Patrick Lestrange was an Insight Data Science Fellow (Winter 2018) from Insight's second Seattle session. In his first four weeks at Insight, he built a Chrome extension for Amazon customers to easily identify useful topics in customer reviews. Previously, Patrick was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington, where he also received his PhD in Chemistry in May 2017. He is now a Data Scientist at Boeing, working on pilot-less airplanes. Like over 75% of Americans, I do most of my shopping online with Amazon in part because their wealth of product reviews allows me to make smart choices as a consumer. These product reviews are a great way to qualitatively assess different features of a product.

Google is having a hardware sale.Credit: Google Amazon typically offers Prime Day discounts on their Fire tablets, Kindle E-readers and Echo digital assistants. This year is no exception with the Echo Show already discounted $100 through Prime Day which starts on July 16th and ends on the 17th. It's offering deep discounts on some of its own hardware, and you don't have to pay the fee to be a Prime member or wait until Prime Day to take advantage. If you want a hands-free digital assistant so you can buy stuff from Amazon, the company's line of Echo devices is for you. If you want to have something that resembles a normal conversation with a digital assistant that leads the field when it comes to answering questions and providing information, Google's line of Home devices is what you want.

Christie Rice, left, of Intel, welcomes panelists Jeff Donaldson of Intriosity; Dawn Dickson of PopCom; and Laura Rea Dickey of Dickey's Barbecue. Artificial intelligence has emerged as one of the most powerful tools for improving the customer experience, but retailers must be willing to accept operational change once they embark on their AI journeys. That was a key theme of a panel on driving innovation with AI during the Interactive Customer Experience Summit at the Omni Frisco Hotel in Frisco, Texas. Retailers will find themselves inundated with more data to manage, and they will likely uncover the need to make organizational changes and reassign some employee responsibilities. "Understanding how to use your data is the biggest thing," said panel moderator Christie Rice, worldwide kiosk and digital signage segment manager at Intel.

Buzzwords like "big data" and "artificial intelligence" have become commonplace in many of today's business conversations, but what exactly do they mean--and what do they mean for the luxury consumer? The Chinese government's "Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" was established in 2017, making artificial intelligence (AI) a national priority for China. Simply put, today's high-net-worth buyers still want a traditional tailor-made buying experience, but they want it fast and hassle-free. Artificial intelligence and big data are what will help give them that. Big data is a term for the huge volume of varied and unstructured data (sounds, images, texts, messages, transactions, videos, social networks, etc.) that companies collect both online and off, from employee counts to weather histories.

USA Today's Jefferson Graham suggests tips on the best way to shop through Amazon's home assistant, Alexa. LOS ANGELES -- Alexa is great for listening to music and answering trivia questions, but when it comes to shopping...well, that's another story. If you have one of the classic Echo speakers, you know that there are no visuals to see the product in question and once Alexa makes suggestions, it's hard to comparison shop or get the best prices. But Amazon wants you to buy this way, and throws some special deals that can only be accessed by asking Alexa for them. On Prime Day, many specials will be Alexa-only.

Jefferson Graham shows the many options for finding audio podcasts to listen to, from apps to connected speakers, TV and the car, on #TalkingTech. In July, we've covered everything from how to get the beat deals on Amazon Prime Day to tips on creating and publishing an e-book and we previewed the new website with Netflix's Phil Rosenthall on Talking Tech, USA TODAY's daily, seven-days-a-week podcast. You can listen to Talking Tech on Stitcher, Apple or Google Podcasts or wherever you enjoy online audio. Talking Tech offers the latest tech news updates, gadget reviews, opinion on tech trends and interviews with insiders. Here are the July Talking Tech episodes.

Walmart has raised the ire of privacy advocates with a new patent for an audio surveillance tool. The freshly filed patent describes the need for'sounds sensors' and'listening to the frontend' technology in its stores that can pick up on conversations between employees and customers. Using these recordings, Walmart would identify employees in the audio and study it to measure their performance at the company. Walmart has raised the ire of privacy advocates with a patent for an audio surveillance tool. 'A need exists for ways to capture the sounds resulting from people in the shopping facility and determine performance of employees based on those sounds,' Walmart explains in the patent, which was filed April 20, 2017 but only made public this week.

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They may resemble giant metal toasters on wheels, but these strange-looking vehicles could one day save you a trip to the supermarket. The American grocery store chain Kroger is teaming up with Nuro, a Silicon Valley-based robotics company, to test a fleet of robotic cars this fall in a yet-to-be-announced city. The new autonomous technology is designed to meet changing demands in the grocery market. "Our customers are increasingly wanting different ways of fulfilling their food and shopping needs," said Yael Cosset, Kroger's chief digital officer. The deliveries will be carried out by Nuro's R1 car bots, which have a top speed of 25 miles per hour, stand 6 feet tall and measure about "half the width of a Toyota Corolla," Nuro CEO Jiajun Zhu told NBC News MACH in an email.

Mr. Giannandrea assumes control of Siri as it tries to fend off rising competition from rivals such as Alphabet Inc.'s Google Assistant and Amazon.com Those voice assistants have outperformed Apple's product in independent tests on its ability to accurately answer questions, forcing the iPhone maker to play catch up in a category it pioneered. Apple officially shifted responsibility for Siri to software chief Craig Federighi last September. It had been overseen by senior vice president Eddy Cue since 2012. Voice-driven virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, powered by artificial-intelligence technology, are gaining popularity by making it simpler for people to perform computing tasks like searching for information, shopping, and switching on lights.