Microsoft is hoping to make Skype conversations a bit smarter by injecting then with artificial intelligence. At its Build 2016 conference, Microsoft demonstrated how Cortana, along with other third-party "bots," can provide more information and potential actions as part of Skype messaging. As a basic example, Cortana will highlight key parts of a conversation, which users can tap on to pull up more information. During any conversation, users will also be able to pull up a private AI chat window, where they can talk to Cortana and other bots. Say for instance that you're talking to someone about an upcoming event.

At Tuesday's Build keynote, Microsoft showed how the company plans to add increased utility to its Cortana digital assistant, through greater contextual awareness and more proactive actions. It's not clear when these capabilities will come to Cortana, though it seems likely they'll be rolled out over the coming months, probably timed to coincide with the Anniversary Update of Windows 10 this summer. Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said the improvements to Cortana are part of a larger conversation the company is having, involving natural language interactions with users and even other automated digital intelligence, or bots. Cortana, though, remains the premier way for users to interact with a Windows 10 PC or phone. Marcus Ash, the group product manager for Cortana at Microsoft, showed off some of its new capabilities--the most impressive of which was its ability to "send [a colleague] the PowerPoint that I worked on last night".

If Microsoft's Satya Nadella has his way, there will be no Singularity in the future--where humanity uploads its consciousness into a mass, computer-backed intelligence--nor a murderous scene straight from the Terminator. "Ultimately," Nadella said, "It's not going to be man versus machines. It's going to be man with machines." Nadella made the grand pronouncement during Wednesday's introduction of Microsoft's new "Conversations as a Platform" philosophy--basically, the idea that the mixture of machine learning and natural language will alter the way computing behaves going forward, as we interact with personal digital assistants and legions of bots to help us organize our lives. Ordering food should be as simple as sending a text message; having Cortana juggle your appointments and suggest changes should be accomplished with a simple verbal conversation using natural language.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, speaks at the keynote ceremony of the Microsoft Build Developers conference. SAN FRANCISCO – Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella kicked off the company's Build developers conference with a vision of the future filled with chatbots, machine learning and artificial intelligence. "Bots are the new apps," said Nadella during a nearly three hour keynote here that sketched a vision for the way humans will interact with machines. That's the world you're going to get to see in the years to come." Onstage demos hammered home those ideas. One involved a smartphone conversation with Cortana about planning a trip to Ireland, which soon found Cortana bringing in a Westin chatbot that booked a room based on the contents of the chat. Another featured a blind Microsoft engineer who helped design technology that allows him to take photos with a pair of smartglasses and have either a menu's contents or people's emotions described to him. Nadella placed such human-AI interactions under an umbrella he called Conversations as a Platform. "It's about taking power of human language and applying it more pervasively to all of our computing," he said. "We will infuse intelligence about us and our context into computers." The integrative AI-focused approach to the way humans interact with their digital lives comes not a moment too soon given the pressure Microsoft faces in this "Conversation as a Service sector from Amazon with Alexa and Google with Google Now," says Holger Mueller, analyst with Constellation Research. "All these new conversation canvasses need cloud as the delivery platform and Microsoft needs utilization to achieve economies of scale in the Azure build out." Microsoft had a less than successful rollout of a entertainment-focused chatbot just last week. Nadella drew a collective laugh from the 5,000 attendees when he mentioned Tay, which was taken offline after just one day of existence after hackers made it spew offensive comments. "We are back to the drawing board," he said. "Technology has to have the best of humanity, not the worst." That led to comments from the CEO about the need for a "principled approach" to this emerging technology, an oblique reference to the big drama that recently unfolded between Apple and the FBI." "We need to make choices about how we build technology," Nadella said.

Microsoft doubled down on its message of Windows apps that can work on your PC, smartphone or Xbox One during Build 2016, its annual developers conference in San Francisco. Central to this idea was the big Windows 10 Anniversary update, which further opens up the operating system to developers. Chatbots and Cortana were also featured prominently as a potential future for Microsoft in a world that has left the desktop behind. "I am an optimist," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Wednesday during the Build 2016 keynote. "We, as a company, are optimistic about what technology can do for us. I believe technology can, in fact, drive economic growth all over the world. I believe technology can empower us in our daily lives. I believe technology can be used to preserve our enduring values."

For two of the datasets we are using a small sample for testing. The OpenStreetMap data is limited to edits in Azerbaijan from 2012 and earlier, and the Git data is just from the Django GitHub repository. The datasets we have selected span a wide range of densities, user and item counts, and types of ratings. Additionally, they provide a wide variety of information about items and users allowing us to explore different methods of extracting content vectors from the datasets.

March Madness is upon us here in the US. This annual college basketball competition pits 64 teams in a single-elimination tournament, and the team that goes undefeated for all 6 rounds will be named NCAA Champion. Predicting the winners of the competition, and in particular completing a "bracket" of the teams you predict to make it to the final 32 or 16 and eventually win, is a popular pastime (and foundation for many wagers). Some use their knowledge of the teams or the betting markets to select their bracket. If you'd like to try your hand at your own predictions based on machine learning, Azure ML (part of the Cortana Analytics suite) provides all the data, algorithms, and R and Python support you need.

I still remember my mom telling me about her first job out of college. She was an executive secretary--or what we'd now call a personal assistant--for a multi-millionaire. I fantasized about how easy life would be with someone to take care of all the "little details." Imagine how much more productive I would be if someone else handled scheduling doctor appointments, finding time on my calendar for meetings, and buying my boss a gift for her birthday. Fast forward to 2016 and I don't have anyone at my beck and call. But nowadays you can get lots of the advantages of a personal assistant right on your phone.

Umbo CV Inc. makes artificially intelligent security cameras that the company says detect unusual activity human security guards might miss. It picked up 2.8 million in seed funding led by AppWorks Ventures, Mesh Ventures, Wistron and Phison Electronics. The company plans to launch its first product in early April at the ISC West Show in Las Vegas. Umbo Chief Executive Shawn Guan said the company has applied a form of artificial intelligence known as deep learning to security camera footage. The more footage the Umbo camera has, the more it learns and is able to accurately detect suspicious activity.

In this week's Bloomberg Businessweek cover story, Microsoft revealed its plans to go all in on chatbots, or programs powered by artificial intelligence that can help you do mundane tasks like book a flight or schedule your finances. The company will give more demos of its experiments with chatbots starting Wednesday during its annual Build developer's conference in San Francisco. Chatbots are a growing trend in the tech world. Amazon's Echo speaker has a built-in digital assistant called Alexa that you can talk to and order items online, get traffic and weather alerts, or control your music. Facebook Messenger has a chatbot called M that can do just about anything for you, even prank your friends.