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.

It's no secret that I love technology. From the domination of mobile to the latest in recruitment tools and gamification, and how video and live streaming is having an impact on hiring and training--changes are afoot that many of us couldn't have imagined 15 or so years ago. The reason this "tech meets HR" marriage is so exciting is how quickly the technology evolution has disrupted HR and enhanced the way HR professionals get things done. Now there's another big disrupter on the horizon, one that you would be wise to keep your eyes on: Artificial intelligence. In layman's terms, artificial intelligence (or AI) is an area of computer science where computers are "developed" to behave much the way humans do.

Artificial Intelligence helps choose what books you buy, what movies you see, and even who you date. It's in your smart phone, your car, and it has the run of your house. It makes most of the trades on Wall Street, and controls our transportation, energy, and water infrastructure. Artificial Intelligence is for the 21st century what electricity was for the 20th and steam power for the 19th. The Hollywood cliché that artificial intelligence will take over the world could soon become scientific reality as AI matches then surpasses human intelligence.

When it comes to robots replacing humans, we might think we have the upper hand since we're the ones who build and program them but that's not neccesarily the case anymore. Google is taking a different approach to training its robots – it's letting them teach each other. Researchers at Google have released a report showing how they connected 14 robotic arms together and used convolutional neural networks to let them teach themselves how to pick things up. The approach mimics how young children learn between the ages of one and four years old, and is essentially helping the robots to develop reliable hand-eye coordination. Typically, a robot would be programmed to carry out specific tasks, but this method shows how they can learn through trial-and-error in combination with a neural network – the same way a child learns how to do something by watching other people.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the power to eradicate poverty and disease or hasten the end of human civilisation as we know it, celebrated scientist Stephen Hawking told an audience in Cambridge on Wednesday evening. Speaking at the launch of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), Hawking said the rise of AI would transform every aspect of our lives and amounted to a global event at a par with the industrial revolution. CFI brings together four of the world's leading universities – Cambridge, Oxford, Berkeley and Imperial College, London – to explore the implications of AI for human civilisation. Hawking said: "Success in creating AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilisation. But it could also be the last – unless we learn how to avoid the risks. Alongside the benefits, AI will also bring dangers like powerful autonomous weapons or new ways for the few to oppress the many. "We cannot predict what we might achieve when our own minds are amplified by AI.

As we continue through the OODA loop, we arrive at the Orient step. For a quick review of the OODA loop (see "What the heck is an OODA Loop?") The previous step was "Observe" where the intelligent agent (human or otherwise) learns what the things are in the world around the system that can influence the choices for appropriate behavior. So, having completed the Observe step, our agent knows what it has around it and it can start to explore what the impact of those things will be. As an example, think of an artificial intelligence that is trying to increase the ad revenue on a web site.

In the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in a corner of South Carolina sits a town that should be economically dead. For decades, Greenville was the heart of the state's textile industry--and its economic engine. First attracted by the area's fast-moving rivers as a way to power looms, textile manufacturers employed tens of thousands of people here. Beginning in the 1970s, however, facing competition from lower-cost manufacturing regions like Mexico and Southeast Asia, these companies began to struggle. Over the next decades, many factories closed.

"We used Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS) software for a year, and loved it. I thought it was exactly what we needed until I realized that the models I was writing on the side were better than the ones we had in production," explains Johnny Hilgers, the VP of Business Analytics at Spring Venture Group, an inside sales and marketing company. "We used Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS) software for a year, and loved it. I thought it was exactly what we needed until I realized that the models I was writing on the side were better than the ones we had in production." What Johnny reffered to as Machine Learning as a Service software professes to make machine learning so simple that even a ML novice can click and point their way to a predictive algorithm that will help their company make smarter, data-driven decisions after only a few weeks of training.

If you are a newcomer to the Deep Learning area, the first question you may have is "Which paper should I start reading from?" Here is a reading roadmap of Deep Learning papers! You will find many papers that are quite new but really worth reading. After reading above papers, you will have a basic understanding of the Deep Learning history, the basic architectures of Deep Learning model(including CNN, RNN, LSTM) and how deep learning can be applied to image and speech recognition issues. The following papers will take you in-depth understanding of the Deep Learning method, Deep Learning in different areas of application and the frontiers.