You may have heard that "conversational interfaces" are the new hotness in digital product design. Why open and close a bunch of apps on your phone to get stuff done when you can invoke a text-message-like window and just say what you want done to a chatbot? Well, here's one reason: what if the bot is annoying or tedious to talk to? In conversational UIs, personality is the new UX. "We want people to enjoy dealing with our software, but now we have a very limited palette with which to design the experience," says Ben Brown, co-founder of Howdy, a "digital coworker" chatbot that runs within the office communication tool Slack and automates things like project-status meetings and taking lunch orders.

If you think chatbots are hot right now -- being used in psychotherapy, turning into racist trolls, and presenting an existential threat to Apple -- just wait until they turn into full-fledged personal assistants. In five years time, digital personal assistants will even more important than your smartphone, says University of Washington computer scientist Pedro Domingos, author of "The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World." "What you have right now on your smartphone is dozens of apps," Domingos tells Tech Insider, "with each app doing it's own thing." On any given Friday night, you use one app to find a restaurant, another to buy a movie ticket, another to figure out how to get to where you're going, and another to find a date to take out with you. "It's incredibly annoying," he says, since the apps "don't talk to each other and you have to learn all these different interfaces."

IBM Corp. is rolling out two new TV ads during the U.S. Open this week to showcase its cognitive computing system Watson. The spots feature startups that are using the platform to build apps serving industries from healthcare to travel to retail. Watson, which is named after IBM's founder Thomas J. Watson, was introduced to the public in 2011, when a computer powered with the artificial intelligence technology competed on the "Jeopardy" game show (and won). Last year, IBM formalized a Watson Group business unit -- pumping 1 billion into its development -- and it promised to set aside 100 million to seed companies that are developing mobile apps with the technology. The new TV ads show off some of the fruits of this funding effort, featuring startup companies and IBM's own businesses that are using Watson's artificial intelligence technology.

"Criminal" is more violent than it needs to be, but it also has some unexpectedly involving elements. Half science-fiction tale, half espionage thriller, it's a pleasantly far-fetched endeavor that moves along so briskly that it leaves no time to consider its implausibilities, which are many. Directed by Ariel Vroman ("The Iceman") and written by Douglas Cook & David Weisberg, who scripted Michael Bay's "The Rock" back in the day, "Criminal" has a premise that's hard to wrap your head around: that the memories and feelings of one person can be implanted into another person's brain. Some high profile acting names were intrigued enough by this Frankenstein-ish notion to sign on, including Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, the once and future Wonder Woman Gal Gadot and, in a crucial but unbilled role, Ryan Reynolds. But it's Kevin Costner, the actor playing against type in the title role, who does the most to hold our interest.

If you think chatbots are hot right now -- with how they're being used in psychotherapy, turning into racist trolls, and presenting an existential threat to Apple -- just wait until they turn into full-fledged personal assistants. In five years time, digital personal assistants will even more important than your smartphone, says University of Washington computer scientist Pedro Domingos, author of "The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World." "What you have right now on your smartphone is dozens of apps," Domingos tells Tech Insider, "with each app doing it's own thing." On any given Friday night, you use one app to find a restaurant, another to buy a movie ticket, another to figure out how to get to where you're going, and another to find a date to take out with you. "It's incredibly annoying," he says, since the apps "don't talk to each other and you have to learn all these different interfaces."

The Journalism Department at Emerson College and the Emerson Engagement Lab recently invited William Li to give a talk to introduce machine learning to journalism and communications students. This is a live blog account of the talk by Catherine D'Ignazio. William Li is a 2015–2016 Fellow at the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society and a 2016 PhD computer science graduate from MIT. He develops and applies machine learning methods to answer social science questions computationally and to promote public understanding of law, politics, and public policy. His projects include predicting the authors of unsigned Supreme Court opinions, visualizing the complexity of our laws, and discovering ideas from large collections of public comments on proposed regulations. William has also worked on recommender systems, speech recognition, and user activity prediction at Apple and Mitsubishi Electric. He did his master's degrees at MIT in computer science and the Technology and Policy Program, founded the MIT Assistive Technology Club, and has taught classes that involve civic collaborations with organizations such as the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services, Greater Boston Legal Services, and the Cambridge Commission for People with Disabilities. William Li introduces the topic and that he wants to make the session very interactive.

Chinese internet giant Alibaba has built artificial intelligence that it hopes will be able to correctly predict the outcome of reality TV talent show I'm a Singer. According to Tech in Asia, Alibaba's technology uses performance information such as "voice pitch and energy," and maps that against factors such as song choice and real-time audience response. The results will be shown online, pitching the technology, named'Ai', against the judges as the show is aired. The experiment is being held as a "proof-of-concept" for the technology, with Alibaba suggesting that it'll be used for purposes closer to its core business of online retail in the future. It's not the only internet company to be testing new technology on reality TV shows in Asia.

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.

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.