificial intelligence and GPUs to get ahead of this curve. They've shown they can predict heart failure as much as nine months before doctors can now deliver the diagnosis. A research team from Sutter Health, a Northern California not-for-profit health system, and the Georgia Institute of Technology, believe their method has the potential to reduce heart failure rates and possibly save lives. "The earlier we can detect the disease, the more likely we can change health outcomes for people and improve their quality of life," said Andy Schuetz, a senior data scientist at Sutter Health and an author of a paper describing one aspect of the research.

Production is underway on "Ghost in the Shell," Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures announced Thursday, releasing a first look at Scarlett Johansson ("Lucy," "The Avengers") as cyborg Major Kusanagi. Directed by Rupert Sanders ("Snow White and the Huntsman," "Van Helsing"), the film has begun shooting in Wellington, New Zealand. Based on the eponymous Kodansha Comics manga, written and illustrated by Masamune Shirow, the film centers on the Major, who leads an elite task force called Section 9, focused on stopping only the most dangerous criminals and extremists. Joining Johansson in the cast are Beat Takeshi Kitano ("Battle Royale" series), Juliette Binoche ("The English Patient") and Michael Pitt ("Hannibal," "Boardwalk Empire"). Beloved as the original manga series and resulting animated film and series have been, the live-action adaptation of "Ghost in the Shell" has already courted controversy with its casting of Johansson as its lead.

Now that the 2016 edition of the interactive festival is a thing of the past, here are the main ideas and trends that will shape both technology and the media in the coming years. On the one hand, we are told that things evolve fast and that the future is already upon us; on the other hand, there are claims that this digital revolution is just barely beginning and that there is a lot more to come. What's counts most may not be so much being able to differentiate sociology and foresight but instead to confront one's own ideas and take in the ideas of others. Multiplatform is one of the major trends that made a very prominent mark on this year's festival. It's a question of designing one's content to suit each broadcasting platform instead of adapting one's preformatted content to the platforms in question.

Artificial intelligence (AI), sometimes described as "machine learning," is quickly becoming a key component of several tech leaders' growth ambitions. To its credit, IBM (NYSE:IBM) recognized early on that the key to the fast-growing cloud market lies with the data, not the hosting platform, a fact Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is beginning to take to heart as it explores the expansion of its own AI, data-centric solutions. For Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), its industry-leading cloud business is as much about offering off-site data hosting utilizing its Azure platform to grow its software-as-a-service (SaaS) suite of products. Most pundits agree that SaaS delivered via the cloud is where the real opportunity lies. That said, Microsoft's recently completed BUILD conference in San Francisco made one thing abundantly clear: Its future includes utilizing AI to enhance a person's interactive experience.

Toyota, the world's largest automaker, is sending 5,000 connected cars that can wirelessly communicate with other vehicles and infrastructure onto the streets of Ann Arbor, Mich., in a real-world experiment designed to move autonomous driving closer to reality. Toyota is partnering with the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute on the project. Drivers who agree to participate in the tests will have a small data-collecting box installed in the trunk area of their car and two small antennas -- one on or near the rear windshield and another on the roof. The equipment transmits speed and position data from the vehicle to other participating vehicles as well as infrastructure such as traffic signals and research equipment located at intersections or along roadways. Drivers won't be required to take specific routes.

Jack Dashwood is the marcom director for computer vision company Movidius. There are an estimated 30 million surveillance cameras in the U.S. today. Out of these 30 million cameras, only 5 percent are monitored by a human at any given time. Instead, the majority of them are simply recording footage, providing little value other than evidence long after any kind of crime or accident has occurred. What this means is that today's "security" systems are mostly just a vast network of evidence collection devices, constantly recording and dumping data into hard drives, only to be retrieved after something regrettable has happened.