When it was first announced to a sceptical tech press months after a flop phone, the Echo was dismissed separately as a joke and a privacy nightmare. Now the latter may still prove to be the case - the Echo is always listening, and after it is awakened by saying "Alexa", it logs every sentence spoken to it (although Amazon says privacy is at the heart of the device and that users can delete queries that are stored) - but a joke it is clearly not. In fact many analysts now believe that Amazon has one hand on the future that comes after the smartphone. Alexa is not the only, or even the first, voice-activated virtual assistant – Apple, Google and Microsoft have had their own for years – but it is the first that consumers have truly embraced. While taking out a smartphone in public and speaking to it – as one must with Apple's Siri or Google's Assistant – is awkward, and often slower than simply using a touchscreen, talking to a device in the comfort of one's own home is decidedly less uncomfortable.

Pretty much every data rookie starts with Excel. It is a wonderful program for storing, cleaning and analysing (yes, you read that correctly) your data. Strictly speaking, Excel isn't free, but really – who pays for it these days? If you buy a Windows PC or laptop it'll usually come pre-installed, and if you get a new PC at work your employer will have it pre-installed for you. If you're prepared to look the other way, there are guys who know guys who can get you a copy that fell off the back of a lorry, but I wouldn't endorse that.

Visit our Marketing Nerds archive to listen to other Marketing Nerds podcasts! In this episode of Marketing Nerds, SEJ's Chief Social Media Strategist, Brent Csutoras, was joined by Heidi Young, the principle engineering lead at Oslo, an AI program, to discuss the future of conversational search and how AI could help create a true virtual assistant. Here are a few excerpts from Brent and Heidi's conversation, but be sure to listen to the podcast to hear everything. We very much are in the early stages of it, but I would say what makes today very different from even five years ago, is that technology has kind of been catching up and the market it ready for it. The fact that Google has worked so hard, over the years, to digitize the world's information, organize the world's content, and that Facebook has learned so much about you, and Amazon knows everything that there could be to know about products, you have this ocean of information that's specialized and personalized, all at the same time.

Public perception of A.I. and robots has changed often in the last 100 years. A.I. robots have been represented in pop culture as both friendly helpers like Wall-E, and sentient computer killers like HAL 9000. But now that actual homes and automobiles run on smart technology, it's no longer just pop culture. As robots are starting to look an awful lot like humans, science fiction is starting to look a lot less like fiction. If true A.I. (i.e. a machine/robot as smart and with behavior capabilities as skillful and flexible as ours) becomes a reality, is a world where humans have been replaced as dominant species nigh?

United Parcel Service Inc. UPS -0.42 % said Friday it successfully used a drone to deliver medicine to an island near Boston, jumping into a race with competitors such as Amazon.com Inc. AMZN 0.13 % to test drone delivery inside the U.S. The delivery of an inhaler on Thursday was conducted in partnership with CyPhy Works, a drone maker in which UPS holds a stake. The delivery kicks off a wider test by UPS of using drones for commercial deliveries to remote or difficult-to-access areas. "UPS has a history of trying to take a look at new technologies as they evolve," said Chuck Holland, a vice president of industrial engineering. "We're looking at this in steps," he added, declining to say whether the company may someday use drones more broadly.

United Parcel Service (UPS) is newest competitor in the race to unleash the first fleet of delivery drones. The firm began testing the use of drones this week with a focus of bringing packages to remote or difficult-to-access locations. A mock delivery of urgent medical supplies was delivered from Beverly, Massachusetts to Children's Island as a test, which is the first drone delivery to be made by a major delivery firm in the US. United Parcel Service (UPS) is newest competitor in the race to unleash the first fleet of delivery drones. UPS announced today that it has begun testing the use of drones to make commercial deliveries of packages to remote or difficult-to-access locations, working together with drone-maker CyPhy Works.

Apple is reportedly developing its own device similar to the Amazon Echo, which is said to have left the research and development lab and is now being tested as a prototype. Similar to the Echo, this Siri-driven device will control appliances, locks, lights and other areas of the home via voice activation. Apple is reportedly building its own version of the Amazon Echo, which left the research and development lab and is now being tested as a prototype. Bloomberg reveals Apple's Siri-driven device has left the research and development lab and is now being tested as a prototype. This device will control appliances, locks, lights and other areas of the home via voice activation.

I had the pleasure of participating in Milan's FI-WARE VIP Bootcamp (4–6th May, 2016), under invitation by EBAN. There, along with several other investors and entrepreneurs, we assisted 15 startups from all across Europe to improve the structure and the presentation of their VC pitches. One of the people who actively participated, giving their full support to the event (and as a volunteer, nonetheless) was Federico Travella, founder and CEO of NoviCap, an extremely interesting venture in the "fintech" sector that came up with an innovative way of providing working capital for every kind of business. In discussion with Federico and other participants, the topic of AI was brought up, seen as a contributing factor to increasing unemployment, and through that, to social discontent and political instability. It's surely an interesting subject and is connected to the broader issue of technological progress and its social impact.

Approximately 8 of the 319 million people in the United States read the Wall Street Journal, about 2 percent of the population. If you look at the language -- standardized English -- being fed into many natural language processing units, it's based on the language of that 2 percent. And many machines literally use the venerable, business-focused newspaper to better understand the English language. It might seem like an obvious choice. Standardized English is taught in schools, it's used in legal documents, and it sets the basis for formal society.

A few weeks ago, I got into an intense discussion with a good friend, who's a surgeon. He does important work, literally saving lives for a living. But I said his days in the operating room might just be numbered: the robots are coming. Already, driverless trucks are making their way across Europe, and "virtual employees" are starting to replace call center jobs. By some counts, surgery is not far off on the machine-learning hit list.