Since originally writing this article, many people with far more expertise in these fields than myself have indicated that, while impressive, what Google have achieved is evolutionary, not revolutionary. In the very least, it's fair to say that I'm guilty of anthropomorphising in parts of the text. I've left the article's content unchanged, because I think it's interesting to compare the gut reaction I had with the subsequent comments from experts in the field. I strongly encourage readers to browse the comments beneath the version of this piece published on Medium.com In the closing weeks of 2016, Google published an article which quietly sailed under most people's radar.

Sharing emotion-driven narratives that resonate with other people is something humans are quite good at. We've been sitting around campfires telling stories for tens of thousands of years, and we still do it. One reason why is because it's an effective way to communicate: We remember stories. But what makes for good storytelling? Mark Magellan, a writer and designer at Ideo U, puts it this way: "To tell a story that someone will remember, it helps to understand his or her needs. The art of storytelling requires creativity, critical-thinking skills, self-awareness, and empathy."

Google is increasingly relying on machine learning to order search results, increasing concerns among travel brands about how they'll continue to be ranked. Sure, Google's use of machine learning might not be anything new, but understanding how it's using this technology is vital for the sector which can sometimes struggle to satisfy its notoriously fickle and savvy customer base. NB: This is an analysis by Daniel Bensley, travel industry lead at Qubit. To me, this report highlights a wider challenge for the industry around our approach to AI and machine learning techniques. Whether it's Google changing its search ranking metrics or technology's impact on jobs in the sector, headlines around AI are often more likely to spark fear rather than excitement.

Microsoft has announced that users will have to update to the new version of Skype for desktop in order to continue using the program beyond this month. From 1 March, people will no longer be able to log in to version 7.16 (and older builds) of Skype for Windows desktop, or version 7.18 (and older) of Skype for Mac. The company hasn't given users a great deal of notice, having only announced the update on 3 February. 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.

Leila Kosseim, associate professor in Concordia's Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, and a recently-graduated doctoral student, Shamima Mithun, have developed a system called BlogSum that has potentially vast applications. It allows an organization to pose a question and then find out how a large number of people talking online would respond. The system is capable of gauging things like consumer preferences and voter intentions by sorting through websites, examining real-life self-expression and conversation, and producing summaries that focus exclusively on the original question. "Huge quantities of electronic texts have become easily available on the Internet, but people can be overwhelmed, and they need help to find the real content hiding in the mass of information," explains Kosseim, one of the lead researchers at Concordia's Computational Linguistics Laboratory (CLaC lab). Analyzing informally-written language poses unique challenges compared to analyzing, for example, a news article.

Now, scientists have demonstrated an automated system that uses artificial intelligence and cutting-edge image processing to rapidly examine large numbers of individual Caenorhabditis elegans, a species of nematode widely used in biological research. Beyond replacing existing manual examination steps using microfluidics and automated hardware, the system's ability to detect subtle differences from worm-to-worm -- without human intervention -- can identify genetic mutations that might not have been detected otherwise. By allowing thousands of worms to be examined autonomously in a fraction of the time required for conventional manual screening, the technique could change the way that high throughput genetic screening is carried out using C. elegans. Details of the research were scheduled to be reported August 19th in the advance online publication of the journal Nature Methods. The research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Karthigayan Muthukaruppanof Manipal International University in Selangor, Malaysia, and co-workers have developed a system using a genetic algorithm that gets better and better with each iteration to match irregular ellipse fitting equations to the shape of the human mouth displaying different emotions. They have used photos of individuals from South-East Asia and Japan to train a computer to recognize the six commonly accepted human emotions -- happiness, sadness, fear, angry, disgust, surprise -- and a neutral expression. The upper and lower lip is each analyzed as two separate ellipses by the algorithm. "In recent years, there has been a growing interest in improving all aspects of interaction between humans and computers especially in the area of human emotion recognition by observing facial expression," the team explains. Earlier researchers have developed an understanding that allows emotion to be recreated by manipulating a representation of the human face on a computer screen. Such research is currently informing the development of more realistic animated actors and even the behavior of robots.

If computers are rendered capable of recognising speech it will one day be the norm to give commands by voice rather than via a keyboard. "Speaking" with a mobile phone is already commonplace for many people. The technology can also be used for searching through an audio archive for files or films on the Internet. But achieving good speech recognition is a difficult task. Spoken language differs widely from written language and there is wide variation in spoken language between individuals, such as differences in dialects.

To date, although robot designers have achieved very precise movements, such movements are performed at very high speed, require strong forces and are power consuming. This approach cannot be applied to robots that interact with humans, as a malfunction might be potentially dangerous. To solve this challenge, University of Granada researchers have implemented a new cerebellar spiking model that adapts to corrections and stores their sensorial effects; in addition, it records motor commands to predict the action or movement to be performed by the robotic arm. This cerebellar model allows the user to articulate a state-of-the-art robotic arm with extraordinary mobility. The developers of the new cerebellar model have obtained a robot that performs automatic learning by extracting the input layer functionalities of the brain cortex.

Seagate supported the Thailand Humanoid Robot Soccer Championship, in which students designed their own soccer-playing machines. Hanuman Team from King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) emerged as champions of this year's competition. The team won a cash prize of 200,000 baht and will represent Thailand at the World Robocup Soccer Humanoid League 2013 in Osaka, Japan, next year. Thailand's Humanoid Robot Soccer Championship 2012 was jointly organized by Seagate Technology (Thailand) Limited, the Thai Robotics Society (TRS), FIBO of King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi and the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC). This year saw 11 teams from 8 universities battling for the chance to represent Thailand in the World Robocup Soccer Humanoid League 2013.