Standard Cognition helps retail stores stand up to Jeff Bezos' juggernaut. The $50 million-funded autonomous checkout startup is racing to equip bigger shops with scanless payment technology that lets customers walk out the door without ever stopping at a cashier. While Amazon Go opens its own 2,000 square foot boutiques, Standard Cognition is working on outfitting 20,000 square foot and larger drug stores and grocers. That led Standard Cognition to make its first acquisition, Explorer.ai. Why would an automated checkout company acquire a self-driving car startup?

Google has some news to go alongside its giant pavilion that dominates the lot outside the main halls of CES 2019. The company expects that, by the end of this month, its Google Assistant will be... assisting on one billion devices, across Android phones, iPhones, TVs, headphones, watches, smart speakers and smart displays. So, in the voice assistant stakes, how does this compare to Amazon? Well the retailer recently cheered that it has sold 100 million Alexa-connected devices across the world. Both companies haven't broken down exactly how that all distributes across, say, smart speakers, phones and the rest, but Google's proposition is a little bit to Amazon For Google, its voice assistant is a core part of Android, meaning it's on all recent smartphones -- even entry-level devices that run the lightweight Android Go OS.

This year's most popular pieces--culled from the hundreds of articles, reports, blog posts, and podcasts we published on McKinsey.com in 2018--may lack the glitz of a diamond bracelet or a shiny new gadget. But they offer an invaluable guide to what's top of mind at the highest levels of business leadership. What sparked the greatest interest over the past 12 months? Artificial intelligence and blockchain were clearly on the minds of senior leaders. Beyond these specific technologies, it's clear that many organizations are trying to develop a "new enterprise DNA" at the intersection of digital, analytics, and design.

It could be the best thing since sliced bread. A family-owned baking business is attempting to disrupt how you get your next loaf at the grocery store with the first, fully automated bread-making machine. Called the BreadBot, Washington-based Wilkinson Baking Company took the wraps off the machine at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which mixes, kneads and bakes bread in just 90 minutes. Up to 10 loaves are ready to pick up from a vending machine every hour and its creators say the BreadBot does as good of a job as a human baker - so good that the machines are expected to land in major grocery stores soon. BreadBot can make just about any kind of loaf you want, including whole wheat, nine grain, honey oat and rye.

The Amazon Go store requires hundreds of cameras to detect who's picking up what items. Standard Cognition needs just 27 to go after the massive market of equipping regular shops with autonomous retail technology. Walk into one of its partners' stores and overhead cameras identify you by shape and movement, not facial recognition. Open up its iOS or Android app and a special light pattern flashes, allowing the cameras to tie you to your account and payment method. Grab whatever you want, and just walk out.

Do you recognize this photograph? It's a picture of a robot from Bossa Nova that has been "patrolling" the aisles of some Walmart stores in the United States. There have been attempts for several years to bring automation to retail stores – with mixed success. A popular back-office example is the "picking robots" used in Amazon and Ocado distribution centers. Even Costco's pizza-making bot provides an eye-catching example of automation.

Data science is rapidly changing. New advances in AI and machine learning mean that data can be applied in brand new ways, and in unprecedented modeling systems, to do much more than was possible just a few years ago. The cloud is also ushering in a new era of data science by making software more portable and versatile. Techopedia asked the experts what we might see in the year ahead. Here's some of what's likely to come our way in 2019.

This year's Consumer Electronics Show is bringing the latest in tech including self-driving suitcases and motorcycles. The Numi toilet from Kohler was impossible to ignore. Announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, 2018, the new $8,000 toilet was not just touted to "bring you the finest in personal comfort and cleansing," but it also had voice commands via Alexa. Ready to flush or want to heat up the seat? Just ask Amazon's Alexa personal assistant to do it for you.

Imagine saying "Alexa, buy insurance!" You would not even have to specify what type of insurance policy you need, as the artificial intelligence working in the background will already have worked out when your renewals occur, and what your preferences for any given policy would be. These kinds of innovations have already happened in other industries such as online retail. Amazon, for example, can automatically select the best-matched product to your Alexa voice command, while UK online supermarket Ocado offers an automated weekly grocery shop based on customers' tastes and the amount of time it takes them to use their favourite items. However, despite some already functional AI tools such as telematics in motor insurance and wearable fitness technology in life and health, buying an insurance policy on a single voice command is still pretty much science fiction.

Retail is the place where rapidly changing consumer demands meet just-in-time distribution and production. The sector is in a state of constant flux: "If you think about it, the retail store that you...