The world of bots is exploding. Today's bots integrate within existing applications and replicate the support and intelligence of their human counterparts. They can simplify myriad functions, enabling consumers to gather information or fulfill requests on command. They empower us to make decisions more quickly by sharing information rapidly and clearly in a conversational format. With close to a billion people using Facebook messenger every month, many will soon use bots on the platform to find out when a restaurant opens, place an order for a T-shirt, or even pay their bills.

This week saw the eruption of a vendor spat when NVIDIA, developer of GPUs widely used in the AI/machine learning market, alleged foul play against Intel in recent comparative benchmark results involving Intel's Xeon Phi processors. While NVIDIA makes some fair points about the methodology employed by its rival, Intel announced impressive news of its own on the AI/Xeon Phi front. First, let's look at NVIDIA's criticism of Intel that came in the form of a blog post by Ian Buck, vice president of accelerated computing, who declared that Intel compared Xeon Phi to out-of-date NVIDIA benchmarking data. "Intel used Caffe AlexNet (benchmarking) data that is 18 months old, comparing a system with four (NVIDIA) Maxwell GPUs to four Xeon Phi servers," Buck wrote. "With the more recent implementation of Caffe AlexNet, publicly available here, Intel would have discovered that the same system with four Maxwell GPUs delivers 30 percent faster training time than four Xeon Phi servers. In fact, a system with four Pascal-based NVIDIA TITAN X GPUs trains 90 percent faster and a single NVIDIA DGX-1 is over 5x faster than four Xeon Phi servers."

In movies artificial intelligence is usually depicted with sci-fi images of robots, cyborgs and other dehumanized creatures. For many, the word is misunderstood and creepy. The truth is AI is helping us live more self-actualized lives in more ways than we can imagine. The intersection of AI technology and human communication is a hotbed of activity as chatbots and virtual assistants become requirements for everyday tasks and productivity. The artificial intelligence that powers so many of the products we know and love can be divided into two categories: conversational and experiential. Customer service chatbots, Siri, airline phone menus and even Google are great examples of the types of conversational AI we encounter in day-to-day life.

Okay, they didn't literally run for any hills. But the EFF wrote a very panicked blog post warning of the dangers to come if an AI trained to hack wasn't parented properly. The histrionic post made a few headlines, but missed the point of the competition entirely. If the AI playing Def Con's all-machine Capture The Flag had feelings, they would've been very hurt indeed. The seven different AI agents were projects of teams that hailed from around the world, coming together to compete for a 2 million purse.

It is surprising how much ink is spilled on theories that banking is about to be wiped out by a tsunami called fintech, resulting in the alleged mass closure of banks and unemployment of financial services professionals. Last time I was in New York, Wall Street was intact and thriving and specialized financial crime lawyers like myself were busier than ever. First, the law stands in the way of fintech displacing even one dollar of financial services. A fintech company is not a Brooklyn pizza stand – it cannot survive without being connected to the financial system, which requires a banking partner and a banking relationship. In other words, fintech cannot disrupt anything unless the banks and lawyers (as regulators) let them.

Maybe I'm being a bit pessimistic, but can AI really create jobs just by taking over old ones? Sure we could train some new "data analysts [and] trip optimizers", but in the end can we really mass replace low skilled blue collar jobs with higher skilled ones with the wave of a wand? In the period between when robots can automate the majority of low skill jobs and virtually all jobs, there is very likely to be some sort of significant turmoil as our economy undergoes a paradigm shift of sorts, and I don't think "just retrain workers" is that viable of a solution.

Pokemon Go can make it seem like a cute Caterpie is sitting right there in your cup of coffee (eww). It's clearly just a cartoon image superimposed over the image your phone is capturing. But what if that Caterpie could react to the coffee, splash it around or drink it, as if it really were swimming in your Starbucks cup? Though the videos have been live since August 2, attention from Reddit sparked fresh interest on Friday. Lead researcher Abe Davis, a computer science Ph.D. candidate working in computer graphics, even stopped by the site to chime in.

Blog Post:This week, an Econsultancy article examined five ways that artificial intelligence (AI) can help marketers enhance the customer experience, according to its latest "Marketing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" report. The article explains that by streamlining purchase processes and supply chains, improving recommendations, and enriching the customer experience in related ways, AI can help foster stronger relationships between brands and customers. You may be thinking, "This all sounds well and good, but what does it have to do with me? How am I supposed to leverage AI, right now, to improve my brand's customer relationships?" The article made me think about certain capabilities in Adobe Target Premium that can already help you realise many of these benefits. Streamlining the path to purchase Sales funnels are no longer channel-specific.

China is planning to use artificial intelligence (AI) technology to build the next generation cruise missiles that will be tailor-made for specific combat situations, media reported on Friday. The multi-functional missiles will aid to future combat missions that will require weapons to be both cost-efficient and flexible. "We plan to adopt a'plug and play' approach in the development of new cruise missiles, which will enable our military commanders to tailor-make missiles in accordance with combat conditions and their specific requirements," Wang Changqing of the China Aerospace and Industry Corp told China Daily newspaper. Changqing added that for future combat, modular design based on AI will be a good solution. "Our future cruise missiles will have a very high level of artificial intelligence and automation," he was quoted as saying.