Microsoft releases giant Q&A dataset to help researchers build AI tools that ... Microsoft gives away 100000 questions and answers to advance virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa ... 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.

Microsoft releases giant Q&A dataset to help researchers build AI tools that ... Microsoft gives away 100000 questions and answers to advance virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa ... 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.

Microsoft is trying to help create machines that can have conversations by releasing a new set of data for free. The data, called the Microsoft Machine Reading Comprehension dataset (MS MARCO) is a bundle of 100,000 English queries along with corresponding answers. It's supposed to help people build artificial intelligence systems that can understand human written language. The company is opening up its dataset in the hope that Microsoft can work with other organizations on making machines better at reading comprehension, said Rangan Majumder, program manager for the Microsoft Partner Group, in a blog post on Friday. The queries in MS MARCO are based on anonymized questions that were submitted to Microsoft's Bing search engine and Cortana virtual assistant.

Microsoft gives away 100000 questions and answers to advance virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa ... 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.

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.

No longer simply the subject of science-fiction movies, artificial intelligence is making its way into the insurance enterprise. According to Accenture, four in five insurers are planning to or have deployed some sort of artificial intelligence technology in their enterprises. Allstate Business Insurance deployed ABie -- the Allstate Business Insurance Expert -- virtual assistant to help walk agents through the quoting process for complex products. The context-aware technology understands agents inputs and is able to direct them through the process without using the call center. AIG has partnered with Human Condition Safety to deploy devices that "couples wearable technology with artificial intelligence (AI) and building information modeling."

Amazon's Echo line already has a truckload of skills that tap into Alexa's ability to lend a hand with tasks, and the company adds new ones on a what seems like a weekly basis. This week, Google announced Netflix support for its connected Home speaker through Chromecast alongside the ability to display images from Google Photos. It turns out that was just the beginning as Google revealed over 30 more actions for Home from third-party developers. Using voice commands, you can try to find out why you feel crappy with WebMD, sort your to-do list with Todoist, order pizza from Domino's and get news updates from the likes of The Wall Street Journal, NBC News, NPR and more. And those are just a few examples.

In theory, Sony's newest wearable sounds promising. The Xperia Ear is a single Bluetooth earbud that lets you dictate messages, get weather updates, smartphone notifications and carry out other little tasks just by talking to it. Sony also promises a long-lasting battery that can endure a full workday of talk time with the included charging case, so you can have the assistant ready for your commands all day. Unfortunately, the Xperia Ear simply doesn't do enough to justify its $200 asking price. Sony's Xperia Ear is an intriguing device -- in theory. It's a single Bluetooth earpiece with a built-in assistant that's always ready for your voice commands, and will recite your smartphone notifications as they arrive.

Tis the season for Listicles – those wonderfully quick reads with the "Top 10" things to look for in the coming year. Customers started showing a pronounced preference for self-service over lengthy interactions with live assistants. Conversational commerce, involving chatbots through mobile devices was rapidly expanding All flavors of Intelligent Assistants (especially bots and virtual agents) were making the transition from "assistant" to "advisor" Customers started showing a pronounced preference for self-service over lengthy interactions with live assistants. All flavors of Intelligent Assistants (especially bots and virtual agents) were making the transition from "assistant" to "advisor" Indeed, these three factors shaped IA in 2016 and will continue to do so in 2017, spurred on by increased spending by business enterprises on Speech Processing, Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Knowledge Management and Predictive Interaction Analytics. It's great news for the 28 or so firms that offer platforms for Enterprise Intelligent Assistants [link to our Landscape] while, at the same time it is a tremendous shot in the arm for the thousands of developers who are building bots for messaging platforms (especially Facebook Messenger) or "skills" for "metabots" (like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant).

The year of AI: Major developments in 2016 could pave the way for a future where'intelligent machines are omnipresent in our daily lives' Artificial intelligence or AI is getting a foothold in people's homes, starting with the Amazon devices like its Echo speaker (pictured) which links to a personal assistant'Alexa' to answer questions and control connected devices such as appliances or light bulbs Donald Trump claims torture ¿works¿ ¿ but what does the... South Korea comes a step closer to LIMITLESS energy:... Facebook Messenger launches an in-app camera and... The shoes that will tell you if you're too tired to run:... Donald Trump claims torture ¿works¿ ¿ but what does the... South Korea comes a step closer to LIMITLESS energy:... Facebook Messenger launches an in-app camera and... The shoes that will tell you if you're too tired to run:... Analyst Carolina Milanesi of the research firm Creative Strategies said that '2016 was the year about raising awareness, and exposing consumers to the idea of AI in a more mass market way.' Google Home (pictured) is the small speaker will be able to play music and access Google Assistant, a new AI system the search giant unveiled at I/O in May. It's believed Apple has been working on their smart-home device for at least 2 years The first virtual family portrait: Mark Zuckerberg showed off the firm's software for the Oculus Rift headset at the Oculus Connect conference in San Francisco. Tragic video shows a man filming himself smoking Ice Amir Khan's wife Faryal was called'Michael Jackson' by family Epic fight!