It is set to be a monumental battle for the next generation of smart assistants. Samsung has fired the latest salvo in its AI phone battle with Apple, revealing more details of Bixby, it's competitor for Siri. The AI is said to have visual search capabilities to analyze the images, identify objects and performing optical character recognition on visible text. Although the Samsung Galaxy S8 reveal is around the corner, many users are still feeling the burn from the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco. However, the firm may redeem itself, as the flagship smartphone is rumored to have an assistant more powerful than Apple's Siri Bixby could be used for a wide variety of functions in a similar way to Apple's Siri.

In recent months, machine learning has become somewhat of a buzzword, with major players such as Google highlighting the positive impact it can have for businesses. Defined as a subset of artificial intelligence, machine learning focuses on the development of computer programmes that can teach themselves, and grow and change in response to new data. With 90% of the world's data having been created in the last two years alone, the ability to develop automated processes to efficiently adapt to new information is invaluable. For mobile operators, machine learning has the potential to drive huge benefits, in particular when it comes to tackling fraud. In 2016 alone, telcos are expected to face global losses of $294 billion, making it vital that they look to utilise all tools at their disposal to combat such a pressing issue, says Raul Gomes Azevedo, director Product Development, WeDo Technologies. For starters, fraud management involves identifying specific profiles and behaviour, and checking whether everything's running as expected, or if there are any anomalies.

Samsung is not launching the Galaxy S8 this month, but tidbits about the flagship phone's specs and features are already spreading online like wildfire. This week, a new report is claiming that the Galaxy S7 successor's camera will come with Bixby support. Bixby is Samsung's upcoming AI assistant that is rumored to match Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa in more ways than one. The intelligent assistant is rumored to launch with the ability to control all of Samsung's native apps and even conduct mobile payments. Interestingly, there is new information claiming that a Bixby search tool will be integrated into the software that controls the Galaxy S8 camera. This Thursday, SamMobile ran an exclusive story about the S8's standard camera having a visual search and optical character recognition (OCR) tool powered by Bixby.

Did you ever get a pre-recorded telemarketing or spam call, and try calling back, only to get redirected to a premium rate service? There have been several instances of such telecom fraud, costing telecom companies a lot of money. While telecom fraud calls can take several forms, most cases involve fake conferencing services and false answer supervision (FAS). For instance, when a network carrier dials a number with the support of unscrupulous third-party providers, the targeted user might choose from various IVR options to connect with a customer care representative beyond business hours. Eventually, instead of getting a notification stating that the service is unavailable during this time, the call might generate billable minutes. Such instances of telecom fraud calls are only rising.

The scientific discoveries and technological innovations produced by Bell Labs research and engineering have been critical not only to the evolution of global telecommunications but, more widely, they had a considerable impact on the technological base of the global economy and, indeed, on our daily lives. Bell Labs is the source of many significant contributions, of course, in the area of telephony, but also in memory devices, imaging devices, system organization, computers and software technology, as well as acoustics, optics, switching, transmission, and wireless and data communication. New principles, new materials, new devices, and new systems from Bell Telephone Laboratories resulted in new industries, hundreds of new products, and thousands of new jobs. The invention of the transistor in 1947, and subsequent advances in related solid-state device and circuit technology formed the basis of a multibillion dollar global industry and ultimately enabled the digital world. Shannon's seminal paper titled "A Mathematical Theory of Communication," published over 60 years ago, gave birth to Information Theory and has stood as the guiding foundation for communications scientists and engineers in their quest for faster, more efficient, and more robust communications systems ever since.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Intelligent Agents for Telecommunication Applications, IATA'98, held in Paris, France, in July 1998, in conjunction with the 1998 Agents World Conference. The book presents 17 revised full papers carefully selected for inclusion in the volume. The book is divided into topical sections on network architecture, network configuration and planning, network optimization, network management, agent-based architectures for service applications.

People who rely on satnav could be at risk of losing their ability to navigate, an expert has warned. Writing in the journal Nature, former president of the Royal Institute of Navigation Roger McKinlay argues that our reliance on GPS technology is misplaced and could be eroding our innate way-finding abilities. "If we do not cherish them, our natural navigation abilities will deteriorate as we rely ever more on smart devices," he wrote. McKinlay believes huge investment will be needed before navigation systems will be good enough to allow technologies such as autonomous vehicles to take off. In the meantime, he argues, we need better research into systems for navigation while children should be encouraged to learn how to find their way around by more traditional means.

It is vital to the economy that Australia embraces innovation, according to Andrew Penn, with the Telstra CEO saying Australia should mimic the telecommunications company's strategy of combining incubation and collaboration with building human skills and developing new technologies. Speaking at the Charles Todd Oration 2015 in Sydney on Thursday, Penn outlined the three drivers of innovation as being a combination of the move to mobile and consequently the Internet of Things (IoT); the widespread usage of cloud computing; and the rise of machine-to-machine (M2M) learning and artificial intelligence. "The exponential growth in data, driven by a massive shift to mobile and the Internet of Things with the ability to store and access that data in the cloud in real-time and the computing power with advanced algorithms and machine learning -- these factors together are providing the capacity to solve almost limitless problems," the CEO said. Citing a recent Deloitte report, Penn claimed that the digital sector contributed AU$79 billion in 2014 -- or 5.1 percent of the GDP -- making it the largest segment of the Australian economy. He said that the rapidity of technological innovation has had far-reaching implications for traditional business, however.

SoftBank Robotics America (SBRA) announced that its friendly humanoid will spend a week at b8ta, a Palo Alto store designed for trying and buying new tech products. From August 11th to 18th, the store's visitors can interact with Pepper, and programmers are invited to a developer's workshop on August 16th to learn how to create apps for the robot. In hospitals around the world, surgeons are getting help from new robotic assistants. We spoke with Steve Carlin, VP Marketing & Business Development at SBRA, to find out more about the company's plans to officially introduce Pepper to North America later this year. He told ZDNet, "Our first initiative is to incentivize the development community to understand what the platform is, and bring their creativity onto the platform."

Google is building its very own artificial brain using tens of thousands of computers, hoping to improve stuff like voice and image search. And Facebook has followed suit, aiming to solve its big data problems with help from the principles of neuroscience. There's even an open source framework for building software applications based on brains. Although mimicking the structure of the brain was one of the original techniques researchers experimented with when trying to create machine intelligence in the 50s and 60s, the idea -- called neural networking -- eventually fell out of favor. But now it's back with a vengeance, and it might just change the way computer hardware is designed.