The study entailed consumer-led research conducted by the University of Goldsmiths, and the report provides guidelines for brands developing their own customer-facing bots in preparation for an AI first world. Its recommendations are informed by a thought-provoking set of findings: not least that people prefer to confide in a bot when it comes to finance and medical issues, but still like to know when a bot is a bot. In other words, bots should never be too humanoid. As one participant in the research commented: "I would prefer the interaction with the AI over the human for things like budgeting and managing my money. I think it would be quite intrusive if an actual person was trying to advise you on your spending, but if you could set an AI goals to manage your money better, and you could get advice and tips, that would be a really nice feature."

How can I increase the retention in my chatbot? Alan Greenspan coined the perfect phrase "Irrational Exuberance." Websites like ChatBot Magazine are brought to you by the same people who brought you ZapChain (ridding the Bitcoin wave). Headlines about how everyone should build a bot are all the rage; it is the perfect environment for playing buzzword bingo. At the start of Q1 in 2017, the bot industry finds itself in phase three of Gartner's Hype Cycle, the "Through of Disillusionment."

This March, a Japanese company called Fukoku will fire 34 employees. They're planning to replace them with an artificial intelligent alternative that will never have to eat, sleep or complain. But more importantly: Fukoku's estimates indicate it will be 30% more productive. Wow, hate to be in their place! Fortunately, my job is too complicated and specific to be done by AI.

Apple is preparing to join the Partnership on AI, a group researching the uses of artificial intelligence, according to a Bloomberg News report late Wednesday. Apple's admission to the nonprofit group could be announced later this week, the report said. The Partnership's members are a Who's Who of tech heavyweights that includes Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft. It also includes IBM, the creator of the Watson supercomputer system that won the TV game show "Jeopardy!" The Partnership's mission is "to study and formulate best practices on AI technologies, to advance the public's understanding of AI, and to serve as an open platform for discussion and engagement about AI and its influences on people and society."

Driverless cars could be dangerous because of the time it takes for drivers to retake control if something goes wrong, scientists have warned. A new study found it could take 25 seconds for drivers to take the wheel in a non-emergency situation. It is feared this lag could cause driverless cars to swerve, make sudden lane changes or brake harshly if people do react fast enough. Research by the University of Southampton found drivers took up to 25.7 seconds when distracted to respond to a command to take over from the car's computer. Professor Neville Stanton, lead author, shown in Southampton's driving simulator But initial models are not expected to drive themselves for a full journey.

To promote new sci-fi movie MindGamers, someone thought it would be a good idea to strap a thousand audience members into "cognitive bands". Tying into the movie's debut, the bands will let researchers monitor and record the state of the audience's mind simultaneously during the feature, resulting in a "mass-mind state" image of everyone's feelings and brain activity. Details are thin on exactly what's being monitored, although the screening is bookended by introductory talks and Q and As from experts in neuroscience technology. That may help to distract from having to wear a headband throughout the entire feature. The movie (starring Sam Neill!) centers around a group of "brilliant young students" that create a "wireless neural network" that could link every mind in the world through a quantum computer. However, some kind of sinister threat arises from the idea connecting everyone's brains, and they have to do something about it.

We are entering the age of the CUI, the conversational user interface. Already, there are 8.2 million voice-first devices in homes, mostly Amazon Echos. By the end of this year, that number will balloon to 33 million. That's the prediction from VoiceLabs, a startup that helps companies monitor and measure people's interaction with their Alexa Skills or Google Actions. Skills and actions are integration points between Alexa or Google Assistant and your technology; they are the conversational user interface equivalent of apps on Android or iOS smartphones.

If there's one truth that the tech revolution has proven itself repeatedly, it's this: just because we can build something doesn't mean we should. Take, for instance, Google Glass, iTunes Ping, and Clippy (to say nothing of the smart fork.) Likewise, imagine an app that can take a snapshot of a student's homework assignment, chew on the questions using cloud-based artificial intelligence, and spit out the answers. In theory, this sounds great for students, yet terrible for learning -- that is, until you put Socratic to the test. "Every student today goes to the Internet, goes to Google, to ask all of their questions -- this is something that's happening anyway," says Shreyans Bhansali, the co-founder and head of engineering for the free homework-helping app that's currently topping Apple's App Store for education software. "We read the question, we figure out what they need to learn to answer it, and then we teach them that stuff."

London-based startup Digital Genius is targeting the contact centre with its deep learning technology. The Digital Genius neural network helps agents respond to common customer service queries quicker by first automatically sorting and labelling the metadata and then generating three potential responses, each with a level of certainty attached. Organisations can then set a threshold for automation, so responses the system views as 90 percent accurate could be automatically sent out - like a chatbot - and anything below is sent to the agent to review, for example. The startup claims it can reduce the average handling time for cases by 20 percent. This is especially important as organisations receive queries from more and more digital channels, including social media.

Apple is going to join a non-profit artificial intelligence research group founded by big members of the tech industry last year. The Partnership on AI was established by Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and IBM in September 2016. The organization's goal is "to study and formulate best practices, to advance the public's understanding of AI, and to serve as an open platform for discussion and engagement about AI and its influences on people and society." Bloomberg reports Apple is ready to join the group, indicating the company is willing to share more of its work in the AI field.