Amazon just unveiled details of a new brick-and-mortar convenience store that will let shoppers pick up items off the shelves and leave without standing in line to pay. The new store, dubbed "Amazon Go," is currently in testing with the company's employees in Seattle, and scheduled to open to the public in early 2017. "Our checkout-free shopping experience is made possible by the same types of technologies used in self-driving cars: computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning," the company says in an FAQ page for the Amazon Go store. "Our Just Walk Out technology automatically detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves and keeps track of them in a virtual cart. When you're done shopping, you can just leave the store. Shortly after, we'll charge your Amazon account and send you a receipt."

It looks like those rumors of Amazon convenience stores were true. The online shopping giant unveiled Amazon Go today, its spin on brick and mortar retail. It uses computer vision, a whole bunch of sensors and deep learning to let you walk into a store, sign in with an Amazon Go app, fill up your bags and leave without stopping for a checkout line. Amazon is calling it a "Just Walk Out Shopping" experience, a self-descriptive name if there ever was one. The company is starting out with a large store in Seattle, but it's clearly meant to serve as a model for other locations and retail stores.

Cognitive computing is rapidly infusing every aspect of our lives. As 2017 approaches, the cognitive revolution--riding on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data science -- is coming home to roost more rapidly than many realize. Here are my predictions for the many ways in which you may encounter cognitive technology. Most e-commerce applications now include in-line chatbots that pop out automatically and/or at your request to answer your questions, recommend products for you to purchase, and otherwise make your customer experience more seamless and satisfying. Behind the natural-language conversational interface are cognitive algorithms that are built and tuned by data scientists through real-world experiments, A/B tests, machine learning, and predictive analytics assets in line to merchants' applications.

The advertising industry has made huge strides in targeting, but there's one more big step to take to make ads truly relevant: We need to adapt each creative message so it is interactive and personalized to every single individual. The key to achieving what may be the holy grail of advertising is a thriving branch of artificial intelligence known as deep learning. It uses algorithms to mimic neural networks' capabilities to recognize and act on abstract patterns. A retailer, for example, might send ads for sweaters to one segment, ads for bathing suits to another. Soon, instead of those few variations, a brand will have a million personalized versions of an ad dynamically presented to a million different individuals.

The rise of artificial intelligence, or AI, services -- one of the fastest-growing markets in tech --should be a boon for consumers and investors alike. In fact, researcher IDC predictsAI and cognitive systems technology sales are primed to simply explode in the years to come, rising from an estimated $8 billion this year to $47 billion in 2020. Though by no means the only names interested in this space, Amazon.com Here's how these particular artificial intelligence stocks have performed so far in 2016. Forget GE! Heres how to play the largest growth opportunity in history Forget GE! Heres how to play the largest growth opportunity in history Importantly, each of the tech giants named above has its own strategy to tap into the growth in the artificial intelligence market.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing everything from marketing to healthcare. And this holiday season is the beginning of the future for how marketers will leverage AI to better understand, connect with, and create superior experiences for consumers. To better appreciate the impact that AI is having on retailers, I connected with IBM's first CMO, Michelle Peluso. Peluso has a strong background in retail, having served at the CEO of Gilt as well as the Global Consumer Chief Marketing and Internet Officer at Citigroup. Peluso provides her thoughts below on how Watson's AI capability is changing the way retailers impact the consumer shopping experience.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, and the holiday shopping season is in full swing. As such, Google, Microsoft and Apple have all revealed their latest and greatest to get shoppers opening their wallets. Microsoft has the Surface Studio and refreshed Surface Book, not to mention the Xbox holiday lineup, while Apple goes into holiday battle with the new MacBook Pro and the iPhone 7. Google is trying something different this year. The company has a full ecosystem of products made in-house for the first time: the Pixel smartphone, Google Home assistant and Daydream VR headset. All three products are important to Google's strategy, but it feels to me like something's missing: the humble Chromebook.

Robot vacuums were some of the hottest products this past Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with nearly every model selling out within a matter of hours at all-time low prices. Luckily, it seems like several manufacturers of the most popular models have been able to secure some more inventory, and Amazon is slashing prices across the board. That doesn't mean every one is a great deal. We test robot vacuums in our lab in Cambridge, MA to find out how well each model picks up dirt as well as how well it can navigate a slew of obstacles--just like the ones it'll confront in your home. Based on current sales, our favorite in-stock pick is definitely the iRobot Roomba 770 ($339.99 at Amazon, SAVE $159.01) which is at a record low price of just $339.99,

As in the global survey, we are concerned with platform business models and the design choices that allow these business models to grow. We find the term platform, which is well-established in economic and management literature, offers a more useful and accurate term than some of the terms that have been used such as "share economy companies," "internet companies" or, even more broadly, "tech companies." Network effects are a key characteristic that distinguish platforms from other business models. As more users engage with a platform, the more attractive the platform becomes to potential new users. When more users attract more users, a dynamic is created that in turn triggers a self-reinforcing cycle of growth.

Machine learning can help retailers address the challenges of offering fresh foods, which account for up to 40% of a grocers' revenue and one-third of the cost of goods sold, according to a report by McKinsey and Company. The increasing demand of these products have led to new offerings, like exotic and hard-to-find items as well as "ultrafresh" items with a shelf life of no more than one or two days. Old processes can make it difficult to order the correct amount of food: order too much, and the food goes to waste; order too little, and you lose sales. Most traditional supply chain planning systems take a fixed, rule-based approach to forecasting and replenishment, but because local demand and conditions vary from day to day, planners have to manually enter different types of data into their replenishment systems. These manual processes are time consuming, error prone and reliant on individual planners' experience and instincts.