An autonomous robot security guard equipped with weapons and intelligent video analysis equipment has been unveiled in China. The AnBot is China's first "intelligent security robot," according to state newspaper People's Daily, and was developed by the National Defense University. The 1.49m, 78kg machine has a top speed of 11mph (18km/h), as well as "sensors that mimic the human brain, eyes and ears," the article stated. The droid was on show at the Chongqing Hi-Tech Fair last week and is expected to be used to patrol areas prone to civil unrest or violence. "AnBot has a high degree of autonomy," Xiao Xiangjiang from the National Defense University said at the event.

This year, Pavel Durov will be giving away one million dollars to bot developers in the form of grants starting at 25,000 each. All you need to do to be considered is create an impressive bot using our Bot API. What do we want in return? That's right, just support your creation and make your users happy. Here's a list of things that a bot needs to make us smile: Some areas you may want to focus on: integrations, tools for bot builders, AI stuff, and natural language processing, although your bot may do something altogether different.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has now weighed in on what is important to him and the future of the company that he founded over a decade ago. One thing that was of particular interest was what he had to say about artificial intelligence and what it means to Facebook, and the internet, moving forward. What Mark Zuckerberg is currently doing with artificial intelligence is what most people would see as the technology of the future. A.I. has long been considered an inevitable form of technology that was bound to make its way to the public in one way or another at some point. The fact that Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have set their sights on it means they are clearly focusing on the future.

Artificial intelligence is nothing new at Google, but today we learned just how big a role top boss Sundar Pichai sees AI playing in our future. Answering an analyst query on Google-parent company Alphabet's Q1 2016 earnings call about how the company is leading innovation, rather than simply adapting to changes in technology, Pichai talked about his role in projecting where Alphabet is going in the next 10 years. He gave a shout out to VR as the hot new platform, and then wrapped up his comments by saying: "In the long run, I think we will evolve in computing from a mobile-first world to an AI-first world." Earlier in the call he cited Google's DeepMind AlphaGo super computer defeating a human champion as an extraordinary achievement. He also said the company is investing in AI and machine learning, areas that are taking off and beginning to bear real-world benefits.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the convenient future. It is one of the most promising and transformative opportunities of our time. We are closer to the near future where virtual assistants, bots, and software agents will act more and more like people. Some the biggest advances in AI are being developed inside tech giants such as Google (Deep Mind) and IBM (Watson). But there are still a lot of great opportunities for young startups to explore.

Proponents of autonomous vehicles are in a sticky situation. Self-driving technology is expected to have a tremendous impact on public health and reduce the 1.25 million deaths every year on global roads. At the same time, this emerging technology is a threat to the employment of the millions who are paid to sit behind the wheel -- from truck drivers to cab drivers and delivery workers. Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng, an expert in the world of artificial intelligence, acknowledges the unemployment concerns, but he sees a way forward that offers society the benefits of autonomous vehicles and blunts the negative impact of job losses. "I feel a strong moral responsibility or obligation to try to make self-driving cars a reality as quickly as possible," Ng said in a visit to The Washington Post.

In a four-story Bauhaus-style building west of Shanghai, nearly 500 engineers are working to put what they hope will be China's answer to a Tesla Motors Inc. TSLA -0.00 % electric car on the road. Their company, NextEV, currently doesn't have anything to sell. It plans to unveil its first electric car in 2017. "Our goal is to build a high-end, high-performance electric car for half the price of a Tesla car," said Li Bin, co-founder and chairman of NextEV. Counting Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. TCEHY -0.05 % as an investor, NextEV is part of an increasingly crowded industry as the world's biggest auto market welcomes a wave of new entrants--China's deep-pocketed Internet giants.

"Industry 4.0," or the fourth industrial revolution, can offer both opportunities and risks for the Japanese economy. It is a term to describe the future state of the economy, particularly manufacturing, based on the connectivity of everything, or the "Internet of Things" (IoT). This connectivity includes not only PCs and mobile phones, but also cars, manufacturing equipment and other devices. Although Japan is said to lag behind other developed nations, a recent gathering discussed whether the country could thrive in this new economy. A consultant, an IT service company president, an employee of the same company and a university professor, all of whom are Japanese, delivered presentations and discussed related issues at a symposium organized by the Keizai Koho Center, titled "The Future of Industry (Industry 4.0) and Japan's Economic Growth," in Tokyo on March 18.

Microsoft is tightening control over Cortana. Only its Microsoft Edge browser and Bing search engine will work with searches initiated through Windows 10 digital assistant, the company said Thursday. Microsoft isn't prohibiting third-party browsers like Opera and Chrome from working with Windows 10, and you can still configure the operating system to launch those browsers by default, when, say, a coworker emails you a link to a Web page. But, if you launch a search via Cortana, only Edge and Bing will be used to complete it, Microsoft said in a blog post. "Unfortunately, as Windows 10 has grown in adoption and usage, we have seen some software programs circumvent the design of Windows 10 and redirect you to search providers that were not designed to work with Cortana," Ryan Gavin, the general manager of search and Cortana, wrote.

And they will soon be doing everything, from taking your pizza orders to scheduling your meetings. This is the future and it's going to be terrible. The rise of the chatbot has been foretold for some time but only in the past few weeks with Facebook's Messenger bots, chat app Kik's bot store and the rise of subversive artbots have they really hit the public consciousness. So how did we get here? At this stage, four months after launch, it seems unlikely that even Peach's developers remember Peach.