Similar concerns arise around "open artificial (AI) intelligence ecosystems" - the next step up from systems like Amazon's Echo, Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana. Combining "listening" devices, cloud computing and the Internet of Things, machines are increasingly combining the capacity to understand normal conversation with the ability to take action on what they hear. This is a truly transformative technology platform. But what happens when these AI ecosystems begin to listen in on private conversations and share them with others? Or independently decide what's best for you?

As expected, Apple previewed iOS 10 at this week's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. And as expected, upgrades to Apple's Siri digital assistant dominated the presentation. In a bid to compete against rivals such as Google and Amazon that are making hard pushes into the artificial-intelligence realm, Apple has opened Siri's API to third-party developers, potentially boosting its functionality. Uber and WhatsApp are early partners in this effort--if you ever wanted to order a cab or send a text massage to a friend via voice command, your chance is coming soon. On the desktop, Siri can help you send messages, find files, and execute some background tasks.)

Computational linguists and computer scientists, among them University of Texas professor Jason Baldridge, have been working for over fifty years toward algorithmic understanding of human language. They are, however, doing a pretty good job with important tasks such as entity recognition, relation extraction, topic modeling, and summarization. These tasks are accomplished via natural language processing (NLP) technologies, implementing linguistic, statistical, and machine learning methods. Voice response and personal assistants -- Siri, Google Now, Microsoft Cortana, Amazon Alexa -- rely on NLP to interpret requests and formulate appropriate responses. Search and recommendation engines apply NLP, as do applications ranging from pharmaceutical drug discovery to national security counter-terrorism systems.

Artificial intelligence is either the bright shining future of technology or an insidious threat that could endanger all of mankind, depending on your point of view. Now Google, one of the companies leading the development of AI systems, has set out five key challenges that need to be overcome with the technology - but they are somewhat more mundane than robots rising up to take over the world. Instead, the company sees one of the key problems as being how to stop negative side effects, such as a cleaning robot that knocks over a precious vase to get its job done faster. Google has published a new research paper highlight five challenges it sees as needing to be overcome to prevent AI and robots causing unintended harm. It also says robots need to be programmed in a way so they do not'game the system' – such as simply covering mess in a room with a sheet it cannot see through rather than tidying up. Avoiding Negative Side Effects: How can we ensure that an AI system will not disturb its environment in negative ways while pursuing its goals, e.g. a cleaning robot knocking over a vase because it can clean faster by doing so?

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

Artificial intelligence is either the bright shining future of technology or an insidious threat that could endanger all of mankind, depending on your point of view. Now Google, one of the companies leading the development of AI systems, has set out five key challenges that need to be overcome with the technology - but they are somewhat more mundane than robots rising up to take over the world. Instead, the company sees one of the key problems as being how to stop negative side effects, such as a cleaning robot that knocks over a precious vase to get its job done faster. Google has published a new research paper highlight five challenges it sees as needing to be overcome to prevent AI and robots causing unintended harm. It also says robots need to be programmed in a way so they do not'game the system' – such as simply covering mess in a room with a sheet it cannot see through rather than tidying up.

Back in December, when Slack integrations launched, I wrote Clippy's Revenge about the potential of "smart messaging" to become a new platform. Since then, big players have done much to nurture that possibility -- as if on some secret, jointly agreed-upon master schedule. This looks like the battleground of the next tech war, and all eyes are on Apple this week. But how much of the bot craze is hype, and what's worth paying attention to? The frenetic energy around this emerging ecosystem is well-placed, but often confusing. After meeting 50 founders in this space, I'd like to offer a structured explanation of the emerging Conversational Economy, and propose some opportunities (for both big companies and startups).

There are a few places where you can find Siri in macOS, and each feels intuitive. For starters, you'll find the familiar purple Siri shortcut in the Dock, right next to Finder. That lower-left corner is the same place we already expect to find Cortana on Windows 10. If you like, though, Siri also lives in the tray, in the upper-right area of the screen, right next to where the search bar already lives. Or -- and this is my personal favorite -- you can use the keyboard shortcut Fn-spacebar to bring it up without using your cursor.

Last week, at the annual news extravaganza/coding demo/Beats 1 jam sesh that is WWDC, Apple launched a new version of its desktop operating system. There was a funny slide about naming conventions, another California-centric name (Sierra) and a bunch of new features. And Craigy With The Good Hair announced a small but long overdue change: Mac OS X is now called macOS. One day after the event, not two minutes after booting up a MacBook Pro that Apple pre-loaded with a preview build of macOS Sierra, I asked Siri some existential questions. Then I asked which version of OS X she was running, expecting a gentle chiding about macOS and silly questions.

From Siri to photo memories, here are five new features of the MacOS Sierra, coming to the public as a beta in July. NEW YORK--Siri evaded my question for what took Apple's voice assistant so long to get onto the Mac. "Who, me?" responds the voice familiar to anyone who uses an iPhone. However tardy Siri's arrival, the debut of Apple's loquacious personal helper on the company's computers is arguably the most welcome new feature coming to Macs that will be running macOS Sierra. Sierra is the latest iteration of Apple's operating system for its PCs and is the first version in years without the OS X moniker.