Artificial intelligence has been a dream in technology ever since Alan Turing first wrote his seminal paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Now, thanks to advances in hardware power and algorithm design, AI is a growth industry – and it has no shortage of vocal advocates. These are some of the most vocal and influential leaders working on artificial intelligence, robotics, chat bots, virtual reality, the ethics of autonomous software and vehicles and more. Organizes the London AI meet up and the annual Research and Applied AI Summit. Thanks to all who kicked off discussion on the back of my piece on "6 areas of #AI/ML to watch closely" Keep going! She has expertise in designing intelligent systems into working AI systems to help understand natural intelligence.

Twitter wants to do a better job of policing bullies who tweet, and Twitter vice-president of data strategy Chris Moody declared from the keynote stage at IBM's InterConnect conference this week that it is using IBM Watson technology to help meet that challenge. "We have had some abuse on the platform. We've talked very publicly in the in the last few months and said our number 1 priority is stop the abuse," he said. Twitter announced updates earlier this month to help reduce abusive content, by being more proactive in identifying those who use Twitter to harass others. The company explained the recent updates in a blog post that made clear how it could intervene earlier when it sees abuse.

Twitter is partnering with IBM to use its AI technology Watson on its continuous fight against online abuse, the site's vice-president of data strategy Chris Moody said at IBM's InterConnect conference this week. Watson can analyze and interpret data, including unstructured text, images, audio and video, which could help Twitter stop trolls. "Watson is really good at understanding nuances in language and intention," said Moody. "What we want to do is be able to identify abuse patterns early and stop this behavior before it starts." Moody said "early testing is super promising" and will return to the conference next year to talk about results of the tool.

British and Irish TV watchers with the latest version of set-top box from satellite program provider Sky have just had a complimentary upgrade. The box is called Sky Q and has many features including the capability to watch programs on your iPad, upstairs TV and so on. It also provides access to a massive collection of 4K UHD content, including movies, programs and live sport of any UK provider. The remote control has a touch-sensitive pad on it and from day one this has had a discreet microphone button on its edge. There is also a more basic remote without a touchpad but this doesn't have the microphone built in.

Sky has finally rolled out voice search, letting people control their TV just by talking to it. Until now, the feature had only been hinted at by a strange, mysterious button on the side of the remote. Now, when that's pressed, people will be able to ask their TV for whatever they want to watch. That doesn't simply mean asking for the name of films and TV shows, though the Sky Q box will handle those. They can also ask for something like the "Liverpool game", categories like "films featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone", or even asking for ratings, such as "Tom Hanks movies rated five stars".

Similar to the voice search features on Rokus, Amazon Fire TV streamers et al, Sky Qers can search through live TV and all on-demand content simply by speaking the names of actors, shows, films and directors into the Touch Remote's microphone. You can also search by genre, age rating, average reviews and other descriptors, as well as compound these for more specific searches -- Sky gives examples such as "Tom Hank's movies rated five stars" and "films with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone." It gets a little bit smarter than that, too. Phrases such as "live cricket on this weekend," "what's on Sky Atlantic tonight" and "Liverpool game" should turn up the search results you're after, so there's some contextual leeway. Sky has even thrown a bunch of easter eggs, letting you to track down classics by reciting popular lines.

Wherever you fall along these lines, you want to make sure that your taxes are accurately being prepared to ensure that you experience no issues with the IRS. H&R Block has introduced a new partnership with IBM Watson to bring its customers a new and improved tax preparation experience. Watson is an artificial intelligence technology that continuously learns from the data fed into its system. As more customers' tax information is processed by Watson, it will apply the knowledge it has retained in order to give tax preparers the best advice for their customers. The technology is so in-depth because it was given a large amount of data about tax laws and codes, allowing it to gain deeper insight into the varied situations that affect an individual's tax return.

IBM and PlayFab are teaming up to deliver better insights about gamers based on analysis from IBM's Watson artificial intelligence platform. Seattle-based PlayFab provides backend services for connected games on mobile devices and PCs. It provides things game developers need to run their games -- like player data storage, player relationship management, tournaments, in-game commerce, and leaderboards. IBM will take that data, crunch it, and come up with insights that help developers run their games better. It's a new way for IBM to participate in what market researcher Newzoo says is a $91 billion market.

As part of IBM's annual InterConnect conference in Las Vegas, the company is announcing a new machine learning course in partnership with workspace and education provider Galvanize to familiarize students with IBM's suite of Watson APIs. These APIs simplify the process of building tools that rely on language, speech and vision analysis. Going by the admittedly clunky name IBM Cognitive Course, the class will spend four weeks teaching the basics of machine learning and Watson's capabilities. Students will be able to take the class directly within IBM's Bluemix cloud platform. "Not everyone knows what to do with a Watson API," says Bryson Koehler, CTO of IBM Watson & IBM Cloud.

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