Earlier in the series, we learned that Salesforce (CRM) is increasingly interested in the AI (artificial intelligence) space. Recently, deep learning, machine learning, and AI have all taken the world by storm. AI is an umbrella term that encompasses natural language processing, machine learning, and robotics. Apart from Salesforce and IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT) is also trying to capture AI market share with its recent acquisition of Genee. Plus, Amazon (AMZN) used its Alexa Fund to host a voice technology summit in late August to make a move toward developing its own virtual assistant offerings.

Sydney fintech startup Stockspot has become the first robo-advice platform in Australia to integrate AI and machine learning functions into financial advice. The company has today announced the launch of its new digital financial assistant to help clients optimise their investment behaviour. The digital financial assistant works by analysing thousands of clients and making targeted recommendations. As it learns, the technology will provide consumers with intuitive assistance to help investors optimise their profile and coach them to make better investment decisions. Instead of being a financial advisor that makes recommendations through listening to clients, Stockspot will now give advice based on consumer behaviour and actions.

If life is like a bowl of chocolates, you will never know what you will get, but is there a way to reduce some uncertainty? Dimensionality reduction is the process of reducing the number of random variables impacting your data. Come and explore, but make sure you don't let the chocolates melt.

Volvo Cars today announced a partnership with Swedish-American vehicle safety systems supplier Autoliv Inc. to form a new jointly-owned company to develop autonomous driving software. The planned company, which has yet to be named, will have its headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden and an initial workforce of about 200 taken from both firms. The new company is expected to start operations in early 2017, and then grow to more than 600 employees. Autoliv develops and sells automotive safety systems for all major automotive manufacturers around the globe; it has 80 facilities with 60,000 employees in 29 countries. The new Volvo/Autoliv company will develop advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous drive (AD) systems for use in Volvo cars and for sale exclusively by Autoliv to other car makers globally.

Conversational Commerce refers to using natural language within a messenger application (Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, and others) or using voice assistants (Siri, Amazon Alexa, and others) to interact with a business for an inquiry, purchase, or customer service. The term Conversational Commerce was coined by Chris Messina, Developer Experience Lead at Uber, in a brief post over a year ago. While Conversational Commerce has been around for a while (think IVR and SMS) the recent success is the culmination of three key factors – emergence of the mobile-first customer, domination of messaging apps, and the increasing maturity of Artificial Intelligence. In the IAB Nielsen's Mobile Ratings Report 2015, findings indicate that Australians live in a mobile-first world: While the total time spent on commercial activities is at an average of 3%, this trend is poised for rapid growth as organisations mature their Conversational Commerce capabilities. Messaging apps like WhatsApp and WeChat are no longer just for conversation between friends and family.

Historian Francis Fukuyama in 1992 reckoned with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the replacement of Communist systems behind it with liberal democracies, we had reached the end of history. Can we say the same about software development? Has the arrival of the age of Agile meant that we can now talk about a similar full-stop? Is this the final word in software development? And if it's not, what's going to come after it?

The car company announced last week that it would no longer use a vision system provided by MobileEye, an Israeli company that supplies technology to many automakers. This comes a few weeks after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that it was investigating a fatal accident that occurred while one of Tesla's cars was operating in Autopilot mode, a system designed to enable automated driving under a driver's supervision. It is unclear why Tesla is dropping MobileEye, but one reason may be the emergence of newer approaches to automated driving. MobileEye provides what amounts to an advanced image-recognition system, capable of identifying road signs or obstacles, such as other cars or pedestrians, on the road ahead. The company has said that it uses deep learning, a popular machine-learning technique based on training a many-layered network of simulated neurons to recognize input using a large number of training examples.

A panel of academic and industrial thinkers has looked ahead to 2030 to forecast how advances in artificial intelligence (AI) might affect life in a typical North American city – in areas diverse as transportation, healthcare and education – and spur discussion of how to ensure the safe, fair and beneficial development of these rapidly emerging technologies. Titled "Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030," this year-long investigation is the first product of the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100), an ongoing project hosted by Stanford University to inform societal deliberation and provide guidance on the ethical development of smart software, sensors and machines. "We believe specialized AI applications will become both increasingly common and more useful by 2030, improving our economy and quality of life," said Peter Stone, a computer scientist at The University of Texas at Austin and chair of the 17-member panel of international experts. "But this technology will also create profound challenges, affecting jobs and incomes and other issues that we should begin addressing now to ensure that the benefits of AI are broadly shared." The new report traces its roots to a 2009 study that brought AI scientists together in a process of introspection that became ongoing in 2014, when Eric and Mary Horvitz created the AI100 endowment through Stanford's School of Engineering.

No one will read what your bot has to say. At best, they will skim it and move on. You challenge is to take something complex and boil it down to a few crucial words -- and to make those words so powerful that the message sticks to the user like glue. Your chatbot should have a single-minded focus, and anything that does not adhere to this focus should be stripped away. Have you ever wondered why Donald Trump won the Republican primary?

Whether they are assisting your doctor in surgery, driving your car, analyzing crime patterns, or cleaning and providing the security system for your home, artificial intelligence (AI) will play a big role in urban living in by 2030. But to maximize the benefits of an AI-wired city tomorrow, expert and the public need to have a frank conversation today, according to the first report from Stanford University's 100-year study on AI, which was released last week. "As a society, we are now at a crucial juncture in determining how to deploy AI-based technologies in ways that promote, not hinder, democratic values such as freedom, equality, and transparency," the panel states in its report, which analyzes the role AI will play in the typical North American city in 2030, focusing on eight domains: transportation, home robots, healthcare, education, entertainment, low-resource communities, public safety and security, and employment and the workplace. "Policies should be evaluated as to whether they foster democratic values and equitable sharing of AI's benefits, or concentrate power and benefits in the hands of a fortunate few." The report outlines not only the ways AI could potentially be used throughout everyday life, but also how public opinion surrounding the implementation of AI has changed, and will continue to.