Talk is cheap, but security is king in the AI future of conversational commerce. Researchers at TSSG in Waterford are on the case for making AI voice-based commerce tangible and safe. The speed of the introduction of services like Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana and Amazon Echo's Alexa makes it easy to forget that the artificially intelligent (AI) future we all dreamed of is actually here. Yesterday, Gartner Fellow and vice-president Tom Austin pointed this paradox out when he said that most of the AI on our smartphones – many of which have been with us for years – are taken for granted. 'We are seeing cool apps coming out but we have to make sure that we underpin the technology by addressing core security and privacy concerns as well' – ERIC ROBSON And yet, the hottest areas of tech today, AI and machine-learning, hold the keys to a whole generation of services that will transform our lives forever.

A panel of robotics experts at the South by Southwest conference couldn't reach a consensus Tuesday on whether machines would soon take over the Earth. But they agreed that the advances in artificial intelligence are well-nigh unstoppable. In fact, they said, machines are already demonstrating the ability to learn and to solve problems that humans couldn't. The discussion was seasoned with more than a dash of whimsy, and like much of what goes on at South by Southwest, it was closer to a brainstorming session than an academic presentation. Nevertheless, the speakers offered enough anecdotal evidence to make their visions of the future compelling, if not necessarily prescient. Two of the three -- Daniel Wilson and William Hertling -- are authors of novels about apocalyptic conflicts between machines and humans, so their comments need to be taken with a grain of salt.