In this paper, we introduce a new NLP task -- generating short factual articles with references for queries by mining supporting evidence from the Web. In this task, called WebBrain, the ultimate goal is to generate a fluent, informative, and factually-correct short article (e.g., a Wikipedia article) for a factual query unseen in Wikipedia. To enable experiments on WebBrain, we construct a large-scale dataset WebBrain-Raw by extracting English Wikipedia articles and their crawlable Wikipedia references. WebBrain-Raw is ten times larger than the previous biggest peer dataset, which can greatly benefit the research community. From WebBrain-Raw, we construct two task-specific datasets: WebBrain-R and WebBrain-G, which are used to train in-domain retriever and generator, respectively. Besides, we empirically analyze the performances of the current state-of-the-art NLP techniques on WebBrain and introduce a new framework ReGen, which enhances the generation factualness by improved evidence retrieval and task-specific pre-training for generation. Experiment results show that ReGen outperforms all baselines in both automatic and human evaluations.

A Washington state man, who survived a samurai sword attack last week by his now ex-girlfriend while he was asleep, revealed his rigorous video game training regime left him with a lack of sex drive, and this resulted in his former partner thinking he was cheating on her. "It killed my sex drive. I was training too hard, it exhausted me. I felt bad because she needed the affection. I just couldn't keep up," 29-year-old Alex Lovell told Buzzfeed News of his video game training regimen, which led to the attack by his ex-girlfriend March 3. "She thought I was having sex with other people," Lovell added.

Dale Lovell, chief digital officer at AdYouLike and author of Native Advertising, says: "In an ad marketplace where context is increasingly the criteria for success, the more data – and learnings from that data garnered in real-time – the greater the performance will be. "High-performing native advertising units combined with AI offer a deeper semantic understanding and granularity on campaigns. In fact, by the end of the year, any platform or partner without an AI capability for ad targeting will start to look increasingly dated." In addition to AI, marketers are turning to dynamic creative optimisation (DCO) to transform their digital ad experiences: a display ad technology that creates personalised ads based on data gleaned at the moment of serving the ad. DCO makes it possible for brands to engage in one-to-one conversations with users where situational data, environmental factors, time of day, weather, live information and user data, can all be added to increase the campaign relevance and performance. "We'll see more and more marketers embrace this in 2018," says Lovell. "Forget wider fads and spin – this is what now sits at the core of advertising innovation." Yet with technology's incredible ability to immediately and efficiently meet our consumer needs, comes a huge demand for brands to deliver impeccable customer experience. "The internet of things (IoT) has created a rise of'invisible digital', where technology is hidden in everyday objects and behavioural triggers generate data or output," explains Shirra Smilansky, CEO of Electrify Worldwide Ltd and author of Experiential Marketing. She adds: "2018 is the age of ultimate choice, where consumers expect authenticity from brands.

Legal artificial intelligence (AI) was a major theme at this year's International Legal Technology Association Conference (ILTACon 2017). At ILTACon, law firm IT and a small group of in-house lawyers, network, learn from each other, and attend educational sessions. It is an amazing opportunity to catch up on legal technology. This year my radar was searching for an update on what is really happening with legal AI in law firms. Are law firms getting beyond the hype and using AI?

Futurist Jack Uldrich warns of technology threats at a conference sponsored by Store Capital. Jack Uldrich flashed a photo showing a homeless man accepting donations through his cellphone. "The world is changing in strange ways," he quipped. It was a lighter moment against a backdrop of some anxiety and uncertainty as Uldrich, an author and futurist, warned a small-business audience in Scottsdale this past week about the accelerating technological changes that already have devastated taxi-cab companies, video-rental stores, some retailers and many other businesses, with more disruption ahead. It was one segment of a conference designed not just to warn businesses about looming threats but to help them identity things they might not be doing well -- tips ranged from honing your marketing message to encouraging a culture of innovation, from acknowledging failures will happen to hiring young adults as "reverse mentors."