Car and tech companies continue to partner up, but Honda and SoftBank's newly-announced union is a little different from most. Rather than working on self-driving cars, or a more connected vehicle, Honda and SoftBank are working on making an artificial intelligence that can actually talk to and assist drivers in a way designed to foster more feelings of friendship between human and car. If the aim is really friendliness, rather than bad-ass stunts designed to help David Hasselhoff nail bad guys, then Herbie the Love Bug might be a better analogy to what the Honda/SoftBank partnership aims to accomplish. And the track record of robots created by both companies suggests a softer side for any future car companion. Honda's Asimo is actually celebrating its sweet sixteen this year in October, and the humanoid robot is one of the most recognizable in the world. The bot has even been a guest on quiz shows, and literally made great strides when it learned to run in 2005.

Say you're driving late at night and you start to feel lonely. What if your car, detecting your change of mood through an array of sensors and cameras, suddenly asked how you were feeling? Better yet, what if your car already knew how you were feeling, and offered to cheer you up? This possible future was sketched out by SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son at an event in Tokyo Thursday, according to Reuters. The eccentric tech executive, who recently announced his company's acquisition of chip manufacturer ARM for 34.1 billion, said he is working with Honda to produce a car that can both talk and read a driver's emotions. "Imagine if robots, with their super intelligence, devoted themselves to humans," Son said, according to Reuters.

Detailing their plans during a special event in Tokyo, Softbank and Honda discussed their ideas, expressing a desire for a future where Honda's cars could speak and interact with drives utilizing SoftBank's Pepper robot. The adorable bot is life-sized and would ideally be utilized when it comes to assessing drivers' speech and other data compiled via multiple sensors and cameras. Vehicles would be given the autonomy to offer advice to drivers as well as company after assessing situations. If that sounds bizarre, think of it as having your own personal KITT in your car. With SoftBank's push into robotics and AI, it wouldn't be too far off to see additional sensors and other equipment to be entered into the "internet of things" as far as automobiles go.

Car maker Honda is teaming up with electronics giant Softbank to work on artificial intelligence (AI). The pair have confirmed they will develop an innovative range of products, which use sensors and cameras to improve the breadth and depth of communication possible between car and driver. Soft bank's pionerering Pepper robot was designed to live with humans and the company will now work with Honda through its robotics unit – Cocoro SB – to create products that give drivers a feeling of'friendship' with their cars. Honda is opening a new AI laboratory in Tokyo in September as it continues its investment in the future of robotics.

SoftBank said its robotics unit Cocoro SB, which is researching cloud-based artificial intelligence, will work with Honda on research that seeks to harmonize mobility with people, so that drivers can feel a kind of friendship with their vehicles.

Last month, in collaboration with the folks behind the fantastic Burner app, my company Voxable launched our latest chatbot project, Ghostbot for Burner. Ghostbot runs on top of Burner's "open" phone numbers as an agent inside your text message inbox, allowing you to "ghost" away from fleeting relationships by responding to unwanted or creepy texters on your behalf. Since the launch, Ghostbot has been covered in over one hundred media outlets. Chris Messina was also kind enough to post it to Product Hunt, calling it "the first bot-as-personal-firewall" he had seen. The opportunity to break new ground in the coming era of bot-mediated communication was what initially both excited and terrified us about the project.

The definition of artificial intelligence (AI) is a bit fuzzy, so when AT&T claims that it has been using AI for more than 20 years, it should be kept in mind that the AI of 1996 is a lot different from the AI of 2016. The bigger point is that the newer version is doing a lot for the carrier. AT&T is settling on an AI platform that can be used for different things instead of developing "one-off" solutions every time a task requiring the predictive capabilities and massive number-crunching abilities of AI presents itself. AI can be leveraged to anticipate rather than simply react to events, as less sophisticated AI platforms have done in the past. The driver is software-defined networks (SDNs), according to Computerworld.

ITEM: A researcher at Telenor Group Research says he has developed a machine learning algorithm that uses mobile phone call records to determine literacy rates in developing markets by location. According to MIT Technology Review, researcher Pål Sundsøy says he started with a regular survey – conducted by a professional agency for a mobile operator – covering 76,000 mobile users in Asia that collected the user's mobile number and asked them if they could read. Sundsøy matched that data against the mobile operator's call data records, which enabled him to work out where each user was, who they called, for how long, etc. Then he crunched 75% of the correlated data to detect patterns with illiterate users, and used the remaining 25% to see if those patterns could identify illiterate people and areas where there is a higher proportion of illiterate people. All in all, he says, his machine learning algorithm can spot illiterate individuals with surprising accuracy.

Today, Pål Sundsøy at Telenor Group Research in Fornebu, Norway, says he's worked out how to determine literacy rates using mobile phone call records. He starts with a standard household survey of 76,000 mobile phone users living in an unidentified developing country in Asia. Sundsøy then matches this data set with call data records from the mobile phone company. "By deriving economic, social, and mobility features for each mobile user we predict individual illiteracy status with 70 percent accuracy," he says, pointing out that this allows areas with low literacy rates to be mapped.