Forbes Shutterstock Image READ MORE 6. "There an estimated 3,000 AI startups worldwide, and many of them are building on NVIDIA's platform. They're using NVIDIA's GPUs to put AI into apps for trading stocks, shopping online and navigating drones." Read more … Aaron Tilley Writer 7. The retail sector is now best positioned to leverage AI and Deep Learning, as these new technologies are developing… 8. READ MORE AI software such as Computer Vision is being developed by startups to help retail consumers find the perfect and individualized fit. THIRD LOVE A app that enables women to find the right fitting bra from home using a mobile device and deep learning. VOLUMENTAL Offers computer vision applications for sizing shoes and eyewear to create a individualized retail experience for customers.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already transformed a wide range of industries. From healthcare and media to finance and retail, tedious, manual tasks have been replaced with automation, operational processes have been updated via machine learning and future trends are being accurately and continually predicted thanks to AI-powered technologies. Research firm Markets and Markets estimates the AI market will grow from $420 million in 2014 to $5.05 billion by 2020 due to the rising adoption of machine learning and natural language processing technologies in the healthcare, media, finance and retail industries. And with increasing consumer enthusiasm for the Internet of Things, the market stands to expand even further. In fact, Gartner estimates that 6 billion connected devices will be actively requesting support from AI platforms by 2018.

Virtual assistants and chatbots are here to make our lives easier. Retailers ranging from Nordstrom to DSW and Sephora offer chatbots to find presents for your friends and family through Facebook Messenger. Whole Foods' bot makes it easy to find a recipe for any occasion and dietary preference. Or if your hands are full, Alexa can do the same thing through voice commands. At their core, however, bots are simply applications that perform a designated task.

Amazon.com said today it would create more than 100,000 full-time jobs in the US over the next 18 months. Seattle-based Amazon said it plans to increase its full-time US-based workforce to more than 280,000 by the middle of 2018 from 180,000 in 2016. "These jobs are not just in our Seattle headquarters or in Silicon Valley - they're in our customer service network, fulfillment centers and other facilities in local communities throughout the country," CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement. Amazon had about 230,800 full-time and part-time employees as of December 31, 2015. The move comes with Amazon expanding from its origins as an online retailer to a diversified tech company offering streaming video and music, cloud computing, and home automation through its artificial intelligence program Alexa.

Amazon.com hires a lot of people. But the expansion of its army of orange-wheeled robots is more than keeping pace. The world's largest e-commerce retailer said it has 45,000 robots in some 20 fulfillment centers. That's a bigger headcount than that of the armed forces of the Netherlands, a NATO member, according to World Bank data. It's also a cool 50 percent increase from last year's holiday season, when the company had some 30,000 robots working alongside 230,000 humans.

Ford cars will soon offer Alexa, but also competitive agents. Amazon's Alexa voice agent has been the biggest surprise hit for the mammoth online retailer since it moved into the cloud storage business with Amazon Web Services. Alexa showed up at CES 2017 in full force. As Larry Dignan notes, the agent picked up friends in high places, including Ford, Whirlpool, Dish Network, Huawei, Hyundai, Mattel, Lenovo, LG, Samsung and ADT. That shouldn't be a surprise to those who noted the rise of Alexa at CES 2016.

It already seems an age since Christmas and the speculation about who might'win'. And this year was no less hard fought than usual. But there was a distinct theme of getting back to what matters running through many of the big ads of the season. It was perhaps this renewed focus on the humanity of the festive period as opposed to the commerciality that swung it for Sainsbury's in the end (we'll conveniently forget that we are still talking about a supermarket winning Christmas). As we look back at a very challenging 2016, and set out our ambitions for a better, happier, less odd 2017, people are focusing more on how they can grow, rather than how they can gain.

The book definitely provides the ability to do data analysis from scratch. However, I took that to mean it would provide me with the basic knowledge to do data science as its done in production. What you want find hardly anywhere in this book is a single discussion of how to use pandas, scikit-learn, numpy, matplotlib, or any of the other tools used by today's data scientists. It does provide you with the basics of how the analysis is done and the math behind a bunch of machine learning models. So, while I think this book had value, it was very different from what I was expecting. I think the target audience for this book is more an academic looking to apply their knowledge to a data science realm, and not so much a programmer wanting to learn how to actually implement machine learning or data analysis in code.

First of all, I would advise to think of this as a 400-page book with a WEKA appendix. Its price is about right for a 400-page machine learning textbook, and you don't even need to know that WEKA exists for the first 400 pages. I never read any of the WEKA stuff and got tons out of the textbook part. The average explanation amounts to "There's a technique called X, where you do this... it has a couple problems, but you could try fixing them in these ways." It's great for getting a lot of machine learning and data mining ideas in your head without having to get confused by learning the math behind them.

Artificial Intelligence is becoming more and more prevalent in every day life as we see the technology adopted in everything from digital assistants to autonomous vehicles. One sector that has huge potential for AI is retail. You might not know it, but if you've ever submitted an online query to a retailer, then you've probably already spoken to an AI. Brands and companies are quickly beginning to realise the benefits of automation, applying AI not only to behind-the-scenes operations but also to customer services. This is causing huge changes to the way that retail companies work, from tourism to banking. With AI startups now offering adaptable software, it's easier than ever for businesses to integrate the tech into their business strategies.