Early detection and routine follow up of dementia are important because it can slow down the progress of the disease. The most common way to detect dementia is based on cognitive tests. The tests are usually done in the clinical setup with the help of a psycho-metrically trained examiner. Revised Hasegawa’sDementia Scale (HDS-R) is one of the prominent screening tests for dementia. We propose a method for early dementia detection by using a Virtual Personal Assistant (VPA) on a computer that has a natural language user interface, such asAmazon Echo, Apple Siri, Google Home, Microsoft Cortana, Soft bank Pepper, Sharp RoBoHon, etc. In our proposal, we consider HDS-R as a guideline to examine dementia. A VPA extracts the necessary features from the verbal and interactive response of the patient to compute the level of dementia.Such implicit checking is physically and mentally much comfortable for old people. We believe the proposed method will be able to contribute future society.

Our work uses the notion of theory of mind to enable an interactive agent to keep track of the state of knowledge, goals and intentions of the human user, and to engage in and initiate sophisticated interactive behaviors using decision-theoretic paradigm of maximizing expected utility. Currently, systems like Google Now and Siri mostly react to user’s requests and commands using hand-crafted responses, but they cannot initiate intelligent communication and plan for longer term interactions. The reason is that they lack a clearly defined general objective of the interaction. Our main premise is that communication and interaction are types of action, so planning for communicative and interactive actions should be based on a unified framework of decisiontheoretic planning. To facilitate this, the system’s state of knowledge (a mental model) about the world has to include probabilistic representation of what is known, what is uncertain, and how things change as different events transpire. Further, the state of user’s knowledge and intentions (the theory of the user’s mind) needs to include precise specification of what the system knows, and how uncertain it is, about the user’s mental model, and about her desires and intentions. The theories of mind may be further nested to form interactive beliefs. Finally, decision-theoretic planning proposes that desirability of possible sequences of interactive and communicative actions be assessed as expected utilities of alternative plans.We describe our preliminary implementation using the Open CYC system, called MARTHA, and illustrate it in action using two simple interactive scenarios.

This article presents a novel approach to monitoring athletes' behavioral changes to predict a decline in motivation. When the system detects such a decline, it refers the athlete to her coach, along with a concise explanation of the detected behavioral changes. The coach thus has all the information needed for a prompt, targeted intervention.

Cortana is the AI-powered digital assistant that has one of its homes in Windows 10. It can do various tasks such as opening apps, doing simple math, suggest discount coupons, etc. But an Israel-based researcher duo, Tal Be'ery and Amichai Shulman, have discovered another thing Cortana can do. It can provide hackers a way to hack a Windows 10 PC, even if it's locked. Locking your PC is fundamental to preventing others from accessing it when you leave it unattended.

AI is poised to drive the next wave of technological disruption across industries. Like previous technology revolutions in Web and mobile, however, there will be huge dividends for those organizations who can harness this technology for competitive advantage. I spend a lot of time working with customers, many of whom are investing significant time and effort in building AI applications for this very reason. From the outside, these applications couldn't be more diverse – fraud detection, retail recommendation engines, knowledge sharing – but I see a sweeping opportunity across the board: context. Without context (who the user is, what they are searching for, what similar users have searched for in the past, and how all these connections play together) these AI applications may never reach their full potential.

IBM is today launching Watson Assistant, a new service aimed at companies looking to build voice-activated virtual assistants for their own products. Want your hotel's rooms to remember a guest's preferences for air-con? Or your car's dashboard to be controllable via voice interface? IBM's message to companies is: we can help you build that. It's an interesting pitch, especially as voice assistants like Amazon's Alexa are being integrated into new arenas.

IBM has just become the latest tech giant to tackle the voice assistant market. On Tuesday, IBM launched Watson Assistant, an AI service that companies can integrate into a variety of platforms, like cars, hotel rooms and home appliances, among other things. Don't expect IBM to launch its own smart speaker anytime soon, however. IBM's Watson Assistant is a digital assistant that can be molded into a variety of products, like Harman's digital cockpit (pictured), which learns about the driver with each interaction Watson Assistant is designed to be different from Amazon's Alexa, Google Assistant or Apple's Siri in that it isn't tethered to a specific device. What's more, IBM describes Watson Assistant as an'enterprise assistant,' meaning that it's aimed at helping companies improve their consumer experience.

Even if you don't have a home packed with smart devices, a smart speaker can still be a great way to play music and get information. So if you're looking for your first one or just want to add to an existing setup, Best Buy is offering its exclusive Insignia Voice smart Bluetooth speaker with built-in Google Assistant for just $36.99 right now. The Bluetooth speaker looks like a standard alarm clock but it comes with Google Assistant built in for hands-free control. Once connected to your smartphone, the speaker can access a variety of popular online streaming services as well as your own Google Play music library to listen to a wide range of music in multiple rooms at once. And if you have other smart devices in your home, you'll be able to control them as well just by asking Google Assistant to turn off the lights or turn up the thermostat.

Innovation is good; financial innovation is bad. It gave us the global financial crisis, after all, along with multibillion-dollar bailouts for entities such as AIG Financial Products, which almost nobody had heard of before they suddenly turned out to pose a mortal threat to the entire economy. That said, there are two financial innovations that are generally considered to have been clearly positive for society. One is the ATM, for reasons which should be self-explanatory. The other is passive investing.

A strategic tool for enterprises, it introduces genuine reactivity into information systems facing business changes, and as a result, provides a significant edge in optimizing costs. Alexa is Amazon's voice service and the brain behind tens of millions of devices like the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Show. Alexa provides capabilities, or skills, that enable customers to create a more personalized experience. There are now tens of thousands of skills from companies like Starbucks, Uber, and Capital One as well as other innovative designers and developers. You might want to keep up with your fitness goals by getting Fitbit data with Alexa.