Artificial intelligence has become such a catchy selling point for online services that some companies have turned to a bit of sleight of hand -- and voice -- to convince people they have smart machines working for them. Several companies have employed humans to impersonate chatbots performing scheduling and other services. A prototype for Facebook's AI assistant for Messenger, called M, had people behind the curtain calling M's shots for two and a half years before taking humans out of the equation in January. Amazon's Mechanical Turk reportedly used people to transcribe some expense and benefits documents Amazon's touted SmartScan software was supposed to be doing but couldn't handle. To anyone who has dreaded the labyrinthine house of mirrors automated call systems have become, it might seem odd companies want to pretend to have a machine on the other end of the line rather than a human, but there are several factors at play.

This week's news has once again been dominated by the subject of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The most exciting piece of AI news has come out of IBM, this week the people behind Watson have revealed Project Debater. Project debater can argue with people, now that might not sound like a good thing but it actually displays a range of impressive technical feats. Firstly, it can understand the context of what someone is saying during a debate which shows how far the technologies used in chatbots or conversational AI have come. This is especially true when you take into account the fact that when it gave a response for its side of the debate, it created the narrative for its argument.

Alicia Silverstone's bubble-headed Cher, from the 1995 comedy Clueless, would go gonzo over Amazon's hands-free camera, the Echo Look. She said in the film: "I don't rely on mirrors, so I always take Polaroids." That girl knew a mirror distorts your image, but a picture--or, better yet, a video clip--gives you a pretty good idea of how your clothing looks to other people. The Echo Look is a $200 voice-activated camera that snaps full-body photos and six-second video clips of your daily looks. It comes with a companion app that does two things: It tracks what you wear each day, and it uses that information to offer up fashion advice (including suggestions of complementary togs you can buy from Amazon). Announced in April 2017, but until recently available for purchase only by invitation, the Look is a significant departure from the rest of the Echo lineup.

Vienna's residents and tourists do not have to rely on the kindness of strangers or scroll through long lists of website links to find parking, restrooms or other critical information. They can simply use WienBot, the Austrian city's chatbot. Available via Facebook Messenger, WienBot provides answers to an array of user questions and continuously learns from the interactions -- even pre-empting questions as it captures the most frequently used terms. WienBot is a perfect example of how governments can use artificial intelligence (AI) to go digital, one of the biggest challenges for cities, states and nations worldwide. Bettina Tratz-Ryan, research vice president at Gartner, says developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-powered chatbots will allow government CIOs to customize and improve the delivery of services for the citizens they serve.

Get your day started with a video from Virgin Galactic's latest test flight and then go for a ride with Roberto Baldwin in Lamborghini's Huracán Performante Spyder. One step closer to commercial service.Virgin Galactic breaks Mach 2 in third powered test flight After being released from the VMS Eve carrier craft, the VSS Unity flew higher than it has previously, reaching a peak altitude of 170,800 feet and entering the mesosphere for the first time. It also reached speeds of Mach 2.47 during its 42-second rocket burn. All leading to Unpacked on August 9th.Samsung teases improved battery life for the Galaxy Note 9 The first in a series of teasers leading up to the launch of Samsung's next Galaxy Note, the company highlighted how frustrating it is when your battery is running down. The implication is that this new device will eliminate that, and rumors have suggested it could pack a 4,000mAh battery inside.

APAC regional legal technology conference LexTech has launched an AI assistant to help facilitate a better conference experience, making its services available through Facebook Messenger -- a first in the local legal tech industry. Called, LEXi, the Artificial Intelligence chatbot was developed by Malaysia's CanChat and will focus on addressing enquiries of LexTech delegates in real-time via Facebook Messenger. Notably, between now and August 31, 2018, potential conference delegates can secure a 20% discount code by asking LEXi for one. Lee Su Wen, Director of the LexTech Conference 2018 said that: "By leveraging on AI capabilities, the chatbot is a smart and intuitive way to provide information and directions to our audience with great convenience and speed. With LEXi taking on these tasks, we are now able to more efficiently re-allocate our manpower to the more strategically-intensive departments, and by extension creating a better experience for all delegates."

Here is an assortment of artificial intelligence quotes. Once you read some of the quotes it is easy to see why AI is so important. "I am telling you, the world's first trillionaires are going to come from somebody who masters AI and all its derivatives,and applies it in ways we never thought of." "Google will fulfill its mission only when its search engine is AI-complete. You guys know what that means? "Artificial Intelligence is the new electricity." "Every serious technology company now has an Artificial Intelligence team in place.

We propose a tensor-based model that fuses a more granular representation of user preferences with the ability to take additional side information into account. The model relies on the concept of ordinal nature of utility, which better corresponds to actual user perception. In addition to that, unlike the majority of hybrid recommenders, the model ties side information directly to collaborative data, which not only addresses the problem of extreme data sparsity, but also allows to naturally exploit patterns in the observed behavior for a more meaningful representation of user intents. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model on several standard benchmark datasets. The general formulation of the approach imposes no restrictions on the type of observed interactions and makes it potentially applicable for joint modelling of context information along with side data.

On Thursday, the tech company said it's releasing the first of several home assistant devices with screens slated for the summer. The Smart Display, built by Lenovo and running Google's Android Things software for internet-connected devices, hits stores this weekend. Like Google's Home, Home Mini and Home Max, the Smart Display lets you control it with your voice, and focuses on playing music. But it also has either an 8-inch or 10-inch screen, on which you can watch YouTube videos, have a video chat or get better answers to some questions. The Smart Display starts at $200.

Google has taken the wraps off of the personality behind its AI-powered Assistant. To give Assistant some flair, the tech giant employs a huge group of comedians, 'empathy experts,' sound engineers, game designers, animators, illustrators and graphic designers, according to Yahoo Finance. As part of the Personality team, they're charged with incorporating various Easter eggs, conversational elements and comedic quips into users' interactions with Assistant. Google has taken the wraps off of the personality behind its AI-powered Assistant. The Personality team designs Assistant's voice user interface (VUI), or the system that enables humans to interact with Google's AI software.