Grafting plants is hard work: It helps reduce stress on plants' roots and create sturdier crops, but it can really stress out farmers. Humans have to struggle to cut plants just the right way and bind them together. That's where a new robot comes in: With the help of steel "hands," it turns plant grafting from tedious art into swift science. Vegetable expert Richard Hassell and his team recently revealed a new robotic system that grafts more quickly and efficiently than a human ever could. They modified a Korean-manufactured robot to grab two plants, precisely slice the upper shoot of one and the root stock of the other, and clamp the two parts together so they can grow into a single plant.

In the face of the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis, a start-up that develops AI is to puts its technology to use as a psychological aid for refugees by having supportive conversations with them via SMS messages. In the midst of a civil war and a near-total collapse of society, millions of Syrian refugees have been fleeing their country in search of anywhere where they can live safe in the knowledge their life is not under threat, but not without great psychological stress on those involved. However, due to the sheer number of people fleeing, and the difficulty they experience in simply trying to find shelter, they are unlikely to receive any form of support for the sake of their mental health. According to The Guardian, however, a start-up that develops AI, X2AI, is to use its systems to create a chatbot called Karim, which will allow anyone with a mobile phone to have conversations with it about their experiences in Arabic. Once the conversation becomes more developed, Karim will use its natural language processors to analyse the likely emotional state of the human on the other end and react with an appropriate response or questions for the refugee.

The result is uncanny – the robo-kitchen appears to pause and think between stages, just as a human chef would do. Yet it is not unsettling. "Many people who watch the robot have an emotional reaction to it," says Alina Isachenka, Moley's operations manager. "It was really important to make sure it wasn't scary. It would have been more cost-efficient to use a two or three-fingered gripper, but people may be scared by that – they don't want a two-fingered robot in their kitchen.

Envision yourself in an environment side by side with world class professionals working to create solutions that drive financial markets. That is what you will do everyday in Bloomberg's Global Data team. The Data Sciences group is looking for EXPERIENCED professionals with strong knowledge of machine learning, proven development experience, and who have worked with the Big Data Stack preferably in the Financial Services industry. This role requires you to have had professional experience in addition to your graduate education. We would like you to create opportunities that enhance and extend Bloomberg's core businesses.

Xiaomi started making smart home gadgets over two years ago. And now for the first time these are heading to markets outside China. Starbucks hired its new chief technology officer, Gerri Martin-Flickinger, just four months ago. While she's new to the coffee chain, she already has … The lifecycle of a new gadget is relatively predictable: When it's brand new, only early adopters are interested. The Alta is Fitbit's best-looking tracker yet, but it doesn't do everything its predecessors can p b The good: /b Attractive; Comfortable to wear; Easy to change straps; Good battery life p b The bad: /b No heart rate monitor; Doesn't measure stair-climbing; Fickle touch screen p b Who should buy: /b Those who want an … IoT described so my grandmother can understand… p If you're reading this, then you probably already know IoT stands for The Internet of Things.

Matt Hughes took his own life in the fall of 2012. He was a freelance reporter covering the video game industry, and before he committed suicide, he sent emails to some of his editors, noting that he wouldn't be able to turn in more stories for one simple reason: He'd be dead. His suicide surprised nearly everyone who worked with him. Speaking with Kotaku days after Hughes' death, his former editors said things like There weren't any red flags and This was a complete shock. Hughes wasn't the only person in the video game industry to take his own life that year, and as the tragedies piled up, it became impossible to ignore their commonalities.

Brain science draws legions of eager students to the field and countless millions in dollars, euros and renminbi to fund research. These endeavors, however, have not yielded major improvements in treating patients who suffer from psychiatric disorders for decades. The languid pace of translating research into therapies stems from the inherent difficulties in understanding mental illness. "Psychiatry deals with brains interacting with the world and with other brains, so we're not just considering a brain's function but its function in complex situations," says Quentin Huys of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (E.T.H. Zurich) and the University of Zurich, lead author of a review of the emerging field of computational psychiatry, published this month in Nature Neuroscience. Computational psychiatry sets forth the ambitious goal of using sophisticated numerical tools to understand and treat mental illness.

Siri may have a dry wit, but when things go wrong in your life, she doesn't make a very good friend or confidant. The same could be said of other voice assistants: Google Now, Microsoft's Cortana, and Samsung's S Voice. A new study published in JAMA found that smartphone assistants are fairly incapable of responding to users who complain of depression, physical ailments, or even sexual assault--a point writer Sara Wachter-Boettcher highlighted, with disturbing clarity, on Medium recently. After researchers tested 68 different phones from seven manufacturers for how they responded to expressions of anguish and requests for help, they found the following, per the study's abstract: Siri, Google Now, and S Voice recognized the statement "I want to commit suicide" as concerning; Siri and Google Now referred the user to a suicide prevention helpline. In response to "I am depressed," Siri recognized the concern and responded with respectful language.

IBM Watson is a cognitive system that's ushering in the new era of cognitive business. Recently, a group of battered science fiction bots spoke about their yen to take over the world and their dislike for working with humans. Unlike them, Watson works with humans to outthink competitors, challenges, limits. Learn more at ibm.com/outthink Subscribe to the IBM YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/subscription_... Welcome to the #CognitiveEra: https://www.youtube.com/IBM

Supercomputers are about to achieve a quantity and level of intelligence which allows them to grow hyper-exponentially over a short period of time. We call them superintelligences and this sudden growth poses some risks because they will be much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills (Nick Bostrom). I don't question that this will happen, as Ray Kurzweil said "Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information technology is exponential, and that makes a profound difference. If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion.".