Apple is now taking pre-orders for the HomePod, but there is some confusion as to whether services like Spotify and devices the Apple TV can be used with the speaker. The HomePod will cost you $349 and will be available in stores on Feb. 9. The speaker was revealed last June during Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference and was due in December. However, Apple pushed the release date to February instead. The HomePod's price is much higher than other speakers on the market, like the Google Home, Amazon Echo devices and the Sonos One.

The "AI for Everyone" Challenge enables companies, organizations or individuals using AI to solve critical problems in their industry of choice. "When I first used CrowdFlower as a customer in 2010, it was for disaster response that involved both Human and Machine Intelligence. So, the'AI for Everyone' winners are working on problems that are very close to my heart," said Robert Munro, CrowdFlower CTO. "The breadth and depth of the researchers collaborating on identifying hate speech is impressive, and it's a delight to support the ambitious LanguageNet database that will help bring AI to more languages." The first winning proposal from this round has been awarded to a group of academics, professors and Ph.D candidates hailing from elite universities across the world (Cornell University, University of Michigan, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Rochester and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) who came together as a team to submit for the challenge.

Spending on information technology worldwide will reach $3.7 trillion this year, with the largest growth expected in spending on enterprise software. That is the prediction of research firm Gartner, which says organizations will increase spending on IT by approximately 4.5 percent in 2018. Enterprise software spending is the bright spot in Gartner's latest study, which predicts 9.5 percent growth in purchases for these applications in 2018, with another 8.4 percent growth in 2019, and will total $421 billion. "Global IT spending growth began to turn around in 2017, with continued growth expected over the next few years. However, uncertainty looms as organizations consider the potential impacts of Brexit, currency fluctuations and a possible global recession," said Gartner Research Vice President John-David Lovelock.

He may be one of the most famous figures in history, but it appears the Google Home smart speaker doesn't know who Jesus is. At least, that's according to several outraged users who have accused Google of deliberately filtering its results to fit its own agenda. They claim that despite not providing any details about Jesus, the smart speaker can still identify Buddha, Muhammad and Satan. When people asked their speaker'Who is Jesus?' the general response from Google Home seems to be'I'm not sure how to help you with that.' One television producer in Nashville compared the theological knowledge of Google Home and Amazon Alexa during a Facebook Live video.

When Google unveiled its $249 Clips camera back in October 2017, it was easy to question Google's motives. Lifelogging cameras weren't a new idea, nor were they particularly successful, and given the rise in smartphone imaging and video quality, it was a tough ask to let a wearable camera automatically capture important moments. With Clips expected to debut in the coming weeks, Google has penned a blog post (first detailed by The Verge) detailing how it's trained its algorithms to identify the best shots. In order to do that, its AI needed to learn from something or someone, so Google called in photography experts from various different backgrounds and supplied their model with some of the best photography available. "We ended up discovering--through trial and error and a healthy dose of luck--a treasure trove of expertise in the form of a documentary filmmaker, a photojournalist, and a fine arts photographer," said Josh Lovejoy, Senior Interaction Designer at Google.

"We ended up discovering--through trial and error and a healthy dose of luck--a treasure trove of expertise in the form of a documentary filmmaker, a photojournalist, and a fine arts photographer," said Josh Lovejoy, Senior Interaction Designer at Google. "Together, we began gathering footage from people on the team and trying to answer the question, 'What makes a memorable moment?'" Some of that learning comes down to principles that you may have learnt as you've struggled to get to grips with a new smartphone camera or point-and-shoot. Understanding focus, particularly depth of field, and the rule of thirds are key, but so are some more "common sense" suggestions. Everybody knows to keep fingers out of the shot and to not make quick movements, but machine learning algorithms have no such understanding.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being leveraged brilliantly by the early movers, but a much larger majority is still intimidated by the avalanche of disruption.

DAVOS: "Artificial intelligence and robots will kill many jobs." It's a depressingly blunt statement for anyone to make, but even more so as it is the prediction of Jack Ma, CEO of the Chinese online sales giant Alibaba.

It was not long ago when the term "artificial intelligence" was something largely reserved for sci-fi movies. But, increasingly, daily life is being influenced with the use of artificial intelligence (AI). "AI is changing everything from the way we shop with products like Amazon's Echo using voice commands to …