In future, machine learning could improve transport, security, healthcare and revolutionise industry. You'll also be able to take part in an interactive exhibition where machine learning developers and researchers will showcase examples of the technology in action. The talks and panel discussion will run from 18:30 to 20:00, doors open at 17:30 and close at 21:00. Tweet your questions to @royalsociety using #rsmachinelearning during the panel discussion to join the conversation.

SQL is referred to as a declarative language as opposed to an imperative language like the 3GL's. You give it a high-level goal, and it figures out which machine learning algorithm to use, and tunes the hyperparameters for you. Are there other declarative machine learning systems out there? Their purpose is to allow non-Spark developers to write machine learning programs in languages they are comfortable in (like Python), yet be able to compile down to Spark Scala when the time comes to deploy to production.

The Brand AI can analyse this liquid big data using its machine learning capabilities to create dynamic real-time personalised actionable insights seamlessly across a customer's physical and digital experience – it is the heartbeat of the retailer's invisible omni-channel offering. For example, the Brand AI can advise in-store sales staff in advance what specific products a customer wants or needs that particular day to help personalise this human interaction, provide on the spot guidance and critical feedback about products available immediately to drive a purchasing decision, or tailor in-store digital experiences such as virtual reality or media walls to create genuine moments of customer delight. In addition, the AI can capture the customer's emotional and physical reactions via wearables to these experiences (such as a raised heartbeat when seeing a new product for the first time); such insights can then be explored later by the customer (including socially with family and friends) using the AI on the retailer's integrated digital channel to sustain their retention. A further opportunity for using Brand AI is its potential ability to streamline inventory management to improve the customer experience and reduce operating risk.

Now, she is applying her creative talents toward building the personality of a different type of character: a virtual assistant, animated by artificial intelligence, that interacts with sick patients. Unlike the fictional characters Ewing developed in Hollywood, who are put through adventures and plot twists, most virtual assistants are designed to perform largely prosaic tasks, such as reading through email, sending meeting reminders or turning off the lights. Writers for medical and productivity apps make character decisions, such as whether bots should be workaholics, self-effacing or eager beavers. At a recent meeting of Microsoft Cortana's six-person writing team -- which includes a poet, a novelist, a playwright and a former TV writer -- the group debated how to answer political questions.

The company's expertise is in natural language processing -- letting computers analyze relationships between words. "With MetaMind and Salesforce coming together, we'll be able to offer customers real AI solutions with breakthrough capabilities that further automate and personalize customer support, marketing automation, and many other business processes," MetaMind CEO Richard Socher said. The acquisition will see MetaMind, whose backers included Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, embed deep learning within the Salesforce platform. Meanwhile, Microsoft Dynamics CRM got AI-powered predictive marketing capabilities in March through integration with EverString's platform.

Amazon.com Inc., the largest internet retailer in the world, has acquired Artificial Intelligence-based deep learning startup Orbeus Inc. However, online search has disclosed that the domain name of Orbeus, Orbe.us, is registered in the name of Amazon Hostmaster, which is a part of Amazon technologies Inc., an Amazon subsidiary. Based on neural networks, a powerful artificial intelligence (AI), a photo recognition technology named ReKognition was developed by Orbeus. PhotoTime, an app by Orbeus was launched much before Google announced its launch of its successful Photos app, which is also based on AI.

Computer vision is essentially an arm of artificial intelligence that lets machines analyze and understand images by breaking them down and processing them on a pixel-by-pixel basis, rather than by meta data (such as keywords and descriptions that rely not only on human actions, but on human accuracy too). Predictive typing keyboard company SwiftKey was recently snapped up by Microsoft -- not because it has a popular little app for Androids and iPhones, but because it's building a sophisticated back end built on artificial intelligence and machine learning. This includes artificial neural networks (ANNs) that are more directly based on the structure and workings of the human brain. From enterprise software and drug discovery through to predictive typing and now stock photography searches, machine learning is less of an abstract research field now and more of a reality.

The Cheriton School is part of Waterloo's highly regarded and unique Faculty of Mathematics, which also placed in the top 20 in the 2015 QS rankings With those credentials, it is little wonder that the Faculty has more than 7,500 graduate and undergraduate students. "At the University of Waterloo, we build innovative, high-impact platforms, systems, and applications for tackling the big data challenge," says Prof. Jimmy Lin. To produce globally influential technology leaders, the Cheriton School has formed 16 different research groups of professors and graduate students, who explore innovations in a myriad of areas such as human computer interaction, machine learning and artificial intelligence, algorithms and complexity, bioinformatics, information retrieval and database systems, symbolic computation, and quantum computing. The Cheriton School is a world leader in computer security and privacy, developing and researching tools used by millions of people every day to protect the security, privacy, and integrity of their online communications.

Almost a week after being shut down for spewing racist and sexist comments on Twitter, Microsoft Corp's artificial intelligence'chatbot' called Tay briefly rejoined Twitter on Wednesday only to launch a spam attack on its followers. "Tay remains offline while we make adjustments," a Microsoft representative said in an email. It was taken offline following the incident, according to a Microsoft representative, in an effort to make "adjustments" to the artificial intelligence profile. According to its Twitter profile, Tay is "an artificial intelligent chatbot developed by Microsoft's Technology and Research and Bing teams to experiment with and conduct research on conversational understanding."

Microsoft made clear that it is betting big on the future of bots, after making two major AI announcements at the Microsoft Build 2016 conference. CEO Satya Nadella personally introduced a cleverer Cortana (Windows' AI desktop assistant) at the developer's conference in San Francisco, and a Bot Framework that'll allow developers to build bots of their own. The framework will allow developers to build AI bots that can work within apps like Skype, Telegram or Slack to help users out when they talk about ordering a pizza or similar tasks. It was also announced that the Microsoft HoloLens augmented reality goggles are now being shipped to developers in the US and Canada.