Samsung Electronics wants to buy its way into the connected car market, with a plan to acquire Harman for US$8 billion. It's the latest in a line of acquisitions by Samsung, as it seeks to diversify its business beyond the slowing smartphone market. Other recently announced deals include last month's buy of artificial intelligence startup Viv Labs, which has developed a virtual personal assistant Samsung hopes to put in its consumer electronics products, and the June purchase of Joyent, a supplier of cloud services for the internet of things. Samsung only set up its automotive electronics team last December, with the goal of identifying business opportunities in the sector, and where previous acquisitions have been unabashedly about enhancing or adding capabilities to existing Samsung products, the strategy with Harman seems to be more about buying a position in a new market. Harman's best-known products are probably the headphones, Bluetooth speakers and home hi-fi systems it sells under brands such as JBL, AKG and Harman Kardon, but it makes around two-thirds of its revenue from audio electronics.

Recently, I needed to book a lunch meeting. To help coordinate, I asked Amy to assist and cc'd her on the email. "Amy," I wrote, "please help us find a time to meet. Let's plan for sushi at Tokyo Express on Spear Street." Amy looked at my calendar, found an open time suitable for everyone invited, and booked the meeting.

Seoul: Samsung Electronics Co. plans to equip its next Galaxy S smartphones with a Siri-like digital assistant, seeking to make a comeback after the global debacle that precipitated the death of its flawed Note 7 lineup. Samsung, which last month acquired US-based artificial intelligence software company Viv Labs Inc., said the Galaxy S8 slated for next year will come with AI-enabled features "significantly differentiated" from those of Apple Inc.'s Siri or Google, executive vice president Rhee In-jong told reporters. Those services now offer up potentially useful information from the weather to flight times based on user activity. The flagship Galaxy S line will prove crucial to salvaging Samsung's reputation in the wake of the fiasco surrounding a Note 7 device prone to bursting into flame. The recall and eventual cessation of the line is estimated to cost upwards of $6 billion and pushed profits at its mobile division to a record low in the September quarter.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not one big, specific technology. Rather, it is comprised of one or more building block technologies. So, to understand AI, you have to understand each of these nine building block technologies. Now, you could argue that there are more technologies than the ones listed here, but any additional technology can fit under one of these building blocks. Knowledge engineering is a process to understand and then represent human knowledge in data structures, semantic models, and heuristics (rules).

Apple announcements are like holidays in our office, and the new iOS release in September was no exception. Since then, AI assistant news has moved at warp speed. Every Alexa update is a new opportunity for fintech integration. Google, with its latest releases, is also now in the running. Add to this Bank of America's launch of a new AI chatbot, Erica, at Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, and the bank bot race is on.

Want to know if chatbots are gaining ground on apps? A Citi analyst, for example, reported that bots are growing at a much faster pace than mobile apps did at this same stage. In the realm of personal finance, bots have the real potential to radically improve the way we manage our money, weaving financial decisions into the fabric of our daily lives and giving us immediate insight into the long-term effects of our spending, saving, and investing habits. For instance, in the near future, when you walk into Starbucks, Siri might gently suggest that instead of spending $5 on a coffee this morning, perhaps you should put those dollars toward your child's college fund, which you've been neglecting lately. To further nudge you in the right direction, she might also let you know how that $5 investment in a college fund will appreciate over time and remind you that the single coffee purchase holds no long-term value. You compromise and opt for drip coffee instead of a latte, putting the leftover $2.50 into your child's 529 plan.

Fujitsu Reports Boost to Todai Robot's College Exam Scores A revolutionary AI technique is about to transform the self-driving car. Here's how Google Play is using AI to improve search Nvidia Boom Thanks to Artificial Intelligence: Can the Chipmaker Keep It Up? Stay up-to-date on the topics you care about. We'll send you an email alert whenever a news article matches your alert term. It's free, and you can add new alerts at any time.

Last week I attended IBM (IBM) World of Watson as both a speaker and an attendee, and today as I sit in my neighborhood Starbucks (SBUX) thinking about everything, all I can say is WOW! This was one of the most interesting, inspiring and amazing events I have ever attended. And we are still in the very early stages of Watson, Cognitive and AI. I invite you to follow me as I learn more and write more about the wonderful world of Watson, all the companies that work with it and how it will change our industries, our businesses and our lives. As a wireless analyst and columnist, I come at this world of Watson from the wireless, telecom, internet and television angle.

Andrew Heikkila is a tech enthusiast and writer from Boise, Idaho. More posts by this contributor: Let's start getting excited about robots taking our jobs Let's start getting excited about robots taking our jobs Let's start getting excited about robots taking our jobs Artificial intelligence has fascinated mankind for more than half a century, with the first public mention of computer intelligence recorded during a London lecture by Alan Turing in 1947. More recently, the public has been exposed to headlines that have increasingly contained references to the growing power of AI, whether that's been AlphaGo's defeat of legendary Go player Lee Se-dol, Microsoft's racist AI bot named Tay or any other number of new developments in the machine learning field. Once a plot device for science-fiction tales, AI is becoming real -- and human beings are going to have to define their relationship with it sooner rather than later. Peter Diamandis, co-founder and vice-chairman at Human Longevity, Inc., touches on that relationship in a post he authored on LinkedIn, titled "The next sexual revolution will be digitized."

An Australian man acquitted of killing a woman on a Tinder date has been asked if he is "heartless" in a controversial TV interview. New Zealand woman Warriena Wright fell to her death from Gable Tostee's balcony on Queensland's Gold Coast in 2014. Last month, Mr Tostee was found not guilty of murder or manslaughter. Australia's 60 Minutes programme paid him A$150,000 (£90,000, $115,000) for Sunday's interview, local media said. Mr Tostee and Ms Wright had met through the dating app Tinder.