Fandango uses them to communicate with movie fans. Dominos offers them to help customers order pizza. And Nordstrom utilizes them to help shoppers customize gift ideas. They're called "chatbots," and they've now infiltrated the real estate space, making it easier to hunt for a home or rental unit or list your property for sale. Chatbots are artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistants (VAs), found within messaging apps or websites, that automatically respond to consumers' requests and provide information via chat or text.

This article first appeared in IEEE Software magazine. IEEE Software offers solid, peer-reviewed information about today's strategic technology issues. To meet the challenges of running reliable, flexible enterprises, IT managers and technical leads rely on IT Pro for state-of-the-art solutions. Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly hyped by vendors of all shapes and sizes-from well-funded startups to the well-known software brands. Financial organizations are building AI-driven investment advisors1. Chat bots provide everything from customer service2 to sales assistance3.

The first day of the 2017 IA Summit overwhelmed me in the best way possible. I attended a variety of sessions, talks and discussions about how machines and humans are meant to work together, as a team, to solve the different challenges people face today. In keeping with the theme of "Designing for Humans," some talks expanded on the role of the information architect and how they can enhance their own skills and add value with the aid of artificial intelligence--and not the other way around. Here's a quick overview of what I saw, and how we can use AI to enhance our own abilities. As information architects from all over the world gathered at the Hyatt Regency in Vancouver, keynote speaker Alan Cooper, co-founder of Cooper, shared his "Ranch Stories" and described how software and interaction design should be built the same way a farmer takes care of its land.

Machine learning is a very hot topic for many key reasons, and because it provides the ability to automatically obtain deep insights, recognize unknown patterns, and create high performing predictive models from data, all without requiring explicit programming instructions. Despite the popularity of the subject, machine learning's true purpose and details are not well understood, except by very technical folks and/or data scientists. This series is intended to be a comprehensive, in-depth guide to machine learning, and should be useful to everyone from business executives to machine learning practitioners. It covers virtually all aspects of machine learning (and many related fields) at a high level, and should serve as a sufficient introduction or reference to the terminology, concepts, tools, considerations, and techniques of the field. This high level understanding is critical if ever involved in a decision-making process surrounding the usage of machine learning, how it can help achieve business and project goals, which machine learning techniques to use, potential pitfalls, and how to interpret the results.

Best-selling author Calum Chace writes fiction and non-fiction books about artificial intelligence. He is a regular speaker on AI and related technologies and runs a blog on the subject at www.pandoras-brain.com. Prior to becoming a full-time writer and speaker, Calum had a 30-year career in business, as a marketer, strategy consultant and CEO. He maintains his interest in business by serving as chairman and coach for growing companies. Calum studied philosophy at Oxford University, where he discovered that the science fiction he had been reading since boyhood was actually philosophy in fancy dress.

Looking forward to 2017, we asked 21 bot experts, entrepreneurs, and executives to share their predictions for how bots will continue to evolve in the coming year. "In 2017 brands will realize that conversational marketing is a better way to learn about and build relationships with their customer than today's digital marketing, which monitors their customers with cookies, pixels, search and social data. We'll also see powerful case study data showing that opt-in and conversion rates and the quality of profile information that can be obtained conversationally far outweighs the benefits of email marketing, marketing automation and apps." "Bots will be even more helpful, more intuitive, and most of all, more human. In Flowdock, we aim to have our users interact with bots like we do the people around us to get the information and updates we need. Best of all, bots will continue to keep work fun and to make us laugh."

Feel free to forward this email or share it with your network. Facebook is working on automatically flagging offensive material in live video streams, building on a growing effort to use artificial intelligence to monitor content, said Joaquin Candela, the company†s director of applied machine learning. Uber has launched an artificial intelligence lab and acquired Geometric Intelligence, an AI start-up, as it seeks to use the technology to improve its driverless cars and delivery routes. They are not quite the same thing, but the perception that they are can sometimes lead to some confusion. So I thought it would be worth writing a piece to explain the difference.

IBM Corp. is all-in on artificial intelligence and machine learning. The company provides a broad range of cognitive products for businesses of all sizes. However, it is also using its other product lines, such as its storage business, to assist customers in developing products around Internet of Things and machine learning. "We provide the storage platform with our flash technology to SparkCognition, a professional software company. They are a hot startup [with] a number of different use cases, including cybersecurity, real-time IoT and predictive analytics," said Eric Herzog (pictured, left), vice president of product marketing and management, storage, and software-defined infrastructure, at IBM. Herzog and Mark Godard (pictured, right), manager of customer success and partnerships at SparkCognition Inc., spoke to John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's mobile live streaming studio, during IBM Interconnect 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

TripAdvisor brings to you a fun, new feature we have been testing and is now available on Facebook Messenger. We're happy to introduce you to TripAdvisor chatbot, a real time interactive platform, where ask for travel advice and recommendations regarding popular restaurants, attractions, hotels and flights. In case you are unfamiliar with chatbots, they are simple artificial intelligence computer systems that you can chat with via text. Many people use them to help get things done, or even to be entertained. With this new feature now you can send TripAdvisor a message via Facebook Messenger asking where to stay, eat, or what to do anytime, anywhere.

I was meeting with the Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce's Communications Committee; there was some brainstorming about session ideas for the upcoming Chamber Conference. There were some thoughts thrown out, and quite a few comments were made. Then someone said, "how about automation and artificial intelligence." Suddenly, a surge of ideas and thoughts hit the room like a vicious uppercut from Mike Tyson circa 1999. All industries went into the mix: retail, auto, construction, medical and legal.