It is hard to think of the words "artificial intelligence" without conjuring up Doomsday images of The Matrix and The Terminator where man and highly intelligent machine are pitched into battle. Even a step further back from that science-fiction precipice conflates the term with massive job losses and the eventual irrelevance – or liberation – of humankind from labour as we know it. Artificial intelligence or AI is, of course, all around us already in obvious ways – Apple's voice recognition service Siri or Google's increasingly reliable search results – or in more obscure ones such as better weather forecasting and lower levels of spam e-mail in your inbox. There is nothing new about the concept of AI which started to gain traction in the 1950s when Alan Turing explored the notion of machines that could think. J.C.R. Licklider's paper Man-Computer Symbiosis from 1960 may have sounded like something penned by sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, but was instead a formative paper on how the world would move beyond programmable computers to one where computers "facilitate formative thinking".

Arguably the most important questions in analytics these days is, "Who (or what) is going to make the decision?" There are two fundamental answers: a human or a machine. How the question is answered has all sorts of implications for what kind of people will do the analysis, what kinds of tools will be used, the process for the analysis, and so forth. The import of this question has rarely been discussed, although Michael Li wrote an excellent article about it on Data Informed last summer. His focus was on what kind of data scientist you need.

CEO Satya Nadella said, "it's about taking the power of human language and applying it more pervasively to all of our computing." He continued that Microsoft needs to infuse intelligence into its products and services." He pointed out that the platform will be composed of three factors: Humans that actually have the conversations, the digital personal assistant like Cortana and the bots that are the new applications. Nadella said that all of three of these interact in a variety of ways. It won't be corralled in the Window's world.

Microsoft today is introducing the Bot Framework, a new tool in preview to help developers build their own chatbots for their applications. There is also a new bot directory full of sample bots -- like the BuildBot -- that Microsoft is showing off today at the company's Build developer conference in San Francisco. A BotBuilder software development kit (SDK) is available on GitHub under an open source MIT license. These bots can be implemented into a variety of applications, including Slack or Telegram or even email. "Bots are like new applications," Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said.

If you're young and single, chances are you're rejecting potential dates left and right on apps like Tinder, Bumble and OkCupid. Hundreds of people are whittled down to a few in minutes. In the seconds you lingered on one person's profile, four pictures and an ambiguous job title, what made you swipe him or her to the right? First impressions count in ways you might not expect. How people sit or where their arms and legs are in the images they share seem to loom large in potential daters' calculations, according to experiments involving speed dating and an online dating app.

The brain-like computer network will process the equivalent of 16 million neurons and four billion synapses. It's often said that the human brain is the world's most powerful supercomputer and now a team of computer scientists is looking at the organ as inspiration for building a new, neural network-based supercomputing platform. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), a federal government research facility in California, tasked with ensuring the safety, security, and reliability of the United States nuclear deterrent, is working alongside IBM on what's been described as a "first of a kind" brain-inspired supercomputing platform for deep learning. The neural-network will be based on IBM's neurosynaptic TrueNorth computer chips. These processors are designed to aid computers in performing cognitive tasks, such as pattern recognition and sensory processing, more efficiently than conventional computer chips.

First in a series of two articles about the history of signature-based detections, and how the methodology has evolved to identify different types of cybersecurity threats. Used in the context of an outdated and manually intensive technology focused on older classes of threats, there's little wonder why vendors would seek to distance the legacy term "signature" from their advanced detection technology. Vendors haven't necessarily been deceptive in the labeling of their latest generation of techniques; it's often just easier to create a new label for something than to fully explain the context and evolution of what preceded it. Over the years, signature-based systems have changed and advanced, but the core concepts still lie at the heart of all modern detection systems – and will continue to be integral for the foreseeable future. To understand what a "signature system" is in reality, we need to understand the evolution of the detection path as directed and discovered by human intervention.

Microsoft's AI experiment, the Twitter chatbot TayandYou, went off the rails after being exposed to the internet for a day, but the U.S. tech giant has not given up its artificial intelligence plans. CEO Satya Nadella is expected to reveal a future surrounded by chatbots during Wednesday's Build 2016 keynote. While Tay may appeal to millennials, Microsoft AI will cater to different audiences with personalities to match. The Microsoft Build 2016 keynote speech Wednesday will emphasize a future with chatbot assistants helping people live their digital lives, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. At Microsoft Build 2016, Nadella will unveil several chatbots that users can interact with via text, can appear in Skype or can serve a valuable service for the visually impaired.

Microsoft is about to kick off its annual Build conference in San Francisco this week. The debut of Windows 10 made all the news last year. Now, about eight months since its launch, we're expecting to see some high-profile new universal apps, improved Cortana integration and some more AI-powered chatbots. And with HoloLens shipping to developers today, you can expect some augmented reality news, maybe even a teleportation trick or two on stage. You can also tune in right here to watch Satya Nadella's opening-day Build keynote.

Microsoft is hoping to replicate the success of WeChat in China, a messaging app that lets you do things like shop, buy movie tickets and order taxis. Plenty of other companies are also looking closely at bots: Facebook has its M virtual assistant, and Amazon has Alexa, which works like a chatbot even though you actually have to talk to it. The main idea with all of these products is to deliver information, or accomplish simple tasks, without having to deal with an app or website. This new initiative is an important one for Nadella, as it's the first new Microsoft project that he's entirely responsible for. Microsoft will try to prove to developers at Build that it's simple to build bots, and it'll show off demos to prove that they can be useful, like ordering a Domino's pizza.