The recent announcement of Chatbot API from Facebook sets another milestone in one of the hottest trends in mobile as a growing number of leading social messaging platforms introduced bot development capabilities. In a nutshell, Messaging Bots allow people to connect and interact with businesses through chat. The bots assist the user to complete different actions, such as checking your bank account balance, purchasing items, and book a table at a restaurant. The idea of automatic chat is not new. Various types of websites offer the help of a virtual conversational agent.

I am very glad to inform you that we were awarded with the prestigious new tag "1000 members"!!!!! The Grup d'Estudis de Machine Learning de Barcelona (GEMLeB – Machine Learning meetup in Barcelona), is an organization devoted to understand, discover and promote the use of Machine Learning in Barcelona, through an informal environment. As many other machine learning meetups, regular meetings are organized with a two-fold objective: learn about machine learning (from experiences, applications to algorithms, models and theory) and meet people with similar interest to build a wide and supporting community. If you ever come to Barcelona and want to meet the community, please do not hesitate to contact us! On behalf of the organisers, thank you for your support to this meetup!

Data Science foundation for Programmers is a one day course that introduces Programmers to developing Data Science applications. The hands-on course uses the R Programming language to introduce machine learning algorithms. The program includes a one day workshop followed by a one week online session to complete the Programming Exercises. In this section, we understand the characteristics of the data which help us later in choosing an algorithm.

The plummeting cost of computing power coupled with the rising commodification of machine learning is ushering in a new age of artificial intelligence (AI) in business. Contrary to the image many have of a world populated by anthropomorphous robots, however, the future of workplace AI will be less cyborg and even more human than it is today. That's because the reality of technology is finally catching up to its promise. While digital technologies have long excelled at performing repetitive and routine tasks, until now they have barely made a dent in activities involving creativity and intuition. The sheer volume of data production has both paved the way for machine learning and made it essential.

"Sales and revenue generation are as a result of human interaction; it is that human interaction that is changing" – when asked to keynote speeches on the subject of technology in sales and marketing this is often a quote that gets a lot of heads nodding- it is very pertinent in this discussion too. This is due to the fact that I believe, ultimately, there will be little human interaction in certain real estate transactions in the future; some and future being the key points. Could there really be a possibility that artificial intelligence and real estate could work together? Which elements and when are pivotal to the debate and I hope to cover a few here. Ultimately it is my belief that in the near future the real estate industry could be automated and run algorithmically. However, it is important, from the outset to distinguish between automation and the more challenging theory of machine learning which is a term often used to describe Artificial Intelligence.

Pizza Hut Asia and MasterCard have partnered to bring Pepper, SoftBank Robotic's humanoid robot, to restaurants by the end of this year to enhance in-store customer service. Pizza Hut Asia will be piloting Pepper for order-taking and personalised engagement. This marks the first commercial application for Pepper, according to MasterCard. Pepper, which was unveiled on Tuesday, will be powered by MasterPass, the global digital payment service from MasterCard that connects consumers with merchants, enabling them to make digital payments across channels and devices. MasterPass extends the robot's ability to integrate customer service, access to information and sales into a seamless and consistent user experience.

A bestselling author has reportedly predicted that the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) could have an outcome that is more anticlimactic than even seen in doomsday movies. In his upcoming novel Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, author Yuval Noah Harari has described a bleak future for humankind, where instead of being completely wiped out by robotic beings, humans face a bleaker future of being rendered completely useless. A lecturer and historian at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, Harari believes AI will be successful in doing exactly as we fear. Machines will take over society and leave humans jobless and aimless. In fact, according to the author, the destructive powers of artificial intelligence have already started to take control and there are many areas where AI has performed better than people.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is reportedly working on an Amazon Echo like device. The space for these kinds of devices is about to heat up as companies such as Google also announced intentions to enter it. A report from The Information revealed that the iPhone maker will open up Siri by releasing a Software Development Kit (SDK) at the Worldwide Developers Conference 2016. This will allow developers to develop and integrate apps with Siri, which should help in increasing the personal digital assistant's skills. While Siri is connected to some apps, the interactions involved are highly limited.

'Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the science of mimicking human intelligence inside a computer.' In that case, if AI computers are being used in manufacturing, there's a need to protect those assets, right?

Power BI is the self-service BI engine of Microsoft, this service provides ability for business users to work with data with easier tools and be able to do changes or build their own models on top of one or more data sources. This is a full day of Power BI with many live demos. Training starts with Power BI and its components (Power Query, Power Pivot, Power View, Power Map, and Power Q&A). Course continues with real world demos of fetching data and transforming it with Power Query, loading and Modeling in Power Pivot and DAX, Visualizing it in Power BI Desktop and enhanced usage of Power Q&A. Many tips and best practices for using each component will be explained as well.