The users can ask Alexa for diverse Hindi content such as jokes, shayaris, games, Kabir ke dohe, Panchatantra stories, Bollywood dialogues, more than 500 Alexa skills, and even spellings of words in Hindi. According to Puneesh Kumar, Country Manager for Alexa Experiences and Devices, Amazon India, conversations in Hinglish are common. "With today's launch, you will notice that Alexa has become more local. Alexa will not only understand and respond in Hindi or Hinglish but, is also armed with a lot of knowledge about topics that interest users in the country ranging from local information to music, and from Bollywood to cricket," Kumar noted. Soon, customers will also be able to speak to Alexa in Hindi and English without changing the language setting back and forth.

A recent Wall Street Journal report has highlighted how, in March this year, a group of hackers were able to use AI software to mimic an energy company CEO's voice in order to steal £201,000. Reports indicate that the CEO of an unnamed UK-based energy company received a phone call from someone that he believed to be the German chief executive of the parent company. The person on the end of the phone ordered the CEO of the UK-based energy company to immediately transfer €220,000 (£201,000) into the bank account of a Hungarian supplier. The voice was reported to have been so accurate in its sound, that the CEO of the energy company even recognised what he thought was the subtleties of the German accent of his boss, and even "melody" of the accent. The call was so convincing that the energy company made the transfer of funds as requested.

For some organizations, harnessing artificial intelligence's full potential begins tentatively with explorations of select enterprise opportunities and a few potential use cases. While testing the waters this way may deliver valuable insights, it likely won't be enough to make your company a market maker (rather than a fast follower). To become a true AI-fueled organization, a company may need to fundamentally rethink the way humans and machines interact within working environments. Executives should also consider deploying machine learning and other cognitive tools systematically across every core business process and enterprise operation to support data-driven decision-making. Likewise, AI could drive new offerings and business models. These are not minor steps, but as AI technologies standardize rapidly across industries, becoming an AI-fueled organization will likely be more than a strategy for success--it could be table stakes for survival. In his new book The AI Advantage, Deloitte Analytics senior adviser Thomas H. Davenport describes three stages in the journey that companies can take toward achieving full utilization of artificial intelligence.1 In the first stage, which Davenport calls assisted intelligence, companies harness large-scale data programs, the power of the cloud, and science-based approaches to make data-driven business decisions. Today, companies at the vanguard of the AI revolution are already working toward the next stage--augmented intelligence--in which machine learning (ML) capabilities layered on top of existing information management systems work to augment human analytical competencies. According to Davenport, in the coming years, more companies will progress toward autonomous intelligence, the third AI utilization stage, in which processes are digitized and automated to a degree whereby machines, bots, and systems can directly act upon intelligence derived from them. The journey from the assisted to augmented intelligence stages, and then on to fully autonomous intelligence, is part of a growing trend in which companies transform themselves into "AI-fueled organizations."

A new report from Data and Society raises doubts about automated solutions to deceptively altered videos, including machine learning-altered videos called deepfakes. Authors Britt Paris and Joan Donovan argue that deepfakes, while new, are part of a long history of media manipulation -- one that requires both a social and a technical fix. Relying on AI could actually make things worse by concentrating more data and power in the hands of private corporations. "The panic around deepfakes justifies quick technical solutions that don't address structural inequality," says Paris. "It's a massive project, but we need to find solutions that are social as well as political so people without power aren't left out of the equation."

Such is its meteoric rise, that its adoption among businesses increased by 60% between 2017 and 2018. Despite the obvious potential, recent events have exposed how automated systems can both intentionally and unintentionally lead to bias. For example, accidental bias was identified in cases where algorithms manage digital ads for STEM roles. With this trend only expected to accelerate, it is critical that the risk of bias is recognised and addressed. While AI bias is creeping into the business world, a recent UNESCO report provided more concerning findings, revealing that voice-activated assistants with female voices such as Amazon's Alexa instil views of gender subservience.

At ETH Zurich, scientists from the Department of Physics and the Department of Computer Science have now joined forces to improve on standard methods for estimating the dark matter content of the universe through artificial intelligence. They used cutting-edge machine learning algorithms for cosmological data analysis that have a lot in common with those used for facial recognition by Facebook and other social media. Their results have recently been published in the scientific journal Physical Review D. While there are no faces to be recognized in pictures taken of the night sky, cosmologists still look for something rather similar, as Tomasz Kacprzak, a researcher in the group of Alexandre Refregier at the Institute of Particle Physics and Astrophysics, explains: "Facebook uses its algorithms to find eyes, mouths or ears in images; we use ours to look for the tell-tale signs of dark matter and dark energy." As dark matter cannot be seen directly in telescope images, physicists rely on the fact that all matter -- including the dark variety -- slightly bends the path of light rays arriving at the Earth from distant galaxies. This effect, known as "weak gravitational lensing," distorts the images of those galaxies very subtly, much like far-away objects appear blurred on a hot day as light passes through layers of air at different temperatures. Cosmologists can use that distortion to work backwards and create mass maps of the sky showing where dark matter is located.

A common refrain in the media is that people don't like their boss and people are scared of robots. So I wondered about the truth and nuance to these emotions: how many people would prefer a robot to their boss? The old saying goes, "People join a company, but they leave a bad boss." As Gallup research demonstrates, 70% of how we feel about work--our emotional commitment--is driven by who our manager is. The ongoing employee engagement crisis is largely about managers who know how to manage tasks, but don't know how to lead people. And there is also growing press coverage about automation and the emergence of robots in the workplace.

NEW DELHI: The skills gap is widening, found a global survey by Wiley Education Services and Future Workplace. It also found that the number of recruiters who would prefer to invest in AI (artificial intelligence) rather than upskilling their employees had increased to 40% this year from 29% last year. The report, titled'Closing the Skills Gap 2019', surveyed 600 HR leaders and found that 64% employers thought there's a skill gap in their firm, up from 52%. The top reasons for the skill gap were found to be the pace of change due to technology, a lack of skilled talent that can move into the required positions, and a lack of candidates who are qualified. Around 90% of employers said they would hire a person without a 4-year college degree, although 68% said that a college degree was used to validate to hard skills.

Robots aren't going to take everyone's jobs, but technology has already reshaped the world of work in ways that are creating clear winners and losers. And it will continue to do so without intervention, says the first report of MIT's Task Force on the Work of the Future. The supergroup of MIT academics was set up by MIT President Rafael Reif in early 2018 to investigate how emerging technologies will impact employment and devise strategies to steer developments in a positive direction. And the headline finding from their first publication is that it's not the quantity of jobs we should be worried about, but the quality. Widespread press reports of a looming "employment apocalypse" brought on by AI and automation are probably wide of the mark, according to the authors.

Judge Napolitano's Chambers: Judge Andrew Napolitano breaks down why the Fourth Amendment is an intentional obstacle to government, an obstacle shown necessary by history to curtail tyrants. A trial in Great Britain has just concluded with potentially dangerous implications for personal freedom in the U.S. Great Britain is currently one of the most watched countries in the Western world – watched, that is, by its own police forces. In London alone, one study found that more than 420,000 surveillance cameras were present in public places in 2017. What do the cameras capture? Everything done and seen in public.