To some, he was the voice of Rodimus Prime on the mid-1980s animated TV show "The Transformers," or Serpentor on the animated "G.I. But for baby boomers, Dick Gautier was best known for his deadpan performance as Hymie the robot in the '60s spy spoof "Get Smart." The actor died Friday, according to a Facebook post by Tess Hightower, his third wife. Gautier's daughter Denise told the Hollywood Reporter that he passed away at an assisted living facility in Arcadia after a long illness. Gautier earned a Tony nomination for his performance as Conrad Birdie, an Elvis Presley-esque singer, in the original Broadway production of "Bye, Bye Birdie," which also starred Dick Van Dyke. Born in Culver City, Gautier began his show business career as a comedian and was spotted performing at a New York club by renowned dancer-choreographer Gower Champion, who urged him to audition for "Bye, Bye Birdie." Though he made only six appearances on "Get Smart," his character, Hymie, a robot with superhuman strength and intelligence but a tendency to interpret commands in an overly literal fashion, became a fan favorite. He reprised the role in the 1989 made-for-TV movie "Get Smart, Again!" Gautier also starred as Robin Hood in the Mel Brooks series "When Things Were Rotten" and on multiple episodes of the anthology comedy series "Love, American Style." He was a fixture on the talk- and game-show circuit of the 1970s, appearing on "Password," "Tattletales," "Match Game," "Dinah!" and "Hollywood Squares," among others. Gautier also published several books about caricature drawing, and a children's book called "A Child's Garden of Weirdness." Gautier became popular to a younger generation through his voiceover work. Joe," and "Transformers," he voiced dozens of animated characters on "Duck Tales," "Cow and Chicken" and many more.

Microsoft's Cortana AI bot is known for dealing with customer service enquiries – but it goes much further than that. The artificial intelligence technology is being applied in a great variety of ways at huge companies such as Volvo. Chris Testa-O'Neill of Microsoft's data science team demonstrated the Cortana Intelligence Suite at SpaceportX in Manchester's Northern Quarter this week. Speaking at the first of a series of regular business intelligence and data meetups organised by Travel Counsellors, he discussed subjects such as machine learning – which the CIS can perform – with a captive audience. We spoke to him afterwards to get the lowdown on what the Big Data and advanced analytics suite can do for firms large and small.

In the next three to five years, organizations will see an unprecedented amount of disruption with the advancement of cognitive computing. And the pace of technological change isn't set to slow down any time soon. Communicate Influence speaks to Nigel Willson, a Global Strategist with Microsoft UK, about cognitive computing. Cognitive computing is set to have a massive impact on how businesses and individuals perform transactions, communicate, and interact with the world around them. Companies will face immense pressure to keep with technological change as software developments move ahead at warp speed.

Now is the time of the year when every marketer should well reflect on the achievements of 2016 and holistically examine what the New Year is going to mean for marketing, branding, and business. With this article I proceed with a good tradition by following-up on my previous and related articles for 2016, 2015, and 2014. As we all know, paying attention to what's on the horizon does offer valuable insights. Knowing the below-listed 16 marketing trends which I consider as highly relevant for 2017, should help you to build, expand, and keep strong brands. Although this should have been ingrained in every marketer s DNA for years, however, with all the data, tech, and buzzwords flying around, one of the biggest marketing challenges of 2017 will be to stay calm, focused, and to be obsessed with the only one that matters: Your customer! How to identify her, to reach her, to engage her, to make her purchase, to have her stay loyal, to make her to recommend you, and to have her even re-purchase more of your products in the future? There is a certain risk that (marketing) managers – more than ever – get confused and fall into the trap of mixing up data-driven insights with a real customer-centric business philosophy. Therefore successful companies and brands don t worship the data gods for the sake of it; instead they have a comprehensive and deeply rooted digital transformation strategy in place which is flanked by a crystal clear marketing action plan. Enhanced and lived by every employee of the organization and not only by a chief digital officer who very often is floating around the company in search for a home base.

We are in the midst of an extraordinary period of computing platform revolution, a renaissance in artificial intelligence, which is going to change the lives of billions of people around the globe. No other technology is gaining more momentum, seeing more progress--or inciting more fear--than the radical sharpening and rise of intelligence of machines. While the promise of AI has been known for years, the current pace of breakthrough is stunning. Machines are set to reach and exceed human performance on more and more tasks, thanks to advances in dedicated hardware, faster and deeper access to big data, and newer sophisticated algorithms that provide the ability to learn and improve based on feedback. AI has driven crucial progress in fields such as medicine, where it has spurred breakthroughs in disease diagnosis and the development of treatment plans.

Two out of every five people in the US will be diagnosed with cancer during their lifetimes, according to the National Cancer Institute . Now the same technology behind improved voice assistants and credit card fraud detection--artificial intelligence--is now being implemented into lung cancer screenings for this year's Data Science Bowl. Booz Allen Hamilton and Kaggle are hoping to inspire data scientists and medical communities around the world to use artificial intelligence to improve lung cancer screening technology at this year's Data Science Bowl. The 90-day Data Science Bowl competition will award winners with $1 million in prizes. Funds for the prize purse will be provided by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.

Selena Gomez and rumored boyfriend The Weeknd were certified newsmakers this week. But what's more interesting about this developing story was the latest report highlighting the sex life and nontraditional views on love and marriage of Gomez's new lover. In a recent interview with GQ magazine, the publication that labeled The Weeknd as the "king of sex pop," the 26-year-old "Starboy" singer candidly spoke about his own views on love and marriage. The Grammy Award-winning musician said his popularity does not affect his ego and his dating game, saying most girls want to get involve with him because of his talents instead of appearance. "The reason why they want to [have sex] with me is because of what I do [in the studio]," The Weeknd said in an interview for GQ's February 2017 issue, Us Weekly quoted.

HTC may have taken a bolder approach in the smartphone world with its new U Ultra and U Play, but it's decided to play it safe with its roadmap for the rest of the year. After today's launch event in Taipei, I caught up with President of Smartphone and Connected Devices Business, Chialin Chang, who confirmed that HTC will only be releasing six to seven smartphones this year. While that's a drastic cut from last year's eleven to twelve models, he claims this has so far allowed the company to focus on its smartphones' core features, in a bid to put up a better fight against other brands. In the case of the two newest phones, Chang sees machine learning as their main selling point. The exec described the so-called Sense Companion virtual assistant as a combination of Google's Awareness API, device information and third-party data.

Think about your typical day. Your phone alarm wakes you up (maybe after hitting snooze a couple of times), you check the weather as your coffee is brewing, and you get traffic alerts about your commute to work. How many times do you think artificial intelligence (AI) is a part of your day? It's definitely more often than you think. During a conversation with President Barack Obama, technologist Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicted that 2016 would be the "year artificial intelligence becomes more than just a computer science problem." In 2016, AI's fast progress led to acquisition deals topping $1 billion, and the White House released its first report on artificial intelligence and the economy.

SEEK is using machine learning and artificial intelligence to send its users more relevant job advertisements and alerts. Norway switches off its FM radio network this week, but other nations have abandoned similar plans. James Fairfax, the philanthropist and former chairman of John Fairfax & Sons, has died, aged 83, at his home in Bowral. Facebook has launched its own'Journalism Project' in an attempt to better engage with news organisations. Communications Minister Mitch Fifield is expected to woo the crossbench on media regulation.