Alan Turing was well ahead of his time in predicting the capabilities of AI. Computers are writing novels -- and getting better at it. It probably won't help your "robots are stealing our jobs" fear. And it casts doubt on the idea that creative professions are safer than the administrative or processing professions. Right now, in a play on a human literary contest, around a hundred people are writing computer programs that will write texts for them, the Verge says.

At its hardware launch event in San Francisco yesterday, Alphabet showed the sweeping breadth of its ambition to own consumers' personal data, as computing continues to accelerate away from static desktops and screens, coalescing into a cloud of connected devices with the potential to generate far more data -- and data of a far more intimate nature -- than ever before. Along with two new "Google designed" flagship Android smartphones (called Pixel), the first Androids to be preloaded with the company's AI assistant (the Google Assistant) and also including fully unlimited cloud storage to suck users' photos and videos into Google's cloud, there were Google Wifi routers, designed to be bought in bundles to plug all those pesky in-home internet blackspots; the Google Home always listening connected speaker, which is voice-controlled via the Google Assistant and has limited support for third-party IoT devices (such as Philips Hue lightbulbs); an updated Chromecast (the Ultra) to ensure any legacy TV panels are internet-enabled; and Google's less disposable mobile VR play, aka the soft-touch Daydream View headset -- just in case consumer eyeballs seek to stray outside the data-mined smart home by escaping into virtual reality. The scope of Alphabet's ambition for the Google brand is clear: It wants Google's information organizing brain to be embedded right at the domestic center -- i.e. In other words, your daily business is Google's business. "We're moving from a mobile-first world to an AI-first world," said CEO Sundar Pichai kicking off yesterday's event.

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Memorably spoken by Alexander Graham Bell, these were the first words ever heard through a telephone. Since then, speech has become the natural format for long-distance communication across the globe. The impact of voice-to-voice communication has meant that even written messages, sent via email and social media, have become increasingly conversational in tone. That Watson was not IBM Watson, of course, or Watson's namesake Thomas J Watson. But IBM Watson, by bringing a cognitive, learning approach to the absorption of data, has made it possible for computer systems to understand spoken language, and the more natural, colloquial way we now express ourselves in text.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly emerging as a catalyst that will accelerate future innovation in mobile technology, according to a new global report from the GSMA, the mobile industry association and standards body. A collection of our most popular articles for IT leaders from the first few months of 2016, including: - Corporate giants recruit digitally-minded outsiders to drive transformation - Analytics platforms to drive strategy in 2016 - Next generation: The changing role of IT leaders. This email address is already registered. By submitting my Email address I confirm that I have read and accepted the Terms of Use and Declaration of Consent. By submitting your email address, you agree to receive emails regarding relevant topic offers from TechTarget and its partners.

DR. ALI PARSA (UK) talks about the role artificial intelligence is playing in healthcare and how today and how the developments will change the face of the industry, most likely in the next five years. How a bio algorithm symptom checker, adaptive health monitoring, clinically curated machine learning and intelligent medical tracking will help detect diseases quicker, diagnose more accurately, prevent illnesses and predict them before they happen. The impact will be the democratisation of healthcare, where it's accessible and affordable to people globally from the palm of their hand.

Technology is a big part of healthcare. In a 2014 McKinsey survey, more than 75% of patients polled said that they would like to use digital healthcare services, as long as those services meet their needs and provide the level of quality they expect. And yet the healthcare industry lags behind every other sector when it comes to implementing technology. HIPAA Journal writes, "In some cases, the new technology now being introduced by healthcare providers was first introduced in other industry sectors many years ago." A break in that trend has come from the surge of wearable devices. Getting beyond counting strides and counting calories, the healthcare industry has seen tremendous growth in wearable and wireless technologies that can monitor serious diseases.

Companies have another set of tools at their disposal to build chatbots. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has begun touting a new LiveMessage service that's aimed at connecting his company's Service Cloud with messaging services like Facebook Messenger and SMS. Benioff is pitching the new service as a way to turn messaging apps into a user interface for Salesforce, in addition to serving as a tool for connecting people with their friends. It will power bots, in addition to direct communications between service representatives and customers. Right now, LiveMessage works with SMS, and it will be expanded to work on Facebook Messenger later this year.

First generation virtual reality may have nailed sense of presence, but one major limitation keeps it from feeling truly immersive: Walking. The endless landscapes of the digital world are hampered by the confines of reality -- your playspace is only so big, and if you walk too far in any given direction, you're going to hit a wall. Most games get around this with teleportation mechanics, allowing the player's avatar to jump to far-off locations. Ready at Dawn Studios' Lone Echo took another approach: turn off the gravity, and eliminate the need to walk altogether. Lone Echo casts the player as Jack, an artificially intelligent robot who helps astronauts run and maintain a space station that orbits Saturn. It's the perfect environment for a game trying to sidestep limitations of VR's walking problem: with no gravity, there's no need to walk.

Edward Snowden appears from Russia to people in Stuttgart, Germany, in 2014. SAN FRANCISCO -- The Edward Snowden effect just made an encore, thanks to a report Yahoo has been scanning incoming emails on behalf of U.S. intelligence officials. And it's likely to take a few more bows. U.S. technology companies, already in defensive mode thanks to the former NSA contractor's revelations of a mass government surveillance program in 2013, are even more data-hungry today and therefore more on edge. From big data to the cloud to artificial intelligence you can talk to in your kitchen, the tech world is busy spinning the straw of information it gathers about users into gold.