In April 2018, the department of economic development, Dubai, launched a "Smart Protection" service, which adopts Artificial Intelligence (AI) to respond efficiently to consumer queries and resolve their complaints. Through an app called Dubai Consumer, the service engages consumers in a direct dialogue to gather information and, within a few minutes, issues an "empowerment letter" stating details of complaint and instructions to the retailer to resolve relevant grievance within a pre-specified time frame, failing which the retailer risks attracting fines. It was reported in November that retailers comply with instructions in empowerment letters in more than 90% cases. The service has been trained to handle grievances in more than 12 sectors and understands more than 40 laws and regulations relating to consumer protection. Imagine the utility of such a service in our country, wherein the standard of customer support and grievance redressal is abysmally poor.

Inventory tracking -- that is, figuring out which products are in stock, which stock is likely to run low in the next week, and so on -- is a never-ending battle, as shoppers spend an estimated 40 billion hours picking things off store shelves. However, serial entrepreneur Richard Schwartz believes he has the answer, and it involves airborne drones with brace cages that resemble giant wiffle balls. Schwartz is the CEO and founder of Pensa Systems, an Austin startup developing a retail inventory system that taps computer vision algorithms to "understand" what's on store shelves. Pensa has already trialed its platform with Anheuser-Busch InBev -- a strategic investor -- along with several other brands and retailers in multiple countries. And at the New York Retail Federation's annual conference in New York, the company today announced that it has secured fresh capital it will put toward client acquisition.

Nikki Baird is Vice President of Retail Innovation at Aptos, a retail enterprise solution provider, as well co-founder of Retail Systems Research and a former analyst at Forrester Research. She discusses advancements in Artificial Intelligence that will help retailers ensure that AI isn't making bad assumptions under the adage "garbage in, garbage out" as well as the trend toward in-store personalization in Part 7 of EcommerceBytes Online Selling Trends 2019. Retail Breaks Out of the AI Black Box First-generation AI solutions were simple – data in, answer out. Solutions were designed to protect the average end user from confusion and distraction. While black box solutions serve their purpose, they also limit the value organizations can extrapolate by hiding AI logic, which in theory could be used to teach humans what was learned that led to various recommendations.

Get started with MATLAB for deep learning and AI with this in-depth primer. In this book, you start with machine learning fundamentals, then move on to neural networks, deep learning, and then convolutional neural networks. In a blend of fundamentals and applications, MATLAB Deep Learning employs MATLAB as the underlying programming language and tool for the examples and case studies in this book. With this book, you'll be able to tackle some of today's real world big data, smart bots, and other complex data problems. You'll see how deep learning is a complex and more intelligent aspect of machine learning for modern smart data analysis and usage.

For a technology that's decades old, artificial intelligence managed to emerge in the public imagination as one of the signature technologies of 2018 -- if not always in a positive way. On the upside, AI and its related sets of technology such as machine learning and deep learning enable now-taken-for-granted services such speech recognition in smartphones and devices such as Amazon.com Inc.'s Echo and Google LLC's Home, not to mention self-driving cars, better disease diagnoses and, less obvious but at least as impactful, more automated information technology infrastructure in the cloud and data centers. At the same time, AI has been used to target people with fake news, discriminate against certain kinds of workers or customers and stoked fears, albeit likely overblown, that machines could make most jobs obsolete before too long. Not least, some leading lights such as Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk and the late physicist Stephen Hawking have raised concerns, still hotly debated, that runaway AI could threaten human existence.

This book is an introductory overview of Ethem's detailed text on ML. The text itself has gotten mostly mixed or bad reviews due to a lot of math and algorithms notated without a lot of detailed explanations, however, this is a general reader intro and doesn't go into math, algos in detail, trees, Bayesian logic or even pseudocode, it is more an up to date overview of the field as it exists at this writing. Alpaydin's expensive text, btw, is also available in a very inexpensive Asian edition here on Amazon if you want to brave that difficult book without a lot of investment (Introduction To Machine Learning 3Rd Edition). The present volume is sortof a "ML for Dummies" only updated for the current craze with big data management. There is a lot of history and background that an experienced ML person will find too basic, but as a High School intro or general interested reader intro it is excellent.

The Amazon boogie-man has every retailer scrambling for ways to fight back. But the cost and effort to install cameras all over the ceiling or into every shelf could block stores from entering the autonomous shopping era. Caper wants to make eliminating checkout lines as easy as replacing their shopping carts while offering a more familiar experience for customers. The startup makes a shopping cart with a built-in barcode scanner and credit card swiper, but it's finalizing the technology to automatically scan items you drop in thanks to three image recognition cameras and a weight sensor. The company claims people already buy 18 percent more per visit after stores are equipped with its carts.

From cashierless Amazon Go stores to Walmart's self-driving vans for food drop-offs, tech is revolutionizing grocery shopping with an emphasis on speed and convenience. Now a lesser-known startup is entering the fray with its AI-powered shopping carts that could put an end to bothersome checkout lines at your local store. Equipped with an interactive display and card swiper, the Caper smart shopping cart lets you scan an item's barcode as you shop and pay before you leave. It's already available in two stores in New York, claims the company, which lists Key Food Fresh, Met Fresh and Pioneer Supermarkets as its retail partners on its website. But Caper will need a bigger team-up if it wants to go the distance. For now, it's marketing its smart cart as a more affordable, scalable solution for businesses looking to get in on the autonomous shopping action.

Stitch Fix, established in 2011 in San Francisco, has disrupted the fashion retail industry. With input from the customer and collaboration between artificial intelligence (AI) and human stylists, the online styling subscription service eliminates the need for their customers to go out and shop for clothing or even browse online, because they deliver personalized recommendations right to their door on a regular schedule. The customers can keep all of the products or return what they don't like or need. That feedback gets input into the company's data vaults to make the algorithms even better at determining the preferred style for each person and even identify trends. In 2017, the company had $1 billion in revenue and 2.2 million active customers, but competitors such as Amazon and Trunk Club are lining up to mimic its style of retail.

Changes are rampant in the retail industry. Every day we hear of both big brands (and small ones) closing shop or downsizing in an effort to stay lean and competitive. To understand in depth what's happening in the retail landscape, we spoke to Doug Stephens. Doug is the founder of Retail Prophet, and one of the world's foremost retail industry futurists. The author of two groundbreaking books on retail, a nationally syndicated retail columnist, and over 20 years of experience in the retail industry, Doug brings together his unique perspective to provide Manthan with his insights on retailing, technology and consumer behavior.