Picking the perfect emoji for a text message can be tough – but now SwiftKey has a new keyboard that can do it for you. Called Swiftmoji, this keyboard uses the firms predictive artificial intelligence technology to automatically suggest the right emoji based on what you've typed. SwiftKey, acquired by Microsoft earlier this year, released the keyboard for beta testing in Google Play this week. Although the firm has yet to share any details, the description on Google Play says it will suggest the right emoji and present them to you in one of two ways: 'Emoji Prediction Row', places the suggestions above the keyboard and the other shows you the list in the chat area of your texting application Swiftmoji is a predictive keyboard uses the firms AI technology to automatically suggest the right emoji based on what you've typed. The first, called'Emoji Prediction Row', places the suggestions above the keyboard, which you can then drag into the text box or anywhere else on the screen. And the other shows you the list in the chat area of your texting application.

"Machine learning" will pave the way to delivering better experiences including "how quickly we can put apps on the X1 platform," Comcast EVP and chief technology officer Tony Werner explained here in an introductory overview at the Imagine Park opening session on Monday. He envisioned "a ton of very cool apps," comparing the ability of DOCSIS 3.1 to replace "a backhoe or forklift" in implementing new services for cable operators. "I love Full Duplex," Werner enthused about a symmetrical multi-gigabit project underway at CableLabs and being demoed here by Nokia, before he scooted off stage to support other Comcast executives at the opening of their nearby booth on the INTX show floor. As fellow panelist and visionary Andy Lippman, senior scientist and Associate Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, showed his "Ultimate Media" project, Werner quickly noted that, "You don't have all the online sources loving it." Werner cited the prioritization for certain news sources within the MIT algorithm.

Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) announced a few days ago that its subsidiary Qualcomm Technologies will offer OEMs its first machine learning SDK for running their own neural network models on devices powered by Snapdragon 820 SoCs. The devices include smartphones, cars and drones among many others. With the introduction of the new Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine SDK, we are making it possible for myriad sectors, including mobile, IoT and automotive to harnesses the power of Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 and make high-performance, power efficient on-device deep learning a reality. Qualcomm said in its Q2 earnings call that the company is broadening its presence in "adjacent opportunities," i.e., in adjacent markets where it has growth opportunities. The company has such opportunities in the sectors Brotman mentioned, as presented above in bold.

Qualcomm, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) is bringing neural networks to its Snapdragon 820 chips. The chipmaker has announced that it will be shipping out software development kits later in 2016 giving its chips some new smart features. Qualcomm is making use of its 820 system on a chip's "heterogeneous compute capabilities" with its Qualcomm Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine built atop of the company's Zeroth Machine Intelligence Platform. Developers can use the SDK to turn Qualcomm's chip into a deep learning machine on which to develop and compile neural network models. The potential applications for portable deep learning in mobile devices are inexhaustible.

Computer scientists are not often invited to present their research at The Science of Consciousness annual conference, but University of California San Diego development engineer Stephen Deiss did just that. He spoke to the meeting in Tucson, AZ, in late April on the subject of "Romancing the Oxymoron: The'Hardware Problem' of Machine Consciousness." "I presented my view that our preconceptions – about causality and mechanisms – bias us against accepting the possibility that machines can be conscious," said Deiss (at left), who earned his M.S. in computer science at Purdue University. "It leaves us believing that there is something spooky and unnatural about our own awareness, but I argue that consciousness is fundamental and scale-free in nature." Supported by CSE since 2013, Deiss first worked with the Non-Volatile Systems Laboratory of CSE Prof. Steven Swanson, but now splits his time between the Integrated Systems Neuroengineering Lab of Bioengineering professor Gert Cauwenberghs, and the new Pattern Recognition Laboratory of the Qualcomm Institute (both with CSE support). "We are focused on neurally-inspired or otherwise non-von Neumann computing paradigms," said Deiss, referring to new architectures that, unlike most of today's computers, are not based on executing instructions sequentially.

This is largely due to the invaluable insights we gain through the analysis of thousands of calls received each day by the typical call centre. With speed being of the essence in making the right decision at the right time for each caller many call centres are turning to machine learning to automate their data analysis and make crucial customer experience decisions within seconds. Whether you're running an inbound or outbound contact centre, the interactions between your company representatives and your customers is a crucial area for customer success. Thanks to machine learning algorithms, businesses are able to manage those customer-facing moments more efficiently. According to techtarget.com, "Emotion analysis through text and speech analytics can paint a more complete picture when combined with the overall first call resolution (FCR) metric, indicating the level of confidence customers feel about whether the answer they received has resolved the issue at hand."

Through natural language understanding, we designed the app to feel like you are talking to a person next to you in the car. A simple hand gesture (a high five) wakes up the app to initiate voice-driven text exchange. To eliminate errors, the app reads your text back before sending. It automatically informs you of incoming texts, and you decide if you'd like to listen, respond or cancel without ever looking at or touching your phone. Depending on the streaming music app you use, you can also request specific artists, songs, playlists, or genres, and give commands like "pause" and "skip."

That said, current technology won't allow us to make anything larger than the printing machines themselves. Some smart people have suggested that we should look to nature to see how it builds things--specifically, spiders, and the way they can swarm together to build massive nests for themselves. Siemens, the German engineering and telecommunications company, has taken this concept to heart. A team of researchers at its Princeton, New Jersey, laboratory are creating autonomous spider-like robots that can work together to 3D-print structures on command. While Siemens isn't known for its robotics research, Livio Dalloro, the head of the company's "Product Design, Simulation & Modeling Research" group in Princeton, said in an interview that the company views the bots as a "moonshot."

The future is closer than we think, said Kevin Ho -- and it's not going to be terrifying at all, he claims. Life today would be unimaginable for people from a few decades or a few centuries ago, explained Ho, President of Huawei's handset line, speaking Wednesday morning at the CES Asia 2016 event in Shanghai, China. Just imagine trying to explain ships and trains and even airplanes, all of which would have been terrifying to someone from 10,000 years ago. Then imagine bringing that same person to the modern world. "What if coming to today's society, somebody showed you a black box -- a smartphone -- with video phone functionality? What would people from ancient society think knowing that we can fly?" he asked the crowd.

As someone who recently bought--and was quickly enchanted by--Amazon's Echo connected speaker, I've been thinking of ways to get its Alexa virtual assistant into more rooms of the house. Of course, I could just buy another Echo speaker, or some other Alexa-infused device such as the Echo Dot, Amazon Tap, or Invoxia's Triby. But what if I could just use my smartphone to access Alexa instead? Or better yet, what if I could repurpose an old smartphone to act like an Echo full-time? Such is the promise of a couple new smartphone apps that have Amazon's Alexa assistant built-in.