I'm struggling to think of another profession where'things' is a suitable description of a product, service or problem. Everything from a light bulb and a fridge to a car or a plane is now a'thing'. Because we haven't been vague enough already, we throw into the Internet of Things (IoT) quagmire some real esotericism in the form of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to deliver Smart solutions. Is IoT really an entirely new set of technologies? Industry rhetoric suggests a'sophistication of attack', whenever the latest botnet commandeers thousands of'things', but I'm not so sure what is sophisticated about hunting for default creds on a collection of cameras.

Over the past few years, the buzz about how artificial intelligence (AI) will impact the future of marketing has reached a fever pitch. But what will AI's role in marketing look like, and how can marketers start to prepare now for the future? AI is part of a larger wave of digital transformation that's impacting businesses and consumers around the globe. This transformation can be characterized in three ways. Firstly, technological interactions are becoming multi-device, multi-sensory experiences, with voice and facial recognition-based interactions.

Pac-Man might never have left the public eye, but with Wreck-it Ralph, Pixels and Ready Player One, the iconic elder statesman of gaming is now in front of people that may have never touched an arcade joystick. To that extent, Pac-Man's latest'game' makes sense -- it's arriving on Amazon's Alexa as a skill today. Pac-Man Stories is more bed-time tale than arcade throwback, and will encompass several stories aimed at the family. 'Pac-Man and the Ghastly Garbage' is the first title, and as Lee Kirton, Chief Pac-Man Officer (real title), explained to me, it's a "choose your own adventure" kind of experience. It'll combine moral decisions, interactions with characters and lightweight, kid-friendly puzzles.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are emerging as the most defining tech-marvel in this new wave of financial services. The technology, along with the abundance of data, has given way to several innovative FinTech business models. Several promising players now use AI to solve some of the major problems for customers in the banking and financial services industry – think chatbots, PFM, robo-advisors, and so on. Banks are never the ones to be left behind when it comes to tech adoption. With digital transformation and customer experience as the top most priority, banks are now banking on AI to deliver the next-gen service to their customers.

It's tempting to equate the analogy to a loss of revenue. I was fortunate to have been part of what I consider the definitive take on how BlackBerry lost its lead in mobile. Yet Apple is already deeply invested in sequential inference and digital assistants, having acquired, integrated, and re-shipped Siri half a decade ago, there no signs of existing businesses being put on hold or major external system transition being underway. And they've got billions in the bank. It's better to equate the analogy to a loss of relevance.

Thank God Facebook is finally offering a dating app. Who better to entrust with the most intimate parts of our lives than Mark Zuckerberg, the king of privacy? I assume Zuck will be building it off of one of the early projects that established him as a wunderkind: FaceMash. You may remember it – it's the one where he hacked into campus websites, collecting pictures that allowed Harvard students to rank each other by hotness. With Facebook dating, the FaceMash dream is at last becoming reality.

Speaking in San Jose, California at Facebook's F8 gathering of tech folks, startups and others, Zuckerberg said that 2018 has been an "intense year" just four months in. Attendees grab their seats at the Facebook F8 2018 developer conference held at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center on May 1, 2018. Facebook is mulling a plan to sell its upcoming smart speakers internationally before launching them in the U.S., as American users and politicians have increased their focus on Facebook and user privacy, according to two people who have had discussions with the company about the devices. The two devices, which Facebook had intended on announcing at its F8 Developer Conference on Tuesday, are the company's answer to Amazon's Echo and Alphabet's Google Home products. The speakers, one of which will come with a camera and a touch screen, will connect directly to Facebook Messenger to make chatting with friends and family through the service much easier.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere in our daily lives – search engines, social media, intelligent personal assistants such as Siri – and today's schoolchildren are a generation who will grow up with these AI technologies. I have a one year old daughter; it is distinctly possible that she does not need to learn how to drive when she grows up because self-driving vehicles will be the norm. As a computer scientist who works in a medical research institute, I witness firsthand how AI is transforming the way we screen our three-billion-character genome to discover disease-causing mutations, and detect cardiovascular risks by analysing data from wearable fitness trackers. Like it or not, AI will be an integral part of our children's future. The term AI may sound scary, possibly due to association with killer robots in science fiction.

Equally interesting will be how Match Group responds to Facebook's move. The owner of a slew of dating apps including Match, Tinder and OkCupid, among others, Match Group is a leader when it comes to dating communities. But with more than 2 billion monthly users, Facebook could quickly become the leader in the dating market.

Facebook's smart speakers may be hitting the shelves soon after all. The social media giant was set to release a pair of voice-activated smart speakers at its F8 developers conference this week, but ultimately delayed the launch in the wake of its massive privacy scandal. Now, Facebook is considering rolling out the devices internationally, before possibly bringing them stateside to the US, CNBC reported, citing sources familiar with the situation. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was expected to unveil a pair of smart speakers at the firm's 2018 F8 developers conference, but the firm put those plans on hold after its privacy scandal The devices would come with a smart assistant built in that's connected to Facebook's artificial intelligence technology called'M'. However, it seems that the firm ended its role as a text-based virtual assistant, and now may have plans for M to serve as the technology powering its voice-activated digital assistant.