The complex passenger flows, demanding identification challenges and pressure-filled security conditions that are inherent in border control make the arena appear an interesting prospect for artificial intelligence-based solutions that can revolutionise critical processes. Machine-learning technologies being developed could identify risk patterns at speeds way beyond humans' capacity, and when tied with the powerful security offered by biometrics, AI's potential to disrupt the world of borders expands even further. What then is the future for the border guard? Will their decades of document security expertise and nuanced instincts be made rendered obsolete by a'border bot'? Planet Biometrics caught up with Cyrille Bataller, Artificial Intelligence lead at Accenture, to learn about his team's AI initiatives for borders and about his views on the importance of a "people-first" approach.

There are a surprising number of chatbots already available that promise something vital to all human beings: companionship. Taking inspiration from the film'Her' (pictured), they will be available to talk whenever you need to. Mitsuku is one such example. She learns by experience (the more you talk to her, the smarter she becomes) and is friendly but will argue back. Unsurprisingly, most chatbot companions available at the moment are female.

Satya Nadella bounded into the conference room, eager to talk about intelligence. I was at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, WA, and the company's CEO was touting the company's progress in building more intelligent apps and services. Each morning, he told me, he puts on a HoloLens, which enables him to look at a virtual, interactive calendar projected on a wall of his house. Nadella appeared giddy as he described it. The system was intelligent, productive, and futuristic: everything he hopes Microsoft will be under his leadership.

Some very intelligent people – including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Bill Gates – seem to have been seduced by the idea that because computers are becoming ever faster calculating devices that at some point relatively soon we will reach and pass a "singularity" at which computers will become "more intelligent" than humans. Some are terrified that a society of intelligent computers will (perhaps violently) replace the human race, echoing films such as the Terminator; others – very controversially – see the development of such technologies as an opportunity to evolve into a "post-human" species. Already, some prominent technologists including Tim O'Reilly are arguing that we should replace current models of public services, not just in infrastructure but in human services such as social care and education, with "algorithmic regulation". Algorithmic regulation proposes that the role of human decision-makers and policy-makers should be replaced by automated systems that compare the outcomes of public services to desired objectives through the measurement of data, and make automatic adjustments to address any discrepancies. Not only does that approach cede far too much control over people's lives to technology; it fundamentally misunderstands what technology is capable of doing. For both ethical and scientific reasons, in human domains technology should support us taking decisions about our lives, it should not take them for us. At the MIT Sloan Initiative on the Digital Economy last week I got a chance to discuss some of these issues with Andy McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, authors of "The Second Machine Age", recently highlighted by Bloomberg as one of the top books of 2014. Andy and Erik compare the current transformation of our world by digital technology to the last great transformation, the Industrial Revolution.

Digital technologies are developing rapidly. During the general meeting of EBG, web gurus took out their crystal balls in trying to predict tomorrow's trends that will constitute the marketing buzz. They foresee that artificial intelligence and the utilisation of our data will be at the centre of development. The focus of the research will involve the advances in artificial intelligence linked in direct relation with humans, and the digital applications that we use in our daily life. Deep learning, the object of major developments, enables systems to perceive the structure of data and to order and orient the request.

While the technology industry is abuzz with new opportunities created by advances in artificial intelligence -- from intelligent web search to voice recognition -- book publishing has yet to feel the full impact of AI. Neil Balthaser intends to change that through his machine learning software Intellogo. Intellogo uses technology that can analyze and understand the contents of a book in order to provide better book recommendations to readers. The technology can also identify reader behavior trends that can inform book publishers' content creation strategy. In the following interview, Balthaser explains how Intellogo's software can help publishers streamline book discovery and how AI will transform the reading experience into a conversation between the reader and the book.

The second AI ZA meetup was held on 21 June 2016 at Entelect's headquarters in Melrose Arch, Johannesburg. The event was packed with over 50 attendees eager to learn about artificial intelligence and machine learning. The goal of this meetup was to continue with a more in depth classification problem as well as run through the introductory concepts for all those that were new to the meetup. Rishal Hurbans and Hennie Brink gave a short talk on classification algorithms. The uses, advantages, and disadvantages of classification algorithms were covered.

The tech paradigm has been changing, or at least, we are made to believe so. We are slowly yet steadily moving towards bots, and that doesn't necessarily mean away from apps, not yet at least. Leading tech companies who usually decide tech trends have made it clear at their respective annual tech events that bots are coming! Chatbots can be described as automated programs to help communicate with businesses, and also make purchases online. With tech businesses' increasing interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning, bots are believed to take the centre stage when it comes to users communicating with said businesses.

You may have heard about the Donald Trump bot army and the Twitter bots that have influenced elections in Latin America, but there are other bots out there, bots that connect citizens to services, bots that plan to crowdsource the election of a president or act as your personal assistant in government. They're going to change civil society, how people interact with government, and the self-governance of free societies. Here are five example of bots that have already impacted or will impact democracy. Dirty Water VT sends a tweet each time a sewage spill occurs in the state of Vermont. Trib IL CampaignCash sends a tweet any time a campaign contribution is made above 1,000 in the state of Illinois.

She's a blast to have around. She's especially fun to shop with. That's when her bubbly, happy-go-lucky personality really comes through. Usually, we walk down an aisle – any aisle will do – and all of a sudden you can see her get excited about something she sees – a product, a sale price, whatever. I tease her that she's like a squirrel – always getting distracted by the next "shiny object". Rats do! She'll kill me if I compare her to a rat, though!)