This year's news about what artificial intelligence (AI) can do in the arts has been both exciting and scary. Neural networks have learnt to paint like masters and compose sophisticated music. Those of us in creative endeavours might be as endangered by technological advances as blue-collar workers are often said to be - though we are protected by certain limitations that technology is never likely to overcome. Last summer, a team of Russian developers released Prisma, a mobile app based on the work of some German AI researchers. The neural network behind it could redraw an image using techniques it had learnt from studying the oeuvre of a number of painters, including Vincent Van Gogh and Edvard Munch. The end product was impressive: Prisma could reproduce brushstrokes and palettes, using only a photo for guidance, almost the way a human painter could have.

The first step away from search engines and towards intelligent assistants was marked by Google's launch in 2012 of Google Now, which offered "information that you need throughout your day, before you even ask". It tried to predict what users might want – such as weather reports, sports results or public transport updates – and this information would appear on your phone without the need to type anything into a search bar. By 2016 this had evolved into Google Assistant, capable of having a two-way dialogue with the user, and designed with wearable technologies in mind. You can ask it to remember things (such as codes or passwords) and it learns to recognise things you do regularly so it can offer relevant suggestions. It can also look at what is on your phone screen to get'context' for what you are doing – for example if you are discussing going to a rock-climbing centre with a friend, it can show you prices and directions.

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This year's news about what artificial intelligence can do in the arts has been both exciting and scary. Neural networks have learned to paint like masters and compose sophisticated music. Those of us in creative endeavors might be as endangered by technological advances as blue-collar workers are often said to be--though we are protected by certain limitations that technology is never likely to overcome. Last summer, a team of Russian developers released Prisma, a mobile app based on the work of some German artificial intelligence researchers. The neural network behind it could redraw an image using techniques it had learned from studying the oeuvre of a number of painters, including Vincent Van Gogh and Edvard Munch. The end product was impressive: Prisma could reproduce brushstrokes and palettes, using only a photo for guidance, almost the way a human painter could have.

In 2005, Atlanta-based voiceover artist Susan Bennett recorded hundreds of hours of audio for a text-to-speech company. Six years later, on 4 October 2011, she quickly learned that those recordings had been licensed by Apple for the iPhone 4S's built-in personal assistant, Siri. Overnight, Susan's voice became globally recognised, whether she liked it or not. In this week's episode of Chips with Everything, Matt Shore speaks to Susan about her experiences of being thrust into the world of Siri and how her life has changed since that fateful day. Follow us on Twitter: @mattshore and @guardianaudio Tell us how technology affects you.

And how can they each illuminate the nature of mind and self? These were some of the questions on Siri Hustvedt's mind as she began her new book of essays, A Woman Looking At Men Looking At Women. Hustvedt herself has an omnivorous professional history that blends the two worlds in unconventional ways. She is an essayist, poet, and novelist (best known for her recent novel The Blazing World), an English literature PhD by training, and lectures on psychiatry at the Weill Medical School of Cornell. In her essays, Hustvedt uses this eclectic expertise to jump freely from the arts to empirical science and back again.

While we think of them as the latest thing in tech, conversational interfaces have been around for quite some time. From Cleverbot and Smarter Child to labyrinthine phone trees ("say REPRESENTATIVE"), we have been trying for years to build technology that mimics how we interact with humans. Recent advances have positioned these tools for substantial growth and brought them back to the foreground of the conversation on the future of technology. Conversational interfaces for both speech and text have risen to prominence thanks to virtual assistants or "chatbots," such as Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa. Also, text-based chatbots, or messaging platforms such as Slack and Facebook Messenger, have seen a huge spike in utilization.

How to start learning Artificial Intelligence?Software Development 0 comments by Thomas De Vos Artificial intelligence (AI) is a sub-division of computer science. The main goal is to enable a smart device (e.g. First mentioned back in the 50s in the paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", written by mathematician Alan Turing, artificial intelligence is now a very popular field, and we have advanced technology to "blame" for that. This article is about learning Artificial Intelligence and we will give you a comprehensive guide that you can use as a starting point towards learning artificial intelligence. Today's AI-based computers can beat chess champions, so it's safe to say that little by little the world is taking a turn. Some people say that artificial intelligence will save humanity; others, claim it will destroy it. The truth is, we don't really know what AI is capable of. Artificial intelligence is a fascinating area of computer science we all want to know more about. We've seen cars drive by themselves and computers understand our basic needs and wants. Robotics is yet another sub-field of computer science that depends entirely on AI. Advanced technology has gotten to a whole new level; a level that some people just can't accept. Artificial intelligence studies how people's brain think, learn, work, and make decisions.

Virtually everywhere you look, Bay Area tech businesses are running into walls. Smartphones were revolutionary and lucrative, but the U.S. market is saturated, and Apple's iPhone sales have fallen for three quarters. The "app economy" has matured, with more people using existing apps than downloading new ones. And Facebook, which has filled users' news feeds with so many ads it can barely add more, is predicting its revenue growth will slump next year. Silicon Valley needs its next big thing, a focus for the concentrated brain power and innovation infrastructure that have made this region the world leader in transformative technology.

If a voice inquiry, Siri invokes a speech-to-text mechanism that transcribes what has been spoken to text. This is very difficult, by the way, particularly given the number of languages in which Siri works.