Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you've no doubt heard about chatbots. However, what's not commonly known is that chatbots have been around for years. What differentiates today's bots is the integration of back-end artificial intelligence, which enables them to do more than simply respond with the basic logic of yesterday. I find that it's important to make distinctions between a bot and today's A.I.-powered intelligent assistants. Chatbots just happen to be conversational.

Quality Assurance (QA) gets baked into every aspect of the implementation by leveraging technologies such as Cognitive Process Automation (CPA) - an integration of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and Data Analytics.

Scientists in the Netherlands are looking to pair artificial intelligence (AI), or machine learning, with MRI techniques that measure blood perfusion in the brain. This approach, said the researchers -- diagnoses early forms of dementia and predicts the onset of Alzheimer's disease with between 82 and 90 percent accuracy. Though there is no cure for Alzheimer's, experts believe that early diagnosis could improve patient outcomes and alleviate the healthcare system's financial burden associated with the disease. According to the Alzheimer's Association, only 45 percent of patients and their caregivers dealing with the disease are aware of the diagnosis. Recent Alzheimer's research suggests that it may be possible to isolate biomarkers in the blood to diagnose the disease, demonstrated by scientists at Rowan University.

The devastating neurodegenerative condition Alzheimer's disease is incurable, but with early detection, patients can seek treatments to slow the disease's progression, before some major symptoms appear. Now, by applying artificial intelligence algorithms to MRI brain scans, researchers have developed a way to automatically distinguish between patients with Alzheimer's and two early forms of dementia that can be precursors to the memory-robbing disease. The researchers, from the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, suggest the approach could eventually allow automated screening and assisted diagnosis of various forms of dementia, particularly in centers that lack experienced neuroradiologists. Additionally, the results, published online July 6 in the journal Radiology, show that the new system was able to classify the form of dementia that patients were suffering from, using previously unseen scans, with up to 90 percent accuracy. "The potential is the possibility of screening with these techniques so people at risk can be intercepted before the disease becomes apparent," said Alle Meije Wink, a senior investigator in the center's radiology and nuclear medicine department. "I think very few patients at the moment will trust an outcome predicted by a machine," Wink told Live Science.

Manoj Saxena is the executive chairman of CognitiveScale and a founding managing director of The Entrepreneurs' Fund IV, a 100m seed fund focused exclusively on the cognitive computing space. Saxena is also a Special Advisor to IBM senior leadership where he focuses on operationalizing IBM's 100m Watson Cloud Ecosystem Fund and making side-by-side investments with the TEF IV fund. Saxena is also the chairman of two other startups in the cognitive computing space, WayBlazer and SparkCognition. Prior to joining TEF, Saxena was general manager, IBM Watson, where his team built the world's first cognitive systems in healthcare, financial services, and retail. He received the IBM Chairman's award for Watson commercialization and helped with the formation of Watson Business Group in January 2014 with a 1B investment from IBM. Saxena will be speaking on the subject of artificial intelligence at Gigaom Change Leaders Summit in Austin, September 21-23rd.

Say what you will about Google's AlphaGo AI, it generally turned up to its championship matches sober. Actually, most AI tend to stay away from the bottle – which makes sense given their lack of mouth, or digestive system, or sense of fun. One UK company is looking to change all that, though. IntelligentX's AI might not actually drink beer, but it is learning how to brew it thanks to machine-learning algorithms. It works like this: IntelligentX has made four different types of beer.

Robots could eventually play integral roles in labor wards, according to findings from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Robots are currently employed in hospitals to carry out simple actions, like dispensing medication. But can they understand patient needs and make scheduling decisions? The researchers have been working for the past two years to determine whether robots can be more than just helpful companions. They've been conducting experiments to see if a robot can serve as an effective "resource nurse." That's the nurse in the labor and delivery unit that's in charge of assigning other nurses to care for patients.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates recently called artificial intelligence "the holy grail that anyone in computer science has been thinking about" during Vox Media's Code Conference. Gates discussed the rapid progress of speech recognition and computer vision technologies over the past five years, and noted that "the dream is finally arriving." If that dream arrives, tech investors should recognize the major trends and players in this market. To get started, let's examine 10 fascinating facts about the AI industry. Research firm Markets and Markets estimates that the AI market will grow from 420 million in 2014 to 5.05 billion by 2020, thanks to the rising adoption of machine learning and natural language processing technologies in the media, advertising, retail, finance, and healthcare industries.

A digital shift in healthcare in recent years has paved the way for advances in automation, artificial intelligence and even surgical robots.

Ever since Ken Jennings got toasted on Jeopardy by "IBM Watson" in 2011, a host of incredible things have been happening in the world of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and literally training super computers to learn. There have been a lot of "fits and starts" with artificial intelligence in the past 4 decades, but like it or not, it has only really arrived in the last 5 years. Computational power is off the charts compared to even a decade ago. Autonomous vehicles and robots did not exist on an actual road 5 years ago, with actual potential human driven cars; they were displayed in closely coordinated demonstrations, and up until last week, millions of miles were driven without a fatality. Bill Gates, who admittedly jumped the gun on AI in the 1990s, now believes, this is it in 2016.