Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

Prepare to hear a lot of news Tuesday on Facebook, as the social networking titan launches its f8 developers conference in San Francisco. Get familiar with the word "chatbot." The social network will likely have plenty to say about it during its f8 keynote address Tuesday. This comes off the heels of Microsoft's experiments with chatbots on Twitter. Facebook is also expected to share more updates on its Messenger platform.

Roughly a year and a half ago, I had the privelage of taking a graduate "Introduction to Machine Learning" course under the tutelage of the fantastic Professor Leslie Kaelbling. While I learned a great deal over the course of the semester, there was one minor point that she made to the class which stuck with me more than I expected it to at the time: before using a really fancy or sophisticated or "in-vogue" machine learning algorithm to solve your problem, try a simple Nearest Neighbor Search first. Let's say I gave you a bunch of data points, each with a location in space and a value, and then asked you to predict the value of a new point in space. Perhaps the values of you data are binary (just s and -s) and you've heard of Support Vector Machines. Should you give that a shot?

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Market By Technology (Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing (Nlp), Image Processing, And Speech Recognition), Application & Geography - Global Forecast To 2020" report to their offering. The author forecasts the artificial intelligence market to grow from USD 419.7 Million in 2014 to USD 5.05 Billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 53.65% from 2015 to 2020. The major factors driving the growth of this market include diversified application areas of AI, improved productivity, and increased level of customer satisfaction. In addition, the rising demand for intelligent systems is expected to propel the growth of the market in the next five years. The scope of this report covers the artificial intelligence market by technology, application, and region.

John Breeden II is an award-winning journalist and reviewer with over 20 years of experience covering technology and government. He is currently the CEO of the Tech Writers Bureau, a group that creates technological thought leadership content for organizations of all sizes. If you happen to have a free 30 hours or so, I would highly recommend watching Google's AlphaGo program take on one of the best players in the world at the ancient Chinese board game Go. If you don't have that much time, you could instead just watch the 6-hour third match, where the program wrapped up the best of five series. It's literally history being made. Some news outlets have covered this feat, but I don't think many people understand how monumental this actually is.

Internet of things, cloud computing, big data, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and 3D printing are all terms that will be familiar to anyone who reads this website on a regular basis. They are subjects we write about regularly, and with good reason, as this infographic shows, are they are the areas that are likely to drive the future of innovation. Internet of things (IoT) is the buzzword of the moment, with sensors soon to be omnipresent throughout all our lives, with more data available about us all than ever before. We are constantly hearing that the robots might take our jobs, while AI just keeps getting cleverer all the time. Meanwhile, 3D printing is being used in all kinds of areas, even to create prosthetics, and much more.

According to a leading AI expert, a future in which AI can reach its full potential could be scuppered if those putting forward an apocalyptic outcome continue to create an aura of fear around the technology. AI has managed to find its way into many facets of our daily life, from the technology behind our personal assistants in our smartphones, to the development of autonomous cars that will one day take to the road. But there is no denying that there remains a continuing fear about AI technology, put forward not just by the producers of Hollywood blockbusters set to profit from the idea of robots taking over the world, but by some of the most respected figures in science and technology. At the beginning of last year, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking were two of the most famous figures from the Future of Life Institute (FLI) to sign an open letter calling for greater regulation of AI technology over fears of it one day running amok. Now, according to The Guardian, one of the signatories of that open letter, Chris Bishop, director of Microsoft Research in Cambridge, is saying this type of talk might actually be detrimental to the possibilities of AI.

China will "lead the world" in producing artificially intelligent hardware as the tech industry continues to find breakthroughs in this field, according to a Microsoft executive. Citing examples like Baidu, Harry Shum, executive vice-president of technology and research in Microsoft, said Chinese internet companies are playing an important role in advancing artificial intelligence. "Baidu is building autonomous driving vehicles, and many other Chinese companies are ... doing serious technology development in the artificial intelligence area," said Shum. "If we have the opportunity to democratise artificial intelligence technology through the cloud, we just need a few [Chinese companies] with good ideas and we can [advance] very quickly." He added that he is "bullish" about the artificially intelligent hardware industry in China because cities like Shenzhen are building an ecosystem that supports the technology. "In southern China, you can see these different layers, from manufacturing capabilities, sensors, circuit design, all of that," said Shum. "They used to make low-end phones, but now [can you imagine] what they could do next?"

Chatbots are on the rise, but what are they and why is everyone talking about (and to) them? Facebook is widely expected to launch an app store for chatbots at its developer conference this week. Meanwhile, Microsoft has described chatbots as the "new apps" with chief executive Satya Nadella saying that they "unlock conversation as a platform". The BBC "created" its own one-off chatbot to answer some of the burning questions you may have about this latest technology. What can I help you with Jane?

The goal of artificial intelligence (AI) is to develop machines that can think, reason, and solve problems in a manner that is similar to the human brain. There are two types of AI research. The top-down approach is focused on developing an artificial brain with structure and function that is similar to that of a human. This is similar to the concept of a positronic brain that was introduced by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov and popularized in television and film with robots that exhibit consciousness such as Data from "Star Trek." In contrast, the bottom-up approach is more common and involves providing the basic building blocks that interact and build the computational complexity needed to approximate intelligence.