Amazon has begun trialling a new home delivery initiative that sees its drivers photographing recipient's front doors as proof the package they ordered has arrived. The online retailer has been quietly rolling out the Amazon Logistics Photo On Delivery programme in carefully chosen locations across the US over the past six months, including San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle, Oregon, Indianapolis and North Virginia. The move is intended to address the problem of items being lost or stolen when the addressee is not at home to take delivery. While some may find the initial concept of strangers' photographing their porch while they're out decidedly odd or even creepy, customers have the opportunity to opt out and the majority so far appear to be reassured by the scheme. "Amazon Logistics Photo On Delivery provides visual delivery confirmation - it shows customers that their package was safely delivered and where," Amazon spokesperson Kristen Kish explained.

It's been a busy year in delivery robot land. Starship Technologies sounded the starting gun to bring autonomous delivery vehicles to market with a $17.2 million round led by Daimler back in January 2017. Then in January this year the Mountain View, Calif.-based company Nuro raised the curtain on its own vision for robo-delivery with a whopping $92 million in funding. Meanwhile, upstart Robomart has its own notion for delivery vehicles that it unveiled at CES. And not to be outdone, everyone's favorite Chinese retail powerhouse, Alibaba, announced its own self-driving delivery vehicle.

China tech is highlighted regularly in Mary Meeker's annual Internet report that underscores China's advances in mobile entertainment and payments, e-commerce, artificial intelligence and on-demand transportation -- in other words, all the latest trends that define Chinese innovation today. If you want evidence of China's climb, consider that nine of the world's top 20 Internet leaders ranked by market valuation are in China today: Alibaba, Tencent, Ant Financial, Baidu, Xiaomi, Didi Chuxing, JD.com, Meituan-Dianping and Toutiao. The remaining 11 are in the U.S. led by Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google (Alphabet) and Facebook. China's momentum in artificial intelligence is also highlighted with notes on Chinese government support for AI development. The report cites Eric Schmidt's prediction that China could be at the level of the U.S. within five years, considering how fast Chinese AI knowhow is improving.

The most exciting thing about smart speakers is that they are all so utterly imperfect. Each of the mainstream examples – Amazon's Echos, the Google Home, Sonos's wide range and the new Apple HomePod – packs within it stunning technology that would have been unimaginable just a couple of years ago. But they're also full of downsides, making choosing one a matter of deciding what you want, not simply settling on the best. Deciding is a matter of picking which things you want – and which things you definitely don't. Some sound good, but are terrible at talking back to you.

Nvidia just announced a chip that crams $10,000 worth of power into a tiny box that costs just $1,299. The chip, Jetson Xavier, is for robots. "This little computer is going to be the brain of future robots," company co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang announced at Nvidia's Monday press conference at Computex in Taiwan. "Robots that drive, that fly, that swim, [a robot] that goes underground, that picks strawberries, picks lettuce, picks apples, helps you in the lab, like Jarvis handing you your screwdriver -- this little computer is the brains of future intelligent machines," Huang said. Jetson Xavier is packed with six processors which can run 30 trillion operations per second. It took five years to be created, Huang said: three years for the design and two years for the architecting.

Samsung beefed up its global artificial intelligence (AI) R&D capabilities with the hiring of two prominent experts who teach at universities in the US. Sebastian Seung joins from Princeton University, where he is the Evnin professor in the Neuroscience Institute and Department of Computer Science; and Daniel Lee is the UPS Foundation chair and professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Samsung said in a statement the two will play a central role in building up fundamental research on AI which will advance human knowledge with the potential for revolutionary business impact. "Samsung is a company with a long history of pursuing innovation and is committed to tapping the full potential of artificial intelligence," said Seung (pictured, left), who is an eminent computational neuroscientist. Before joining Princeton University in 2014, he worked as a researcher at Bell Labs and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lee (pictured, right), an authority in AI and robotics, also worked as a researcher at Bell Labs before joining the University of Pennsylvania in 2001.

Reliance Jio commenced a recruitment drive to create a new team focused on developing artificial intelligence (AI), as the company ramps its efforts around the technology. Indian publication Livemint reported Akash Ambani, the son of Reliance Jio's billionaire owner Mukesh Ambani (pictured), has hired a "few senior people" who will build an AI team which he will head up. The company will set up the team, which will have a remit of working on AI-based use cases for the telecoms operator, and developing machine learning and blockchain, in either Bengaluru or Hyderabad. India's newest operator Reliance Jio sparked a price war in India after offering free voice and data services for a limited period following its launch in September 2016. In May, the operator revealed it had signed up 200 million subscribers and achieved 99 per cent population coverage with its LTE network.

Nvidia launched its Nvidia Isaac robot platform today to power the next generation of autonomous machines, bringing artificial intelligence capabilities to robots for manufacturing, logistics, agriculture, construction, and many other industries. Launched at Computex 2018 in Taiwan by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the Nvidia Isaac platform includes new hardware, software, and a virtual-world robot simulator that makes it easy for developers to create new kinds of robots. "AI is the most powerful technology force of our time," said Huang, in a statement. "Its first phase will enable new levels of software automation that boost productivity in many industries. Next, AI, in combination with sensors and actuators, will be the brain of a new generation of autonomous machines. Someday, there will be billions of intelligent machines in manufacturing, home delivery, warehouse logistics, and much more."

Apple is livestreaming the future of the iPhone, Mac and every other product it makes. The company is holding WWDC, its annual conference for developers, this week. It begins with the major keynote, during which it will reveal updates to the operating systems that power the iPhone, Mac, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple TV. That keynote will be streamed live over the internet – to people whose computers satisfy Apple's requirements. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph.

And for soccer (er, football) fans in the US, Fox Sports will be the TV network responsible for bringing them all 64 games from Russia, at least if they want to watch them in English. But, beyond its broadcast offerings, Fox Sports wants to keep people engaged in the competition in different ways. Aside from its partnership with Twitter, which comes in the form of a show that'll stream live from Russia, Fox Sports has teamed up with IBM to build the ultimate World Cup highlight machine. Powered by Watson artificial intelligence, this video hub lets you create on-demand clips from every FIFA World Cup tournament dating back to 1958. Fox Sports says there are 300 archived matches that Watson is capable of analyzing, which you can filter out by World Cup year, team, player, game, play type or any combination of these.