While most people welcome new technologies that make our lives easier, offer better diagnosis and treatment of disease, or making businesses more efficient (and their products cheaper), many new breakthroughs throw up important ethical questions. This is perhaps clearest in relation to artificial intelligence (AI): if we want machines to learn and make decisions like humans, how do they learn to make morally correct decisions? Indeed, could we ourselves reach agreement on the kinds of moral choices that intelligent machines might face? As for efficiency, are there dangers attached to doing things ever faster? For example, what are the benefits and pitfalls of financial technology, aka'fintech'?

Mattias Ulbrich, CIO of Audi, discusses technology trends in the automotive industry and how his team is enabling next-generation manufacturing practices. Many companies are embedding sensors in product components and equipment to streamline manufacturing processes, improve yields, and create new business opportunities.1 1. "Digitizing manufacturing environments," McKinsey on Business Technology, 2016, forthcoming on McKinsey.com. The digitization of manufacturing, sometimes referred to as Industry 4.0., has begun in earnest, and Mattias Ulbrich, CIO of Audi, has witnessed the shift firsthand. "Years of experience in the automotive industry have made it clear to me that interdisciplinary collaboration--with business and IT working together--will be critical in this time of digital transformation. IT has a central role to play as change partner," he says.

What will this chatbot do for Studiotime and our users? Can the chatbot find any type of music studio and also any location in the world? Will the chatbot know of every music studio that's on Studiotime? Will it share high quality photos of the studio if someone wants to see more photos? Think of Rails as preset paths for conversation that help the user move sequentially through stages, with buttons for available options.

"Data-Driven Thinking" is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today's column is written by Santanu Kolay, senior vice president of engineering at Turn. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most-hyped topics in advertising right now. At Cannes, Saatchi & Saatchi featured an AI-created film. This summer, IBM's Watson rolled out AI-powered ads for The Weather Co. that answered consumer questions.

Cirrascale Corporation, a premier developer of server and cloud solutions enabling GPU-driven deep learning infrastructure, has announced the future availability of the IBM Power Systems S822LC for HPC in multiple configurations for its GPU-as-a-Service cloud platform. The configurations will support both the 8-core and 10-core POWER8 CPU and up to four Pascal architecture-based NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPU accelerators using NVIDIA NVLink, a high-speed, energy-efficient bidirectional interconnect. NVIDIA NVLink is embedded at the silicon level and tightly coupled with the CPU. This enables data transmission rates up to 80GB/s bidirectional between CPU and GPU, and 115GB/s between CPU and board memory making it 2.5x faster than competing offerings. The service is differentiated because it offers the industry's most up-to-date, dedicated GPUs as a bare metal offering.

Professor Stephen Hawking on Wednesday opened a new artificial intelligence research centre at Britain's Cambridge University. Funded by a 10 million (11.2 million-euro, 12.3-million) grant from the Leverhulme Trust, the centre's express aim is to ensure AI is used to benefit humanity. Opening the new centre, Hawking said it was not possible to predict what might be achieved with AI. "Perhaps with the tools of this new technological revolution, we will be able to undo some of the damage done to the natural world by the last one--industrialisation. "And surely we will aim to finally eradicate disease and poverty. Every aspect of our lives will be transformed.

A Tokyo-based nonprofit organization will begin offering online Japanese-language classes this month to children from abroad who need help to keep up in class at Japanese elementary and junior high schools. Youth Support Center's YSC Global School in Fussa, western Tokyo, is set to offer instruction provided by language education experts via personal computers or tablets to young foreign nationals living anywhere in Japan. The NPO will cooperate with municipalities and schools without sufficient resources to teach Japanese to such children. Yuran Nakajima, 16, watched a lecture on a PC monitor at YSC's office in Fussa during a trial session in September. Three other students sat in the classroom elsewhere in the city, where the lesson was being taught.

IBM's virtual health care assistant powered by Watson, which has memorized most of the world's medical journals and texts, is an example of this. Enterprise is already feeling the impact of AI assistants like IBM's Watson health care tool, but Gartner says these systems will become more "conversational." Powered by machine learning and AI, such systems will learn how to adapt to humans and vice versa. Gartner believes five major focal points will enable the new capabilities and business models of digital business, including information systems, customer experience, analytics and intelligence, the IoT, and business ecosystems.

Leave it to Zuck to strut out at F8 and make the announcement about chatbots: They're happening. As a major component of Facebook's new Messenger Platform, chatbots will enable businesses to develop a personalized layer of communication and commerce with their customers. Facebook's is just the latest, and biggest, play in the world of chatbots. Slack and Kik have been here for awhile, but Facebook's arrival signals inevitability. As one of the first platforms to launch bots about 18 months ago, Kik has been working with developers and product managers to figure out what makes for a successful chatbot.

A diverse range of exciting technology is currently being displayed in Tokyo for Japan Robot Week, an annual event that offers a glimpse into the gadgets of the future. Held in the East Hall of Tokyo Big Sight, the event showcases a range of robots designed for different activities and uses, primarily focusing on service robotics. It features exhibitions from 193 companies and organisations, with 465 booths. As well as that, this year features the seventh Robot Awards ceremony and exhibition, joint displays from universities and laboratories, and a range of programs and talks related to furthering the field of study. Intriguing technologies showcased at this year's exhibition include a range of humanoid robots designed to assist in domestic and commercial tasks, robotic cats and dogs, powered suits, trousers and backpacks with innovative technology and a range of communication robots. One of the robots exhibited at the show is Paro, the robotic seal designed as a therapeutic assistant to help at nursing homes or hospitals where real animals are not allowed.