In a promotional video actress Michelle Yeoh walks through a bustling urban landscape at night with a smart phone in her hand as she talks to us about a coming transformation. "Every day Qualcomm is transforming the way we work, live and communicate, pushing the limits of technologies like artificial intelligence," she says. It's a dramatic statement by Qualcomm, as they try to connect the company to artificial intelligence in the mind of the market. "Whether our technology is going into a smartphone or whether it's going into a factory or a robot or a drone flying around Mars, our AI is a horizontal that permeates all of those device categories and applications," said Don McGuire, Qualcomm's chief marketing officer. The technology Qualcomm brings to artificial intelligence is a digital platform, based on Snapdragon computer chips.

City court officials in Austin used to spend a lot of time answering rote questions related to parking tickets, court dates and other issues. Then about two years ago, the city began using a chatbot to field these requests. The move made life easier not only for workers in the court system, but also residents. "They had a challenge with individuals coming down, asking questions about paying tickets," explained Austin CIO Stephen Elkins during a panel discussion last week at the Smart Cities Connect Conference in Denver. "And so, what the court basically was finding was that they had a long line of individuals -- some folks had questions about tickets, some had other questions. By pulling out the ticketing questions, they shortened the queue. There was a better experience with the residents as well as the employees," Elkins added.

The rapid growth of artificial intelligence and automation presents threats -- and opportunities -- for workers and businesses in the Miami Valley. More than 31,600 people in the Dayton metro area work in the five largest occupations at high risk of automation, according to data the Brookings Institution prepared exclusively for the Dayton Daily News. Those jobs include food preparation, waiters, stock clerks, tractor-trailer truck drivers and accounting clerks. But about 34,600 people in the region that includes Montgomery, Greene and Miami counties work in the largest low-risk occupations. Those include registered nurses, freight and stock movers, janitors, customer service representatives and general managers, according to the Brookings data.

International travelers could soon be greeted by AI powered lie-detecting robot kiosks before crossing borders. The system, known as the Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessment in Real Time, was tested at the U.S.-Mexico border on travelers deemed a low risk six years ago. Since then, it has been tested at the Canadian Border Services Agency and the European Union, and it is hoped this can soon help agents screen for criminals and even potential terrorists. The system, known as the Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessment in Real Time, has been tested by Canada, the U.S., and the European Union and it's hoped this can soon help agents screen for criminals and even potential terrorists The robot uses eye-detection software along with an array of sensors to pick up on the physiological signs that indicate a person is lying, and once it becomes suspicious, it can flag the passenger for further inspection. Donald Trump requested $223 million from Homeland Security for 2019 for'high-priority infrastructure, border security technology improvements,' as in addition to $210.5 million for hiring new border agents.

Project Sunroof was launched in 2015 by Carl Elkin, an engineer at Google who had worked on local solar-installation campaigns in Massachusetts. It now provides data for 60 million homes across the United States that it has already assessed with its algorithms. For the past two years, Project Sunroof has walked people through all the information-gathering steps of installing solar panels: After you tell it where you live, its algorithms estimate how much solar energy falls on your roof, calculate how much solar panels would reduce your electricity bill, and deliver estimates from local installation firms like Solar City. It can also walk you through similar steps if you're interested in leasing or borrowing panels. "It highlights that, for many people, solar is often free. In many cases, including for my house, solar is better than free," Elkin told me last week.

If you're considering solar power but aren't quite sure it's worth the expense, Google wants to point you in the right direction. Tapping its trove of satellite imagery and the latest in artificial intelligence, the company is offering a new online service that will instantly estimate how much you'll save with a roof full of solar panels. On Monday, the company unveiled Project Sunroof, a tool that calculates your home's solar power potential using the same high-resolution aerial photos Google Earth uses to map the planet. After creating a 3-D model of your roof, the service estimates how much sun will hit those solar panels during the year and how much money the panels could save you over the next two decades. "People search Google all the time to learn about solar," says Google's Joel Conkling.

Border control agencies are already using self-service kiosks to manage the crowds of international travelers entering their countries, but a high-tech type of kiosk in development can do more than just scan passports. The AVATAR--which stands for Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real-Time--can detect travelers trying to lie their way through customs, according to Vocativ. The self-service kiosks, created by the National Center for Border Security and Immigration at the University of Arizona in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security [PDF], scan travelers' passports and ask the kinds of questions posed by human agents, such as "Do you have any fruits or vegetables?" Sensors can identify body cues like facial expression, vocal tics, pupil dilation--and even cues that human agents can't see, like cardiorespiratory data--which could indicate that the person is lying and should be subject to additional screening. They can even see that you're curling your toes, according to a press statement from AVATAR researcher Aaron Elkins of San Diego State University, a professor who studies deception. The kiosks can be programmed to display several virtual agents, choosing from a woman or a man and a stern or a friendly face.

Travelers in the US and Canada may soon be forced to undergo a lie detector test as a standard part of airport security. The Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real Time (AVATAR) is currently being tested by the Canadian Border Services Agency and the US Department of Homeland Security. The robot -- programmed to look for physiological changes that indicate lying through eye-detection software and other sensors -- could help border agents catch terrorists or drug traffickers, according to San Diego State University researchers. "AVATAR is a kiosk, much like an airport check-in or grocery store self-checkout kiosk," San Diego State University management information systems professor Aaron Elkins told SDSU's News Center. "However, this kiosk has a face on the screen that asks questions of travelers and can detect changes in physiology and behavior during the interview. The system can detect changes in the eyes, voice, gestures and posture to determine potential risk. It can even tell when you're curling your toes," he added.

When you engage in international travel, you may one day find yourself face-to-face with border security that is polite, bilingual and responsive--and robotic. The Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real Time (AVATAR) is currently being tested in conjunction with the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) to help border security agents determine whether travelers coming into Canada may have undisclosed motives for entering the country. "AVATAR is a kiosk, much like an airport check-in or grocery store self-checkout kiosk," said San Diego State University management information systems professor Aaron Elkins. "However, this kiosk has a face on the screen that asks questions of travelers and can detect changes in physiology and behavior during the interview. The system can detect changes in the eyes, voice, gestures and posture to determine potential risk. It can even tell when you're curling your toes."

A startup bankrolled by Bill Gates is about to conduct the first public trials of high-speed body scanners powered by artificial intelligence (AI), the Guardian can reveal. According to documents filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Boston-based Evolv Technology is planning to test its system at Union Station in Washington DC, in Los Angeles's Union Station metro and at Denver international airport. Evolv uses the same millimetre-wave radio frequencies as the controversial, and painfully slow, body scanners now found at many airport security checkpoints. However, the new device can complete its scan in a fraction of second, using computer vision and machine learning to spot guns and bombs. This means passengers can simply walk through a scanning gate without stopping or even slowing down – like the hi-tech scanners seen in the 1990 sci-fi film Total Recall.