Rohit Prasad has 17 smart speakers in his home powered by Amazon's smart assistant. "I test my own technology - with all of them being called Alexa, I see which one is waking up and whether it is the right device," says the chief scientist of the AI division responsible for the tech. But, it seems, still not enough. In a one-on-one interview with the BBC, Mr Prasad discussed plans for Alexa to both become smarter and to follow users wherever they go. This is known in the trade as ubiquitous ambient computing, and Amazon hopes to corner the market.

Singapore is tapping artificial intelligence as the next part of its "Smart Nation" project, the city-state's foreign minister announced Tuesday. The strategy identifies five areas -- transportation, smart cities, healthcare, education and public safety -- where AI can be used to make big change. As part of its strategy, Singapore also announced the creation of a National AI Office to "drive the national AI agenda." The office will work to enjoin efforts underway in the city-state's research, industry and government sectors to tackle key challenges. Vivian Balakrishnan, who leads the Smart Nation Initiative for Singapore, and serves as its foreign minister, officially announced the new strategy at the opening session of Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Canada has received more than its usual share of attention for its AI capabilities. The country was either prescient or lucky in continuing to fund neural networks research when the US retreated from it in the 1970s and 80s. As a result, Canadian researchers like Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, and Yoshua Bengio pushed forward the methods we now call "deep learning." These three researchers won the 2018 Turing Award--often called the Nobel equivalent for computer science. Canada is also known in AI for its collegial, public/private ecosystems.

Military drones or unmanned aerial vehicles have been around for a long time and their first tactical use with reconnaissance cameras was tested by Israeli Intelligence in the late 1960s. Israel continued to develop the technology, successfully using it to neutralize Syrian air defences at the start of the 1982 Lebaon War. The U.S. military also adopted it, successfully using the Israeli-developed Pioneer UAV for real-time intelligence over Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo during the 1990s. It was only a matter of time until weapons were first deployed on U.S. drones and this occurred immediately after 9/11 when Osama bin Laden was observed from an unarmed Predator. They, along with their larget successor the Reaper, were subsequently equipped with Hellfire missiles, attacking a host of targets across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and Libya.

Ever since Sony announced the return of Aibo in 2016, it's increasingly focused on developing AI technology to push its products. Now it's established Sony AI which will have offices in Japan, Europe and the US focused on bringing "world class fundamental research and development with Sony's unique technical assets." While that includes robotics like its recently-updated puppy bot, it's also all about the company's Imaging & Sensing business, as well as entertainment like movies and games. The first three areas it's focusing on are gaming, imaging & sensing, and gastronomy. As for that last one, a concept video Sony released last year proposed the idea of "robot gastronomomy" that relied on autonomous tech to cook food at home or even on a night out.

ORGANIZATIONS understand the value of artificial intelligence (AI), and in the past 12 months, many, if not most, have attempted to deploy AI in one way or another. According to a recent forecast by IDC, spending on AI systems is forecasted to reach US$97.9 billion in 2023, more than 2.5 times the US$37.5 billion that is expected to be spent in 2019. IDC's analysis reveals that spending on AI systems is currently dominated by the retail and banking industries, followed by discrete manufacturing, process manufacturing, healthcare, and professional services. Of course, spending on AI is growing rapidly in the media industry as well as among federal/central governments. Despite the spending, it seems as though a majority of the organizations are running AI projects in pilots and are unable to scale them up effectively.

The office of the Russian Ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova proposed to create in Russian universities special course on artificial intelligence. The aim of the course is training to counter the threats of artificial intelligence within the discipline of human rights protection. Moreover, it is expected that the novelty will become part of the training program not only for law students, where the protection of human rights is one of the main disciplines. This special course is also necessary for future technical specialists. The press service of Moskalkova's office clarified that " the course will be constantly adjusted, filled with new things in accordance with technological development."

A group of MIT researchers visited Lockheed Martin this month for a chance to talk about the future of artificial intelligence and automation. Liz Reynolds is the executive director of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future and says her job is to focus on the relationship between new technologies and how they will affect jobs. "Colorado is at the forefront of thinking about these things," Reynolds said. "All jobs will be affected by this technology." Earlier this year, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., created an artificial intelligence strategy group to take a closer look at how AI is being used in the state and how that will change in the future.

Working in advertising can't be easy. For every "I'm lovin' it" or "Just Do It" there's thousands of crappy, forgettable slogans that never caught on. But it's nearly 2020 and that means the brave front-line marketers tasked with capturing our hearts, minds, and wallets have a powerful new ally: Artificial intelligence. Take this unofficial Nike advertisement that a neural network spit out after being trained on seven years worth of the company's commercials: TNW caught up with the faux-advertisement's creator, Jean-Baptiste Le Divelec, via email, who shared their inspiration for the project with us: I work in advertising as a copywriter and AI and neural networks are definitely part of a big discussion in the industry. As a creative I'm fascinated by neural networks especially when it comes to neural networks being able to generate art, paintings, music etc.

The operator of a self-driving Uber that hit and killed a pedestrian in Tempe last year was the primary cause of the accident because she was watching "The Voice" on her phone instead of the road. That's the finding from the National Transportation Safety Board, although the federal agency identified several other contributory causes in its final report submitted on Tuesday. The board also recommended new federal and state requirements for testing autonomous cars on public roads. Beyond the driver, the board found plenty of blame to go around for the nation's first pedestrian fatality involving a self-driving car. Officials called out Uber's lax safety culture, the pedestrian who was high on methamphetamine, and the state of Arizona's lack of safety requirements for the cars.