Humans are unique in their ability to learn from, understand the world through and communicate with language… Or are they? Perhaps not for long, if Dr. Layla El Asri, a Research Manager at Microsoft Research Montreal, has a say in it. She wants you to be able to talk to your machine just like you'd talk to another person. The hard part is getting your machine to understand and talk back to you like it's that other person. Today, Dr. El Asri talks about the particular challenges she and other scientists face in building sophisticated dialogue systems that lay the foundation for talking machines. She also explains how reinforcement learning, in the form of a text game generator called TextWorld, is helping us get there, and relates a fascinating story from more than fifty years ago that reveals some of the safeguards necessary to ensure that when we design machines specifically to pass the Turing test, we design them in an ethical and responsible way. Layla El Asri: In a video game, most of the time you only have a few actions that you can take. You just need to learn when you should go right, when you should go left, when you should go up, when you should go down. But when it comes to dialogue, you need to learn how to make a sentence that is grammatically correct, and then you need to learn how to make a sentence that makes sense in the global context of the dialogue, or a sentence that brings new information in the dialogue that is going to make the person you are talking to satisfied with the sentence. Your action space is just huge because it's not just up/down, right/left, it's all the sentences you could imagine! Host: You're listening to the Microsoft Research Podcast, a show that brings you closer to the cutting-edge of technology research and the scientists behind it. Host: Humans are unique in their ability to learn from, understand the world through and communicate with language… Or are they? Perhaps not for long, if Dr. Layla El Asri, a Research Manager at Microsoft Research Montreal, has a say in it. She wants you to be able to talk to your machine just like you'd talk to another person.

Armani Beauty unveiled its first dedicated pop-up in West Hollywood earlier this month, celebrating its unveiling with a roster of celebrities, including Dakota Fanning and Katherine Schwarzenegger, and a handful of product exclusives. The all-red 2,000-square-foot Armani Box is so far the only place in the U.S. to have the brand's new Power Fabric High Coverage Stretchable Concealer and the Foundation Balm, which will roll out nationally in March. Also, there's a vending machine on hand that delivers take-home samples as well as other technology such as mirrors that show the shopper what a particular lip color will look like on the person. Tim Quinn, Giorgio Armani Beauty celebrity makeup artist, said the Melrose Place location was "an iconic spot for someone to discover" and that although the offering was "soup to nuts, skin care through fragrance," the pop-up has a focused and curated feel. "The brand is known for foundation," said Quinn, adding that he often recommends his clients have three different foundations -- one each for weekends, evenings and workdays.

Graduates are to be given the chance to become qualified experts in Artificial Intelligence through a new set of masters courses and work-based placements. The move aims to drive up skills in the AI sector with courses and placement being funded by Google's Deepmind and British security and defence giant BAE Systems. This research for Doctoral Training will be made available over five years as part of the scheme. Graduates are to be given the chance to become qualified experts in artificial intelligence (AI) through a new set of masters courses and work-based placements. Advances in modern computing technologies have created an explosion of major breakthroughs in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

Remember shortcuts you could enact with a computer keyboard? Using a particular combination of CNTL, ALT and FN, you could quickly scroll through documents, open and close programs, and move elements around. They still exist, of course. But nowadays, with so many tricks, niches and shortcuts, those special operations look downright quaint. Many operations are well known, and most of them are tiny and frivolous.

SAN FRANCISCO - Samsung Electronics Co. unveiled a smartphone Wednesday that when folded open can be used as a tablet, becoming the first major manufacturer to offer the feature as it strives to stoke excitement in a slumping market. The South Korean giant also appeared to get the jump on rivals by announcing the first smartphone for fifth-generation -- or 5G -- wireless networks, while stepping up its efforts in artificial intelligence and wearables. The Galaxy Fold, unveiled at a San Francisco event, serves as a smartphone with a 4.6-inch display but also opens like a book to become a 7.3-inch tablet. "We are giving you a device that doesn't just define a new category, it defies category," said Samsung's Justin Denison at the event. The Fold will be available April 26, starting at $1,980, the company said.

Artificial Intelligence is not just a buzz word, lots of innovations are happening with AI. There are various solutions which are helping industries to grow smartly. Along with manufacturing, it is also benefiting healthcare, education and other verticals as well. Apart from industries, AI is also empowering our personal lives. There are multiple artificial intelligence applications (Apps) which are making our life easier. Previously we talked about Artificial Intelligence trends and impact on various verticals.

You sit down to watch a movie and ask Netflix for help. Zoolander 2?") The Netflix recommendation algorithm predicts what movie you'd like by mining data on millions of previous movie-watchers using sophisticated machine learning tools. And then the next day you go to work and every one of your agencies will make hiring decisions with little idea of which candidates would be good workers; community college students will be largely left to their own devices to decide which courses are too hard or too easy for them; and your social service system will implement a reactive rather than preventive approach to homelessness because they don't believe it's possible to forecast which families will wind up on the streets. You'd love to move your city's use of predictive analytics into the 21st century, or at least into the 20th century. You just hired a pair of 24-year-old computer programmers to run your data science team. But should they be the ones to decide which problems are amenable to these tools? Or to decide what success looks like? You're also not reassured by the vendors the city interacts with.

How do companies like Amazon and Netflix know precisely what you want? Whether it's that new set of speakers that you've been eyeballing, or the next Black Mirror episode -- their use of predictive algorithms has made the job of selling you stuff ridiculously efficient. But as much as we'd all like a juicy conspiracy theory, no, they don't employ psychics. They use something far more magical -- mathematics. Today, we'll look at an approach called collaborative filtering.

Facebook is serious about joining the AI assistant race. The social media giant has been expanding its effort to create its own artificial intelligence chips, Yann Lecun, Facebook's chief AI scientist, told the Financial Times. Facebook's hope is that its AI chips could one day power a voice assistant with the'common sense' to carry out a full conversation with humans and even rival voice assistants created by the likes of Amazon and Apple. Facebook is serious about joining the AI assistant race. The social media giant has been expanding its effort to create its own artificial intelligence chips, Facebook's AI lead said'In terms of new uses, one thing Facebook would be interested in is offering smart digital assistants - something that has a level of common sense,' Lecun told the FT.

Samsung's newest, shiniest phones, the Galaxy S10 line, come with a Bixby button just like the company's previous devices, but this time around, there's a twist: The key is completely customizable. S10 owners can remap the Bixby button to open any app with a single or double press, according to The Verge. Even if you map the Bixby button to a third-party app, holding it down will always open Samsung's virtual assistant. See? Compromise is possible in 2019, after all. Previous Galaxy phones have included a dedicated Bixby button in the same spot, just under the volume controls on the left side of the phone, and it's been a cumbersome stumbling block for many users.