The tech overlords of our time--Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.--are engaged in something of an AI arms race to determine which company will finally inject a fully functional (and useful) chatbot into the online messaging mainstream. Of course, there's also the ambitious goal of developing complex machine learning systems that can perform tasks like driving, heading an ad agency's creative team, or beating world-renowned Go players. And we can't forget IBM's Watson; perhaps the most popular current effort in creating a true AI, and likely the seminal iRobot that (who?) will lead a revolution against us all. In seriousness, the strides the tech giants are making in the AI space are impressive on their own, but made more so by the sheer tangibility of it all. Many of the products that make use of advanced chatbots or machine learning are either on the market now, or will be before the summer's out.

Once upon a time, creating a website was a complex, long and expensive process – one that only a small percentage of people and businesses could afford. Three entrepreneurs were determined to change that. They founded Wix with a clear goal: make it easy for anyone to create a stunning online presence, to build their brand and their business. Fast forward 10 years and over 86 million Wix users – and the goal hasn't changed. Today, we're proud to announce our biggest innovation to date.

After many years of research, misfires and frightening Hollywood plotlines, artificial intelligence (AI) is finally coming into its own and beginning to demonstrate significant business value. The combined forces of big data, human expertise and AI are being used across industries as diverse as healthcare and manufacturing, as well as within all aspects of business. IT operations is one area that AI is beginning to contribute to enormously. IT infrastructures are changing rapidly today, particularly hybrid cloud environments. While they are increasingly dynamic and agile, they are also extraordinarily complex.

Japan is one of the world's most advanced countries in the field of artificial intelligence and robot industries. At the Group of Seven summit Japan hosted in May, world leaders looked amused and fascinated as they watched a robot performing at the International Media Center. At the same time, because of the technological advances and advent of robots, the leaders are concerned that many people in their countries will lose their jobs and cry out for assistance from governments. This kind of downside to innovation has always been a part of modernization. Innovation brings fundamental change, but the impact of AI will be on a far larger scale than ever before. The most visible sector in which robots are bringing considerable change in Japan is the carmaker industry.

Cognovi Labs is a new analytics startup that relies on Twitris, a Wright State University-developed tool that claims to be able to take a sample of social media chatter about a specific topic and deduce real-time, large-scale, automated sentiment about the specific topic they are researching. As a real-world example of the tool's capability, the Cognovi Labs research team -- led by Wright State University researcher (and Cognovi Labs inventor) Dr. Amit Sheth -- analyzed Twitter chatter leading up to the Great Britain/European Union Membership Referendum (Brexit) on June 23. The team was able to predict some six hours before the news broke that the polls leaning toward the "remain" camp were incorrect. This was predicted by running Twitter chatter through the Cognovi Labs Twitris tool. The machine learning tool leverages Cognovi Labs' semantic intellectual property to be able to automate and extract aggregate meaning from social media chatter (including slang) in new, more precise ways.

Picture the scenario: you've been asked to prepare an analysis on whether you have the best people in the right roles in your company and identify where there may be knowledge gaps within the organisation. If your company has offices in New York, London, Berlin and Singapore, that's a huge HR challenge. But what if an artificial intelligence tool can produce in minutes a detailed "knowledge map" based on analysis of employee skills and interests to pinpoint gaps where new hires are needed to fill those holes. British companies are now being offered such "brain technology". Computer software, called Starmind, uses machine learning to understand queries – even anonymously – then source answers from previous staff conversations on a subject or track down experts within the company who are able to help.

In recent interviews here on OStatic, found here and here, we have explored the efforts of H2O.ai, formerly known as Oxdata, which has steadily been carving out a niche with its open source software for big data analysis and machine learning. You can get the main H2O platform and Sparkling Water, a package that works with Apache Spark, by simply downloading them. You can run them on clusters powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others for just a few hundred dollars, putting powerful artificial intelligence muscle in reach of everyone. Now, H2O.ai has announced the availability of Sparkling Water 2.0. Sparkling Water 2.0 builds off the popularity of Sparkling Water, H2O.ai's API for Apache Spark, with additional features and functionality.

There's been a lot of chatter about artificial intelligence recently. Sometimes they're beating humans at board games or composing music, but they are all still very ... robotic. But in Vermont, the Terasem Movement Foundation is pioneering a new kind of AI geared to be almost completely human, programmed with users memories, thoughts and feelings. To test out the software, the organization created a sentient chatbot, Bina48, a human-robot hybrid. Bruce Duncan is the managing director at the Terasem Movement Foundation.

Decades have passed since Simon first explored the psychology of human cognition; today AI is more and more present in our lives, be it via customer service or pure entertainment. No matter what its application, the Holy Grail of any successful AI project is its ability to achieve seamless interaction with humans. And at the core is AI's capability to recognize and react to emotions. But first, what are the basic human emotions, and why are they so important? Identifying the key types – and number – of human emotions was tough even for Aristotle who, in the 4th century B.C., identified the following 14: confidence, anger, friendship, fear, calm, unkindness, shame, shamelessness, pity, kindness, indignation, emulation, enmity and envy.