Longquan Temple, a Buddhist temple not too far from Beijing, is home to Xian'er, a 2ft. The robot is an unexpected blend of modern with the ancient, and is designed to, among other things, teach visitors some basic things about Buddhism. The robot's purpose is fairly simple -- it is designed to attract visitor attention that may otherwise be dedicated to a smartphone. The robot is short and squat with a fun design. The tablet between his hands is a touchscreen on which visitors can view one of 20 questions.

Last month American fast food giant Taco Bell introduced the "TacoBot", a Siri-like version of the cashiers that take your order at its restaurant. TacoBot is loftily described as the future of ordering tacos and the software makes use of AI (artificial intelligence) advancements like natural language processing to let users talk with the bot, order food, and even pay for items entirely through platforms such as Facebook and Slack. "The TacoBot Slack integration is the latest step on our journey to make the brand more accessible wherever and whenever our fans want it," said Lawrence Kim, Taco Bell's director of digital innovation and on demand, in a statement. "Taco Bell is about food tailor-made for social consumption with friends, and that's why integrating with a social communications platform like Slack makes perfect sense. TacoBot is the next best thing to having your own Taco Bell butler… and who wouldn't want that??" TacoBot has the ability to recommend menu items, answer questions, organise group orders, and facilitate transactions fully equipped with a Taco Bell "personality" as seen below.

Looking at what early-stage startups are working on is not only entertaining -- and sometimes concerning -- it can also be a good indicator of where tech is headed. Since we have data on these young ventures at my company, Startup Tracker, we have the opportunity to glimpse emergent product trends in the startup space. We decided to put together a list of the 100 most interesting little-known startups in existence right now and to analyze the underlying patterns. We specifically focused on companies that are building something unique or unconventional. One interesting trend we spotted was the apparent birth of a startup meta-industry -- startups building products for other startups is becoming a thing.

WIRE)--VirtusaPolaris, the market-facing brand of Virtusa Corporation and Polaris Consulting & Services, Ltd. and a leading worldwide provider of information technology (IT) consulting and outsourcing services, and WorkFusion, the leading smart process automation (SPA) provider, today announced a partnership to deliver new smart automation solutions for the banking and financial services (BFS) market. The combination of VirtusaPolaris' deep BFS industry and process expertise and WorkFusion's cutting edge platform will help clients reduce operational costs, while improving quality, productivity and agility. "Most financial services organizations continue to struggle with inefficient legacy systems that have not kept pace with the change in business and regulations, introducing gaps in process automation that negatively impact efficiency of business operations. Many of these gaps are low complexity high volume routine process steps and most organizations have deployed large operational workforces, frequently offshore, to handle these processes," said Bob Graham, global solutions head, Banking and Financial Services at VirtusaPolaris. "WorkFusion's combination of robotic and cognitive automation supported by VirtusaPolaris' expert consulting and implementation services allow customers to improve quality through greater accuracy and the removal of human error, reduce costs through rapid automation of manual tasks, and accelerate time to market with our proven delivery approach."

Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur usually involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.[1] The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, as well as a subject of philosophical and religious interest, throughout recorded history. The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology.[2] Dreams mainly occur in the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep--when brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake. REM sleep is revealed by continuous movements of the eyes during sleep. At times, dreams may occur during other stages of sleep. However, these dreams tend to be much less vivid or memorable.[3] The length of a dream can vary; they may last for a few seconds, or approximately 20–30 minutes.[3] People are more likely to remember the dream if they are awakened during the REM phase. The average person has three to five dreams per night, and some may have up to seven;[4] however, most dreams are immediately or quickly forgotten.[5] Dreams tend to last longer as the night progresses. During a full eight-hour night sleep, most dreams occur in the typical two hours of REM.[6] In modern times, dreams have been seen as a connection to the unconscious mind. They range from normal and ordinary to overly surreal and bizarre. Dreams can have varying natures, such as being frightening, exciting, magical, melancholic, adventurous, or sexual. The events in dreams are generally outside the control of the dreamer, with the exception of lucid dreaming, where the dreamer is self-aware.[7]

Hey Siri, call my date and tell them I'm just not that into them.

When Grace Hui moved to Los Angeles from China in 2014 and Googled the Chinese characters for "Los Angeles immigrant," the first result was Chineseinla.com. The Chino Hills-based website, a disorganized Yelp-meets-Craigslist hybrid, was a throwback, and Hui, 29, thought some of the posts were phishing scams. But with more than 680,000 listings, more than 350,000 registered users, 2 million monthly visits and sister sites in 15 cities, Chineseinla.com It's one of the only ways that Hui could connect to a country she couldn't understand. "American Internet is useless to me," said Hui, who used Chineseinla.com

You are reading a guest blog post by John Boitnott. Artificial Intelligence is not by any means a new concept. It's been the stuff of science fiction speculation for years, and has been a repeated point of debate in popular culture for quite some time. Humanity's relationship to AI really came to the forefront of contemporary technological debate when IBM's Deep Blue computer defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1996. The trend of man vs. machine has continued into the present day with such events as IBM's Watson trouncing Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings and, more recently, Google's AI machine defeating world "Go" champion Lee Sedol in four out of five games.

The bot is just using information that other people have written and is taking it to its logical conclusion. An atheist for instance logically from their perspective can have any standard for morality that the atheist chooses; they can make up their own, because the atheist believes we are the product of random chance and evolution, in which there is no purpose or point. But the google employee is asking what actually is morality, this is a question that can't be answered in an atheist perspective - it's a trick question. The bot is impartial, not an atheist or religious in any way. Morality requires that there be a point to our existence, in which case we would be created by a Creator, not by random chance.

While today's technology sectors produce fewer jobs than the ones that preceded them, their indirect impacts on job creation are far greater as they create additional demand for non-tradables in the local economy, in turn explaining the shift in employment from manufacturing to services experienced by most advanced economies. The fates of workers thus depends less on job opportunities created by biotech companies or computer firms, but on the demand for local services created by those companies. Indeed, the indirect employment impact of today's technology sectors is so critical that the future of employment is likely to depend more on the size of the multiplier than job creation in technology sectors as such. While the expanding scope of automation means that a wider range of low-skilled services will become increasingly automated, potentially reducing the size of the multiplier, demand for entirely new services is at the same time being created – Zumba instructors and Beachbody coaches are now among the fastest growing new occupations on LinkedIn. Despite technological change becoming more labour-saving and less job-creating, concerns over automation causing mass unemployment seem exaggerated, at least for now.