Amazon is working to make its Alexa a better listener. The Seattle-based technology giant has been developing a feature that would allow the voice assistant that powers its Echo line of speakers to distinguish between individual users based on their voices, according to people familiar with Amazon's Alexa strategy. The sources declined to be identified by name because they are not authorized to talk about the company's future product plans. An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment. Alexa, like Apple's Siri or Microsoft's Cortana, can interpret and respond to voice commands such as "How's the weather?" or "What movies are playing tonight?"

Here's something to think about – if machine learning is about teaching a computer to think like humans do, can they be taught to think like a specific person? And if they can think like a great artist, could they also create art like one? To test this idea, IBM's cognitive computing engine Watson has been tasked with trying to think like Antoni Gaudi, the Catalan modernist whose fusion of organic and orient-inspired architecture permeates his home city of Barcelona. There, during the Mobile World Congress conference taking place at the moment, a team of designers from New York agency SOFTLab will create a sculpture, "informed" by Watson. In preparation the IBM machine learning system was fed hundreds of images of Gaudi's work, as well as images related to Barcelona and its culture.

Universities are to get £17 million to help develop pioneering robotics. Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics which can "transform how we live, work, travel and learn" are in line for a boost in the Government's digital strategy. Universities will get £17 million to help them develop pioneering robotics and AI as part of the plans to support the "booming" sector, which is behind smartphone voice and touch recognition technology and digital assistants such as the iPhone's Siri. AI also forms the bedrock of video games and music and film recommendations services, as well as improving online customer services, and is used in fraud detection tools used by banks. Among the projects supported with the money from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is a move by the University of Manchester to develop autonomous robots for hazardous environments such as nuclear facilities.

Waymo, the self-driving car company owned by Google's parent Alphabet, filed suit against Uber on Thursday alleging that the ride-share company engaged in the "calculated theft" of its self-driving technology. The suit is the latest setback for Uber, still reeling from the viral #DeleteUber campaign and which this week launched an "urgent investigation" into claims of sexual harassment. The lawsuit, filed in US district court in San Francisco, contains explosive allegations that a former Waymo employee, Anthony Levandowski, plotted to steal Waymo's technology and trade secrets before leaving to start his own self-driving truck company, Otto. Uber acquired Otto in August 2016, reportedly for $680m. At the center of the suit is Waymo's proprietary LiDAR system – the "eyes" that self-driving cars use to see other vehicles, the road and pedestrians.

Today's artificial intelligence is certainly formidable. It can beat world champions at intricate games like chess and Go, or dominate at Jeopardy!. It can interpret heaps of data for us, guide driverless cars, respond to spoken commands, and track down the answers to your internet search queries. And as artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, there will be fewer and fewer jobs that robots can't take care of--or so Elon Musk recently speculated. He suggested that we might have to give our own brains a boost to stay competitive in an AI-saturated job market.

Autonomous vehicles and self-driving cars are coming. Experts predict that every major auto manufacturer will have a self-driving car on the market by the early 2020s. And this has got many people talking about the business impacts. Every revolutionary technology brings with it revolutionary change. Businesses and industries that don't adjust quickly could face catastrophic consequences.

Machine learning is on the edge of revolutionizing those 12 sectors. Most leaders in those industries look at Machine Learning and see a non-stable, none viable technology in the short term. This will allow technological Entrepreneurs to disrupt them.

Artificial intelligence is a term that is gradually gaining ground in our daily vocabulary. Although the hysteria of machines becoming sentient and taking over humans has been widespread since the terminator movies, in reality, artificial intelligence is nearly nothing like what the movie portrays. We aren't digging our own graves but building effective tools to catapult the human race forward.

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Uber's fleet of self-driving vehicles are now cruising the streets of Tempe, Arizona. After a spat with the California Department of Motor Vehicles in December, Uber moved its line of 16 custom, autonomous Volvo XC90 SUVs to Arizona, where Gov. Doug Ducey welcomed the company with open arms (and no extra restrictions on self-driving vehicles). Arizona is proud to be home to your autonomous vehicle fleet! Today, some Arizona residents can finally catch a ride in a driverless Uber. Request an UberX in Tempe -- the home of Arizona State University -- and if a driverless vehicle is available, it will accept the trip.