We all want a robot butler, but what if that faithful mechanical servant could be turned into a live-in spy, or even a robotic assailant? With the Internet of Things rapidly creating astonishingly wide security holes where none existed before, researchers are sounding the alarm that robots could make our current problems seem cute by comparison. A study titled "Hacking Robots Before Skynet," by Seattle-based IOActive Labs reports that security vulnerabilities run the gamut of manufacturers and distributors. You might not have heard of companies like Ubtech Robotics or Universal Robots, but these are the names that make up most of the nascent non-industrial robot business, and their'bots aren't immune to cyberthieves. These robots were found to be vulnerable to all the cyber attacks you'd expect from a new industry pushing always-online software.

Artificial intelligence startup Ozlo thinks it has a solution for situations where virtual assistants fail in their responses: Getting the bots to ask questions back. Ozlo is launching a trio of software packages for other companies to enhance the virtual assistants they build. They're aimed at making those assistants more sophisticated, including getting them to ask clarifying questions when they don't understand a user request. Current virtual assistants, meaning conversational apps and bots like Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa, "have this problem with being very brittle," Ozlo CEO Charles Jolley told Recode. He's referring to those moments when Siri says, "I didn't quite get that," or where Google Assistant says, "Sorry, I don't know how to do that yet," without addressing what part of the question the virtual assistants don't understand.

You don't have to think back very far to remember the time when disruptive start-ups and forward thinking businesses were championing a "digital first" strategy. Digital technology had been adopted by mainstream consumers and companies that failed to recognise it were being left behind. More recently, that slogan has been replaced for many businesses by a new one, "mobile first," and is not difficult to understand why. Today's consumers are constantly on their mobile. We use our mobiles on the train, while watching television, in bed and even while we are walking around real shops.

Line Corp., owner of Japan's most popular messaging service, is getting into the artificial intelligence market in a big way by outlining an ambitious plan that pits it against the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon. According to a report in Bloomberg News, Line Corp. is gearing up to launch a suite of AI software tools that will enable a digital assistant that speaks in Japanese and Korean. The assistant will be able to converse with users and provide weather and news via a dedicated smartphone app or a speaker that sits on the table and is called Wave, similar to Amazon's Echo. Line Corp., which unveiled the strategy during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, this week, said both the app and the speaker will come to the market between April and June. While Line faces a lot of competition, the company thinks it can stand out from the pack because of its local knowledge about the markets in which it is operating, including South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia.

Loyal readers know that I have frequently written about "the dawn of the robots" (which is the title of a Science Fiction book by famed author Isaac Asimov). A recent flurry of articles on the subject of our automated future has more than strengthened my belief that it will be A.I. 1 – Humanity 0 in the foreseeable future. It is not that I don't see the business benefits from automation or artificial intelligence. It is undoubtedly true that the Weather Channel app has become infinitely more accurate with the help of IBM's Watson. And now Watson will do my tax returns, too, courtesy of H&R Block.

The past decade has witnessed tremendous influx of technology across all aspects of business operations. Organizations are increasingly turning to automation, artificial intelligence and robotics to bring about a transformation in their revenue generation capability, reduction in costs and increase in efficiency. Indian banking leaders like ICICI and HDFC have piloted using humanoids/robots to bring about operational efficiency by intelligently automating many of the backend processes and customer facing areas. On a similar note, global banks like Mizuho and Sberbank use virtual assistants to enhance customer experience. Technological advances are increasingly being viewed as game changers in the ever evolving business landscape.

Significant advances in artificial intelligence over the past few years have broadened AI's reach into industries such as healthcare, finance and even retail. Businesses and consumers alike are benefiting from the rise of big data and the growth of AI techniques like deep learning and natural language processing. But we're still only scratching the surface of what is possible with AI, and the full impact of the technology may be years away. In the near-future, however, AI advances will give rise to increasingly powerful applications like personal assistants with more robust utility in the workplace and in our personal lives. These assistants could provide personalized information, help us make more informed decisions, and perhaps even provide physical assistance.

It's hard to believe the first personal computer was introduced only 40 years ago. Captivated by the implications of this intelligent machine, the world began to speculate on the next big thing for IT. And while the idea of self-driving cars or the "smart" home seemed like science fiction back then, the future is now and these innovations are real. Fast forward to 2017 – technology is directly shaping how people live, work, and even think. State-of-the-art technology allows visions to become printed realities.

Machine learning-powered social analysis enables you to pinpoint exactly what you're looking for (here, the brand Tide) by using example posts to train the algorithm to recognize the patterns of language that indicate that a post is about Tide the brand, instead of something else. Machine learning's ability to interpret the nuances of language and return the most relevant results reaches far beyond identifying brand mentions.

No billion-dollar machine could replace a doctor. But a $25 machine can tell you when you need one. In 1996, the ER at Cook County Hospital of Chicago used an algorithm to determine when a patient with chest pain was in danger of having a heart attack and was thus worth one of its scarce hospital beds. Using a systematic, flowchart-based approach of basic tests, the algorithm proved not only to be quick and efficient, but accurate: It sorted 70 percent more patients into the low-risk category, but caught a higher percentage of heart attacks (95 percent) than human doctors (75-89 percent). And this was before any deep computing was involved.