From picking our favorite restaurants to predicting weather and correcting global food shortages, artificial intelligence is already augmenting everyday life. Firmly rooted in the realm of science fiction, artificial intelligence (AI) has often felt external – something happening out there. In reality, AI is a huge part of our everyday lives. We just don't recognize it. Bank alerts of suspected fraudulent charges, smartphone notifications to exercise, Siri or Cortana's ability to recognize voices – are all examples of AI. "Artificial intelligence is basically where machines make sense, learn, interface with the external world, without human beings having to specifically program it," said Nidhi Chappell, director of machine learning at Intel. AI improves lives in many other areas too.

Sydney fintech startup Stockspot has become the first robo-advice platform in Australia to integrate AI and machine learning functions into financial advice. The company has today announced the launch of its new digital financial assistant to help clients optimise their investment behaviour. The digital financial assistant works by analysing thousands of clients and making targeted recommendations. As it learns, the technology will provide consumers with intuitive assistance to help investors optimise their profile and coach them to make better investment decisions. Instead of being a financial advisor that makes recommendations through listening to clients, Stockspot will now give advice based on consumer behaviour and actions.

Conversational Commerce refers to using natural language within a messenger application (Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, and others) or using voice assistants (Siri, Amazon Alexa, and others) to interact with a business for an inquiry, purchase, or customer service. The term Conversational Commerce was coined by Chris Messina, Developer Experience Lead at Uber, in a brief post over a year ago. While Conversational Commerce has been around for a while (think IVR and SMS) the recent success is the culmination of three key factors – emergence of the mobile-first customer, domination of messaging apps, and the increasing maturity of Artificial Intelligence. In the IAB Nielsen's Mobile Ratings Report 2015, findings indicate that Australians live in a mobile-first world: While the total time spent on commercial activities is at an average of 3%, this trend is poised for rapid growth as organisations mature their Conversational Commerce capabilities. Messaging apps like WhatsApp and WeChat are no longer just for conversation between friends and family.

Under, behind and inside many of the apps we use every day, a revolution is underway. It's a revolution that started decades ago but today is empowering companies to deliver better, smarter services with greater ease and on broader scales than ever before. At Singularity University's inaugural Global Summit, Neil Jacobstein, chair of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, provided a primer showing how artificial intelligence literally transforms everything it touches. First of all, it's critical to define the scope of artificial intelligence (AI), which can be categorized into four areas: techniques in pattern recognition, software agency (that is, software that acts like real users), an exponential technology that is accelerating other exponential technologies, and a vision of a future superhuman intelligence (that fortunately hasn't happened yet). Anyone who has seen a science fiction film is likely familiar with this last area, but it's the other three areas where AI is making huge strides at a revolutionary pace.

Amazon.com Inc. AMZN 1.95 % recently poached an artificial-intelligence expert from rival eBay Inc., EBAY 1.02 % the latest move by the retail giant to strengthen its ability to quickly determine what users want. Hassan Sawaf joined Amazon as its director of artificial intelligence in Palo Alto, Calif., at its A9 labs, according to his LinkedIn page, with the goal of improving "the user experience for users of Amazon's search capability across all products and businesses." An eBay spokeswoman confirmed Mr. Sawaf left the company. Amazon and Mr. Sawaf didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. These companies and others are pouring money into artificial intelligence, which is expected to run everything from automobiles to houses in the future.

"Empower bottom-up innovation and amazing things will happen." He was responsible for one of those amazing things: a way to help Spotify users discover new music called Discover Weekly. This tool launched about a year ago; it now has 40 million users and is helping to build the careers of new artists. Newett joined Spotify in 2013, initially working on a team developing a web page with personalized information, news about artists, album releases, and local concerts, along with a recommender system that offered suggestions of albums a user might find appealing. The recommendation feature, Newett recalled, seemed like a good idea, but wasn't heavily used.

Jibo is a robot that understands speech, has a moving body that helps him communicate more effectively, and express emotions. Jibo has cameras and microphones to make sense of the world around him, including detecting where sounds come from and recognizing and tracking people. He has a display to show images, an eye that can morph into shapes at will, and a touch interface as a complementary input modality. Jibo encompasses the ultimate human-machine interface, with the potential of becoming a new interaction paradigm. In this talk I will take the audience through a journey in making such a complex devices and the challenged faced by the sheer complexity of integrating a large number of technologies in a character robot device for the home.

The dream of a smart home where everything can be controlled at the tap of a button is about to get a step closer. Apple's new iOS 10 software, expected to be released on Wednesday, will include a new Home app built by Apple to make home control easier - and to take on amazon and Google in the battle for the smart living room. It will allow users to control lights, blinds, doors and pretty much everything in their home from a single app - or by asking Siri. The final revamped feature shown for iOS was the Home app, which delivers a simple and secure way to setup, manage and control your home. Opening the Home app brings up a main screen that lists all favourite Scenes and favourite accessories for quick access.

Artificial intelligence can do a lot of amazing things. It's even making your phone smarter 7 Siri Alternatives for Android: Google Now, Cortana, & More 7 Siri Alternatives for Android: Google Now, Cortana, & More There are a lot of personal assistant apps in the Play Store, so we help you sort through the best of them. But AI technology is making inroads into many different areas of your life, and it's doing some exciting everyday stuff too -- like helping you get through your day by making email more efficient and taking the hassle out of scheduling meetings. At the end of the day, artificial intelligence is empowering us to become more productive with some of our humdrum daily tasks. When you think about artificial intelligence, you might think about the Terminator movies or other science-fiction-born AIs, but there's a real-world (less exciting) version of AI What Artificial Intelligence Isn't What Artificial Intelligence Isn't Are intelligent, sentient robots going to take over the world?

It was a simple enough question, at least in this part of the world. "How can we mosey on down to the rodeo?" my friend Ben Crook drawled, sat in a rocking chair on his front porch, a can of Lone Star beer in his left hand on a humid night in Houston. Only one thing jarred with this otherwise stereotypical Texas scene: Crook was asking Siri, the voice-activated digital personal assistant on his iPhone, rather than, say, a passing sheriff on horseback with a cowboy hat wider than the Buffalo Bayou. Siri understood the individual words but didn't know how to respond. But Crook had other questions. He was hungry; heck, so hungry he coulda eaten the north end of a southbound billy goat.