Facebook just released new tools that will let any business build "smart" chatbots that users can interact with and even purchase things from while using the Messenger app. But what about Facebook's own super-smart virtual assistant, M? The bot, which Facebook first introduced to the world in the Fall, got few on-stage mentions during the company's F8 developer conference on Tuesday. And the third-party chatbots that Facebook now wants outside businesses to create might seem to obviate the need for Facebook to maintain its own bot. But Facebook told Business Insider that the company has not given up on M, even if the bot is still "a long way" from being broadly released. Stan Chudnovsky, head of product for messaging at Facebook, assures Business Insider that the company does still foresee M as being its own product.

I'd seen everything that Grindr had to offer and was growing weary of unsolicited dick pics and random old balls. So I turned to Tinder and had a couple failed dates. The first was a disgruntled state worker who wore Tom's, winced when I told him I had two pitbulls and spent the better part of two hours mansplaining ethics to me. The next was a waifish first-year English teacher and self-professed INFJ who, curiously, didn't do a lot of reading due to his workload. I powered through, reminded of months of success, but couldn't help thinking of my failure.

Autonomous agents are a huge trend in consumer, business, industry, and other domains. They're popping up in everything from physical devices -- such as Internet of things (IoT) endpoints and mobile handsets -- to cloud services such as virtual personal assistants and smart advisers. Autonomous IoT devices will allow us to multitask like never before. As we incorporate more of them into our lives, we can offload much of the drudgery we once needed to handle manually. We will let self-driving cars manage our commute, offload the more strenuous yardwork to our robotic household assistants, and depend on personal drones to keep an eye on the neighborhood.

The week before David Marcus will take the stage at Facebook's annual F8 developers' conference to announce new tools to help businesses interact with you and me on Messenger, he tries to explain his ambitious idea for the future. Sure, he'll tell the throngs of developers gathering today at San Francisco's scenic former US Army post, Fort Mason, about bots. He'll announce a new bot platform, new ways to find apps, and an artificial intelligence-powered bot engine. At the end of the day, there'll even be free Messenger messenger bags! But all these announcements are just data points that herald something much grander, according to Marcus, who is vice president of messaging at Facebook.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming a hot topic within technology. And there's little wonder why – exploring the world of AI is just as exciting as exploring the possibilities in virtual reality. But when it comes to AI, many of the issues that pervade our current culture also persist within this new frontier. For as long as AI has been a viable option for digital exploration, AI has been exclusively female. Whether it's in the form of Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, Amazon's Alexa, every GPS system across the country and most science fiction films, the AI we have familiarized ourselves with has been exclusively female.

You don't have to be a Go champion to have artificial intelligence change your game. You get in your car, and your Apple iPhone tells what traffic looks like where you're going--before you ask. We're all on the road with Tesla's self-driving cars, which are redefining what "driving" means. The artificial intelligence calendar assistant Amy emails three of your friends to figure out a meeting time that works for everyone--and nails it. Thankfully, chatting with Amazon's Alexa is a lot more entertaining than, say, with Hal, the fictional artificial intelligence from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

China will "lead the world" in producing artificially intelligent hardware as the tech industry continues to find breakthroughs in this field, according to a Microsoft executive. Citing examples like Baidu, Harry Shum, executive vice-president of technology and research in Microsoft, said Chinese internet companies are playing an important role in advancing artificial intelligence. "Baidu is building autonomous driving vehicles, and many other Chinese companies are ... doing serious technology development in the artificial intelligence area," said Shum. "If we have the opportunity to democratise artificial intelligence technology through the cloud, we just need a few [Chinese companies] with good ideas and we can [advance] very quickly." He added that he is "bullish" about the artificially intelligent hardware industry in China because cities like Shenzhen are building an ecosystem that supports the technology. "In southern China, you can see these different layers, from manufacturing capabilities, sensors, circuit design, all of that," said Shum. "They used to make low-end phones, but now [can you imagine] what they could do next?"

If Amazon's Alexa had just served as an entry point to the company's mega-marketplace, it would have been as boring as the failed Amazon Fire smartphone. But Alexa is way more than that. Alexa feels like an AI, nothing less. She's a personal assistant that lives in the cloud and is always listening to you, through a number of available physical devices that use her as their brain. These include the Amazon Echo, the Echo Dot, the Amazon Tap, and Fire TV.

For two straight quarters, deal activity in artificial intelligence has hit record highs. Dennis Mortensen is one of the biggest winners in all the craze. His startup x.ai is the creator of Amy Ingram, an AI-driven personal assistant that can schedule meetings for you. After testing Amy in beta for two years, Mortensen announced last week 23 million in Series B funding to bring Amy to market. Dennis Mortensen: AI used to be for academia only and decades-long research.

Facebook seems to be leaving Google in the dust in certain areas where the search giant should have dominated. Beyond giving Facebook bragging rights, the company's aggressive development of some of these new technologies has the potential to shake up the business landscape. Take Facebook's recent, dramatic push into video live-streaming. Sure, YouTube has broadcasting capabilities. Individuals can do it through its gaming app and the company has live-streamed huge events, like the President's State of the Union address and several debates.