In this Asia Vision Series interview on artificial intelligence, Dr Hon Hsiao-Wuen, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Research Asia, talks about AI enabling the invisible revolution and driving a future of guardian angels.

Language is becoming the new main user interface (UI) layer in an increasingly rich ecosystem of conversations that includes people to people, people to their personal digital assistant, people to bots and in the future – even personal digital assistant to bot! Microsoft also recently announced that it would be making its bot framework available to all. This adds weight to its belief that new technologies should be available to everyone, regardless of their circumstances. Dr Hon finds this incredibly meaningful, as anyone, not just the wealthy, can have their own personal assistant to make their lives more productive. It was a meeting of minds between Buck Song, an advocate of smart, sustainable cities, and Dr. Hon, a believer in the industrial application of Big Data. Dr. Hon has been with Microsoft since 1995, joining Microsoft Research Asia in 2004.

From a huge effort to help kids realize their potential to a celebration of our dear old planet, this week brought plenty of interesting and inspiring news around Microsoft. We've rounded up some of the highlights in this latest edition of Weekend Reading. Earlier this week, Microsoft announced grants to 100 nonprofit partners in 55 countries as part of YouthSpark, a global initiative to increase access for young people to learn computer science. In turn, these nonprofit partners -- such as Laboratoria, CoderDojo and City Year -- will use the power of local schools, businesses and community organizations to empower students to achieve more for themselves, their families and their communities. The nonprofits will build upon the work that Microsoft already has underway through programs like Hour of Code with Code.org,