You're cool chatting up Amazon Alexa, the Google Assistant and Siri and having each come alive when you utter the "Alexa," "Hey, Google" or "Hey, Siri" wake words. But your kids are also engaging with the popular digital voices inside the smart speakers in your home and your big concern has mostly to do with privacy. Amazon and Google really cornered the smart speaker market. That's the chief takeaway from a new study, exclusive to USA TODAY and conducted in February, by Common Sense Media and SurveyMonkey Audience. Robocall crackdown: FTC continues robocall crackdown, stops groups responsible for'billions' of calls More than 4 in 10 of the 1,127 parents of children ages 2 to 8 who participated in the survey say their family uses a smart speaker such as the Amazon Echo or Google Home.

Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Limited is seeking to sell Grindr, the popular gay dating app it has owned since 2016, after a US government national security panel raised concerns about its ownership, according to people familiar with the matter. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has informed Kunlun that its ownership of West Hollywood, California-based Grindr constitutes a national security risk, the two sources told Reuters. CFIUS's specific concerns and whether any attempt was made to mitigate them could not be learned. The United States has been increasingly scrutinizing application developers over the safety of personal data they handle, especially if some of it involves US military or intelligence personnel. Kunlun had said last August it was preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) of Grindr.

It began three and a half billion years ago in a pool of muck, when a molecule made a copy of itself and so became the ultimate ancestor of all earthly life. It began four million years ago, when brain volumes began climbing rapidly in the hominid line. In less than thirty years, it will end. Jaan Tallinn stumbled across these words in 2007, in an online essay called Staring into the Singularity. The "it" was human civilisation. Humanity would cease to exist, predicted the essay's author, with the emergence of superintelligence, or AI, that surpasses human-level intelligence in a broad array of areas. Tallinn, an Estonia-born computer programmer, has a background in physics and a propensity to approach life like one big programming problem.

SEATTLE/WASHINGTON - Boeing Co. on Wednesday took its most aggressive moves yet to defend its core 737 airliner franchise, saying it had developed software fixes to prevent failures of an automated flight control system that is being scrutinized after two deadly crashes in the past five months. Boeing, in the midst of one its worst crises in years, is under pressure from crash victims' families, airlines, lawmakers in Washington and regulators around the world to prove that the automated flight control systems aboard its 737 Max aircraft are safe, and that pilots have the training required to override the system in an emergency. A Boeing official in Seattle said on Wednesday the timing of the software upgrade was "100 percent independent of the timing of the Ethiopian accident," and the company was taking steps to make the anti-stall system "more robust." There was no need to overhaul Boeing's regulatory relationship with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) now, the company said. "We are going to do everything that we can do to ensure that accidents like these never happen again," Mike Sinnett, vice president for product strategy and future airplane development told reporters.

Scientists and activists are calling for a ban on making robots that could kill humans, which some tech companies are racing to develop. But that call hasn't been met with a blanket "yes", especially from some players in the Artificial Intelligence industry. So far, the United States and Russia have resisted signing up to the ban.

Understanding the complex: Robert Mueller did not ride into the sunset wielding a flaming sword while atop a unicorn, having saved the republic after all. Many people are upset that his much-anticipated report did not immediately "fix" everything, but Lili Loofbourow understands why they're frustrated--it's inherently American to place imaginary superheroes on pedestals, after all. As she writes, "Maybe this is inevitable. Instability makes people cling to their prophet of choice." At least we've got the unicorn illustration.)

Google has set up an external AI ethics council to guide the tech giant away from morally questionable uses of its technology and encroaching on the privacy of its customers. It will advise the search giant on matters relating to the development and application of its artificial intelligence research. Google has been embroiled in past controversies regarding the use of its AI, as well as the way it protects the data it gathers. It established an internal AI ethics board in 2014 when it acquired DeepMind but this has been shrouded in secrecy with no details ever released about who it includes. The firm is a world-leader in many aspects of AI and the eight people recruited for the advisory board will'consider some of Google's most complex challenges'.

AI may be able to predict when patients battling chronic diseases will die, research suggests. Scientists and doctors used data from half a million people to develop the tool that foresees who is at risk of an early death. It takes into account everything from a patient's family history of disease and how much salt they eat, to medication use and whether they wear sunscreen. Researchers said the AI system was'very accurate' in tests and around 10 per cent more reliable than estimations by existing machine-learning systems. The research was carried out by the University of Nottingham and led by Dr Stephen Weng, an assistant professor of epidemiology and data science.

To master English as a native speaker, the average adult has to learn almost as much information as the contents of a full floppy disk, experts estimate. That amount of information translates to 12.5 million bits or roughly 1.5 megabytes (mb), while the iconic storage device holds 1.44mb of information. The data is mostly in the form of word definitions rather than complex structures like grammar. This is the first time that researchers have tried try to work out the amount of information our brains need to store in order to master a single language. Researchers from the University of Rochester in New York analysed different aspects of language learning and found the average learner acquires nearly 2,000 bits of information about how language works daily.

The US government says a Chinese gaming company's ownership of the gay dating app Grindr poses a national security risk, according to a report from Reuters. Beijing Kunlun Tech acquired a 60 percent stake in Grindr in 2016 and bought the rest in 2018. But, Reuters reports, the Chinese firm didn't clear the acquisition with the agency known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which evaluates the national security impacts of foreign investments in US companies. Kunlun is now seeking to sell Grindr following the CFIUS assessment, according to Reuters. Grindr declined to comment; CFIUS and Kunlun did not respond to requests for comment.