BARCELONA, Spain--Chatbots may be all the buzz for brands these days, but some tech execs anticipate it will be tough for brands to create them--much like they struggled to make branded apps. During a panel at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, execs from PayPal, Google, Adobe, Sprint and GupShup talked about how messaging apps are evolving as platforms for content and commerce. While voice technology and artificial intelligence have been big buzzwords in the industry thanks to Facebook's moves to create bots and apps like Kik and Line gaining steam, not all marketers have the resources to realistically create and manage them, argued Harper Reed, PayPal's entrepreneur in residence of next-generation commerce. "Brands don't know how to adapt these things for the technology that we find everyday and I think there's a lot of hurdles between a normal consumer brand in the West, for instance, to figure out what is their mobile strategy let alone what is their chat app strategy," he said. Harper used his company's own technology to explain marketers' problem.

The IBM CEO has been at Big Blue for more than three decades, we wanted to know how she keeps engaged, about IBM's future with artificial intelligence and what career tips she might have for young women interested in technology. These are questions she answered via email, just prior to the opening of HIMSS17, where she delivered the keynote. Q: You've been at IBM since 1981. How do you keep it fresh? A: As IBM has done throughout its 105-year history, we remain dedicated to leading the world into a more prosperous and progressive future.

Facebook has started using artificial intelligence to identify users who are potentially at risk of committing suicide. The social network has developed algorithms capable of scanning posts and comments for warning signs. These could be phrases such as "Are you okay?" or "I'm worried about you", or more general talk of sadness and pain. The AI tool would send such posts to a human review team, which would get in touch with the user thought to be at risk and offer help, in the form of contact details for support services or a chat with a member of staff through Facebook Messenger. The site had previously relied on other users reporting worrying updates.

People trying to comment on articles will now be forced to prove they understand what it's about. That's at least at Norwegian broadcaster NRK's website, which will present people who want to leave comments with a quiz that asks them about what the story is actually about. The creators of the quiz hope that asking people the questions will make sure that everyone on the comment actually understands it. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

CloudMinds, a Chinese startup developing cloud-intelligence-based services for robotics and other application areas, raised $100 million in a Series A funding round. Although no funder information was provided, seed financing was provided by SoftBank, Foxconn, Walden International and Keytone Ventures. Desktop Metal, a 3D metal printing startup based in Burlington, Mass., is gearing up to take its first product into production and raised $45 million from GV, BMW I Ventures and Lowe's Ventures. The company has now raised a total of $97 million. Other investors include NEA, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lux Capital, GE Ventures, Saudi Aramco, and Stratasys.

Machine learning is shaking up standard practices and enabling radical improvements around personalization, customer segmentation, and campaign performance. For early adopters of machine learning, statistics show they are edging out their competitors and creating impossible-to-ignore customer engagements. Predictive marketers who use machine learning are 2.9 times more likely to report revenue growth at rates higher than industry average, according to a Forrester Research study. They are also 2.1 times more likely to "occupy a commanding leadership position in the product/service markets they serve." Clearly, machine learning is giving these marketers an advantage.

The Big Data revolution in business has come about due to the huge increase in the amount of information we're able to capture and analyze, from an ever growing number of sources. It's the driving force behind a wider wave of technology-driven transformation which is taking place thanks to advances in fields such as automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Self-driving cars, personalized medicine and the "fourth industrial revolution" are all built on Big Data. But the growth in the amount of data available is just the start. Forward-thinkers are aware that the way we consume – and act on – this data has to evolve, too, if we want to unlock its true potential. Data socialization is a term that's being heard more frequently, and it's an attempt to tackle the ongoing (and often mission-critical) process of making sure the right data is in front of the right person – a decision maker – at the right time.

We share new announcements and research in the field of deep learning.

This post highlights some of the possible economic implications of the so-called "Fourth Industrial Revolution" -- whereby the use of new technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to transform entire industries and sectors. Some economists have argued that, like past technical change, this will not create large-scale unemployment, as labour gets reallocated. However, many technologists are less optimistic about the employment implications of AI. In this blog post we argue that the potential for simultaneous and rapid disruption, coupled with the breadth of human functions that AI might replicate, may have profound implications for labour markets. We conclude that economists should seriously consider the possibility that millions of people may be at risk of unemployment, should these technologies be widely adopted.

By transforming their networks and operations with the newest technologies, mobile operators could double their cash-flow conversion within five years. The past several years have been tough for telecom companies. Their revenue and cash flows1 1. Cash flow is measured here in terms of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) minus capital expenditures. Consumption of mobile data boomed, as masses of new wireless customers used their handsets to spend ever-increasing amounts of time online. Companies responded by investing heavily in their wireless networks, even as subscriber growth slowed. As a result, the average ratio of capital spending to revenues has remained stubbornly high, at around 15 percent, for the major players (Exhibit 1).