Sincerely, I'm not too mutch fot the app-within-an-app model, successfull now in WeChat and Kik and just recently in japanese LINE (… and please note, many years ago japanese Docomo i-mode m-sites have been precursors of just that) So, I feel that HTML5 embedded bot apps running inside a chat platform are a compromise of the moment, now in 2016, that we "come from" the visual web paradigma ( click&point #GUI), possibly evolving in a final "pure" conversational dialog flow man-machine "intimate" experience (#CUX). Of course SMS-based chatbots are just a proof-of-concept without a possible future, almost in Europe/Italy, where SMS are billed something like 0.25 EUR each:-( I more agree on the above statement: this is the future in my previson: conversational applications able to sustain complex conversations with users, having an "AI-personality", along with a deep/intimate knowledge of human user, and above all able to do inferences. I call this bots: "Third generation" and now we are moving from generation I (command-based) to generation II (dialog based, but without inference skills). BTW, I'm convinced that chatbots on instant messaging platform (text based using hands to write on a keyboard) represent an intermediate phase, bringing us to voice-enabled interfaces (e.g.

We've covered robot writers before, but to date it has never been much of a concern for actual writers. Robots just aren't that good at doing what we do; although Microsoft's'Tay' did prove to be pretty great at going from zero to off-the-rails after dealing with some nasty Twitter comments -- something any writer can relate to. Until now, "robot writers" -- artificial intelligence programs taught to write -- were mainly only good at penning quick stories based on data-heavy reports. Box scores, stock reports, and the like were basically all the programs were capable of doing well. This year's edition of TNW Conference in Amsterdam includes some of the biggest names in tech.

One of the world's biggest banks has revealed it is leading the fight against criminals using state of the art AI technology. The Bank of Russia has teamed up with Yandex Data Factory to use the latter's machine learning services to identify unlicensed money lenders, and the websites hosting them. So far, Yandex Data Factory's custom search algorithm has helped to reveal 2,500 suspicious organisations, and played a significant role in spotting any inaccuracies, meaning that potentially fraudulent organisations will not be missed in the future. The system works by analysing key words across an existing Yandex database, which identified seven million web pages related to finance topics. The algorithm is then able to assign a web page to its correct category, before identifying if an organisation is licenced, which Yandex says occurred correctly in 98 percent of cases.

Like innumerable children with imaginations fired by animated films, Hong Kong product and graphic designer Ricky Ma grew up watching cartoons featuring the adventures of robots, and dreamt of building his own one day. Unlike most of the others, however, Ma has realized his childhood dream at the age of 42, by successfully constructing a life-sized robot from scratch on the balcony of his home. The fruit of his labors of a year-and-a-half, and a budget of more than 50,000, is a female robot prototype he calls the Mark 1, modeled after a Hollywood star whose name he wants to keep under wraps. It responds to a set of programmed verbal commands spoken into a microphone. "I figured I should just do it when the timing is right and realize my dream. If I realize my dream, I will have no regrets in life," said Ma, who had to learn about fields completely new to him before he could build the complex gadget.

"YOU are a developer and you've just spent two weeks writing this amazing app. Your dream is to get it in front of every iPhone user." That was how Steve Jobs, then Apple's boss, introduced an online shop for smartphone apps eight years ago. At first few paid it much heed, but it launched one of the fastest growing software markets ever. Since then, over 100 billion apps have been downloaded, generating 40 billion in revenues for developers and billions more in subscriptions and other fees.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

Twitter was not always an advertising business, and it doesn't want to limit itself to promoted tweets. Under second-time CEO Jack Dorsey, the company has been reinvigorating its foundation as a real-time data service, and the revenue is following. Since Dorsey arrived last summer, he has been cultivating relationships with developers -- particularly those who pay for Twitter's data. In February, Dorsey listed developers as his fifth priority, behind the more obvious need to address the core service, live video, creators and safety. But interestingly, this fifth priority is the one that's already been bringing in more cash and continues to make Twitter relevant.

On this blog, we have been often preaching how Machine Learning has been expanding out of its historic habitat of academics and R&D labs into all kinds of industries by powering smart applications. One of the reflections of this trend can be seen in the number of conferences and events that are bringing together real life practitioners and business leaders that are looking for ways to incorporate Machine Learning in their core activities. This year we are witnessing the addition of Machine Learning Prague to that growing event list as possibly the first conference of its kind in Eastern Europe. We are also proud to announce BigML's active participation at the event that will take place on April 23–24, 2016. In the organizers' words "This is not another academic conference. Our goal is to foster discussion between machine learning practitioners and all people who are interested in applications of modern trends in artificial intelligence. You can look forward to inspiring people, algorithms, data, applications, workshops and a lot of fun during both days as well as at the afterparty."

A combined project by Microsoft, the Rembrandt House Museum, advertising firm J Walter Thompson Amsterdam, and strangely, ING Bank has yielded a 148 million pixel portrait generated by a computer. Developers of The Next Rembrandt say a series of complex algorithms were used to extract the key features of Rembrandt's work. Given the companies involved, the project smacks of an advertising stunt, but the resulting printed image does raise interesting questions about the quality of future forgeries. Under the project, all 346 Rembrandt paintings were analyzed using 3D scans to pinpoint common techniques and themes used by the 17th century artist. READ MORE: Lawnmower explodes during crazy backyard'art' experiment (VIDEO) "The first step was to study the works of Rembrandt in order to create an extensive database," explains Emmanuel Flores, director of technology at J Walter Thompson Amsterdam.

About a dozen trucks from major manufacturers like Volvo and Daimler just completed a week of largely autonomous driving across Europe, the first such major exercise on the continent. The trucks set off from their bases in three European countries and completed their journeys in Rotterdam in the Netherlands today (Apr. One set of trucks, made by the Volkswagen subsidiary Scania, traveled more than 2,000 km and crossed four borders to get there. The trucks were taking part in the European Truck Platooning Challenge, organized by the Dutch government as one of the big events for its 2016 presidency of the European Union. While self-driving cars from Google or Ford get most of the credit for capturing the public imagination, commercial uses for autonomous or nearly autonomous vehicles, like tractors from John Deere, have been quietly putting the concept to work in a business setting. When trucks autonomously follow one another, it's called "platooning."