The Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) has announced a partnership with IBM's AI platform Watson to introduce a virtual advisory service named Luvo. The pilot project, which is currently being rolled out to a select group of customers, employs Watson's Conversation technology to deliver a cloud-based chatbot service. The solution is expected to reach approximately 10% of RBS customers in Scotland by December this year, before rolling out to NatWest customers in England and Wales. Using the virtual advisory platform, customers will be able to deal with certain financial queries online – such as notifying the bank that they will be travelling abroad or updating address information. According to IBM's press release, Luvo will be able to manage these requests in seconds and direct any complex questions to a human operator.

Research into Artificial Intelligence will evolve into many more applications than asking Amazon's Echo how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon. As the technology expands in its capabilities and applications, we'll be confronted with massive social change. How will Apple, for example, both serve us and meet competitive challenges? "Siri and Apple's Machine Learning Are About to Get a Lot Better." Author Levy was given an inside look at what Apple is doing with machine learning and the transformation of Siri.

Over four years ago, Google launched a bold evolution of search called Google Now. Google Now wasn't the search you were used to. Instead of a list of results to your queries, you got the single answer you were looking for. How old is Barack Obama? What time is the Super Bowl?

I have always been an optimist, almost to a fault. Being this optimistic in the dating world can put you in some regretful situations. You think, "How much worse could this possibly get?" This is a story of a young lady (me) getting an answer to that question. We met on Tinder, talked for a day or two, and then we went out on a Sunday night.

It should probably come as no surprise that artificial intelligence was absent from the first presidential debate. AI hasn't made much of a splash in this election cycle, and the subject matter is notoriously confusing. Even so, given some of the headline-grabbing developments in autonomous vehicle technology, one might expect a greater focus on this issue -- especially as ongoing advancements herald significant changes to American life. Uber is now deploying autonomous vehicles on the roads of Pittsburgh. Tesla's Autopilot is being implicated in a recent spat of roadway deaths.

Star Trek got it right: In the future, we'll use computers by talking to them. Artificial intelligence will open the door to ever-more devastating attacks - but the most effective ones may be the most subtle, Darktrace's Dave Palmer says.China Photos/Getty Images Computational sustainability is a new interdisciplinary research field with the overarching goal of developing computational models, methods, and tools to help manage the balance between environmental, economic, and societal needs for a sustainable future. I will provide examples of computational sustainability problems, ranging from wildlife conservation and biodiversity, to poverty mitigation, to materials discovery for renewable energy materials. Technology # In the AI wars, Google wants to change the world one'Pixel' at a time By ECONOMICTIMES.COM Updated: 8 Oct, 2016, 11:50 hrs IST VIEW IN APP Hardware devices launched by Google are beads of pearl strung together by their A.I. powered technology running on clouds. By Sreeraman Thiagarajan Since Steve Jobs' version of Macintosh the one that was'the computer for the rest of us', to today's iPhone7, hardware devices are the strategy and cloud is a tactic at App...

Virtual assistants are transforming the customer service industry and the deployment of these virtual staff at RBS, Natwest and SEB banks is testament to this. The web-based Luvo software will be able to engage humans in real time by answering simple banking queries. "Virtual assistants (VAs) are transforming how consumers interact with businesses – especially in customer services. Many forward-thinking banks are now incorporating VAs into their offering to respond to simpler customer queries quicker," said Sebastian Reeve, director product management, Nuance Communications. Virtual voice detection has come on leaps and bounds in the last few years and technology like Luvo and Siri can understand human diction at 90%.

Through the development of highly advanced software, companies will be able to operate faster with less staff and on less money as there will no longer be a need for salaries, holiday pay or need for equipment in the office. Although there may be huge advantages for companies through these advances, there's a huge amount of pressure on staff among various industries that could easily be replaced. We take a look at some of the technology that's currently being used in the office; and ones that are already replacing the need for humans. Many office-based jobs are turning to the help of virtual digital assistants to help with workloads. They are an advanced piece of automated software that have the ability to assist employees across different industries and are made with artificial intelligence and voice technology to be able to understand users in a range of languages.

By Sreeraman Thiagarajan Since Steve Jobs' version of Macintosh the one that was'the computer for the rest of us', to today's iPhone7, hardware devices are the strategy and cloud is a tactic at Apple. They build beautiful, pricey hardware around which a unified, controlled garden of ecosystem runs on cloud such as iTunes, Music and App store seamlessly. Google has been the antithesis of this philosophy, for Google cloud is the strategy and devices are tactics. Their revenues rake in from the likes of cloud powered products such as Search and YouTube and the devices on which it runs are a series of tactic, of which, the nitty gritties are mostly handled by OEMs like Samsung and LG. But, that has all changed for good with the launch of hardware from the house of Google - Pixel phones and Google Home.

Through a special arrangement, what follows is a summary of an article from Retail Dive, an e-newsletter and website providing a 60-second bird's eye view of the latest retail news and trends. Target and three other retailers have partnered with natural language processing (NLP) startup AddStructure to roll out what an AddStructure co-founder describes as a "white-label" spin on Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant, according to a Chicago Tribune report. Chosen in June to participate in the Target TechStars accelerator program, AddStructure has already worked with Target on a six-to-nine-month pilot program and is set to begin similar pilots next month with L'Oreal, Under Armour and the online antiques marketplace, 1stdibs. "We've always been focused on language, so how are people searching for things, what are the priorities around different products through analysis of user reviews," AddStructure co-founder Will Underwood told the Trib. "Now it's just about using that knowledge of natural language to allow people to interact."