How does one of the largest players in global travel view the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence? As the tech world salivates over its game-changing potential, Expedia Inc. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company plans to first use artificial intelligence for customer service rather than for something like trip-planning. "For me to be able to message Expedia on [Facebook] Messenger or text … 'cancel my hotel booking in New York next week,' it is a much more delightful experience than calling or even my getting on the website etc.," Khosrowshahi said at Skift Global Forum in New York City last month. While leisure travelers might take on average perhaps just one or two vacations annually, artificial intelligence isn't practical at this point for travel research and planning because artificial intelligence needs huge amounts of data to work, Khosrowshahi argued. "We are going to take it on the service side," Khosrowshahi told the audience last month in a session with online travel founders.

Can human consciousness be replicated or fabricated by science? The play, which continues through Oct. 23, is a timely offering for those whose interest in artificial intelligence was piqued by another recent production on a Boston-area stage. Many of the themes explored in "Uncanny Valley" are similar to those explored in The Nora Theatre Company's production of "Marjorie Prime," which has just completed its run at the Central Square Theater in Cambridge. And just like "Marjorie Prime," this play didn't quite seem to close a dramatic circuit around the idea of self-aware machines. "Uncanny Valley" fails to close the gap between the intrigue of core questions about human (artificial or otherwise) identity and tangible insights regarding those questions.

China's biggest search engine -- introduced an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot on Tuesday to connect with patients, field medical questions and suggest diagnoses to doctors. The company is calling the bot -- a new feature of the Baidu Doctor app it launched last year -- Melody the medical assistant. Baidu has developed advanced deep learning and natural language processing technologies to power Melody's artificially intelligent "brain." The bot is designed to be the first port of call for a person feeling sick at home. A patient poses a health query to Melody, which responds in real time with further questions, and compares responses with Baidu's database of medical information.

This 4-foot-tall robot with a tablet for a chest may soon find its way to a big-box store near you. Omar Abdelwahed, Head of Studio at SoftBank Robotics America, demos the capabilities of a humanoid robot, called Pepper, which is supposed to help customers shop in stores. SAN FRANCISCO – The four-foot tall robot whirling around the new offices of SoftBank Robotics America could well be your big-box store greeter of the near future. "Hi, I'm Pepper," says the sentient hunk of whirling white plastic and blinking lights. That remains to be seen.

Artificial intelligence continues to have its moment in the spotlight, with a surge of interest in startups and efforts from huge tech companies to push the boundaries of how we might best use machine learning, computer vision and other areas of AI in the future. The latest development on that front comes from China's Huawei, which today announced that it would form a research partnership with UC Berkeley focused on AI, and fund it to the initial tune of 1 million. The alliance, between Huawei's Noah's Ark Laboratory and Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR), is being billed as a "strategic partnership into basic research", and it will cover areas like deep learning, reinforcement learning, machine learning, natural language processing and computer vision. "The two parties believe that this strategic partnership will fuel the advancement of AI technology and create completely new experiences for people, thus contributing greatly to society at large," Huawei notes. Some of these areas of AI you will have heard a lot about already.

But the really exciting part about this trend is the increasing ability to marry robotics with artificial intelligence. When this happens, robotics and machinery don't need to be programmed to perform certain tasks…they learn by trial and error. But first, there are three things that must come together to make advanced AI possible: Big Data, the computer-programming technique of deep learning and new concepts in both computer chips and how to use them. Big Data is the virtually limitless wilderness of facts, videos, infographics, statistics, public records and everything else stored on and collected from the internet. Software tools allow researchers to mine data to find useful nuggets -- they're digital needles in this infinite haystack of facts and information.

Can a chatbot help you manage your money? Three London-based fintech startups are betting on the answer being yes and have jumped aboard the messaging gravy train as they seek to entice millennials to their respective platforms. The thinking goes something like this: A conversational interface, coupled with tech that plugs into your bank account and analyses your spending in the background, is the best way to deliver financial assistance to help you keep track of your money and actually save for a rainy day. More broadly these chatbots are targeting millennials who, they claim, typically aren't as financially savvy as they could be and who are perfectly comfortable communicating entirely through emoji. Choosing to announce news or fully launch today are Plum, Chip, and Cleo, which is a little awkward.

Lili Cheng is a general manager for Microsoft Research focusing on conversational experiences, bots, and intelligence systems. Lili's team is responsible for the Microsoft Bot Framework (part of Cortana Intelligence) as well as bringing together the community of bot creators, channels, tools, and AI experts in events such as Botness, Microsoft Research's Design Expo, and the Social Computing Symposium. Previously, Lili was director of user experience for Microsoft Windows and also worked in Apple Computer's Advanced Technology group on the User Interface research team, where she focused on Quicktime conferencing and Quicktime VR. Lili is a registered architect; she worked in Tokyo and Los Angeles for Nihon Sekkei and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill on commercial urban design and large-scale building projects. She has taught in NYU's Interactive Telecommunications program as well as at Harvard University.

Kurosawa-inspired bickering buddies C-3PO and R2-D2 have been bleep-blooping benevolently across our screens for nearly four decades, and the ranks of kindly machine heroes have been boosted in more recent times by Brad Bird's Iron Giant, Pixar's Wall-E and Baymax from Disney's Big Hero Six. One moment a high-flying corporate executive at Detroit's top mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products, the next splayed out on a display table, body peppered with automatic gunfire, after getting on the wrong side of the latest (if not necessarily greatest) in automated policing, Robocop's mighty Ed209. Paul Verhoeven's searing 1987 satire on corporate greed imagined a future in which the replacement of human beings with machines begins to spin horribly and inexorably out of control. Not according to killer robot expert Bonnie Docherty of Harvard University, who wrote recently that military robots with the ability to fire on targets independently of human control are swiftly moving towards reality thanks to rapid improvements in artificial intelligence. See also: The Terminator, Yul Brynner's Gunslinger from the 1973 Westworld movie.

At the end it is capable of giving not only pragmatical advice but also emotional ones. For instance, if you are traveling into a new city, it could automatically suggest you activities which you might be interested in or link you with people who you would prefer. However, the social side for the improved AI is just the top of the Iceberg. By reviewing the space progress it is clearly visualized that the humans are pretty primitive. Hence, an AI which could design, develop and implement products by its own. This could make a huge impact and support the development in the space industry. The AIOS ( AI Operation System) could be the base for the next milestone, for the human being. Therefore, I would like to introduce you my "prototype" which I will explain briefly during my next articles. Feel free to contact me via LinkedIn or via my international Number: 44 7 414 139 903 (Please consider the time difference [UTC 01:00] and I would appreciate it, by message me first due to my numerous appointments and meetings.