Jeff Bezos has become a household name in the retail and tech industries for his ability to anticipate trends and his willingness to take risks. Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, holds the Kindle Paperwhite at the introduction of the new Amazon Kindle Fire HD and Paperwhite devices. When the Amazon CEO spoke at Recode's Code Conference eight years ago, the online retail giant had just recently launched its Kindle e-reader, which has since proven to be a tremendous success. Bezos attended that same conference Tuesday evening in Los Angeles, but this time, his goals were even more extravagant and future-focused than ever: In his talk with Recode editor-at-large Walt Mossberg, he discussed artificial intelligence and his ideas for saving the planet. During their conversation, which was recorded and published by Recode, Bezos claimed that the way to protect the planet is "by going into outer space."

Following the event, Mossberg appeared on CNBC on Wednesday, to talk about this dialogue. Below is a look into five things the editor learned from Bezos -- also described in this ReCode article. One lesson learned from Bezos was about wandering down diverse ideas roads, encouraging brainstorming and taking risks. When working on a project, the CEO likes to be "stubborn on the vision, but flexible on the details," sticking with ideas until "the last high-judgment champion folds his or her cards." As suggested not only by Bezos, but also by Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG)'s CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB)'s COO Sheryl Sandberg, artificial intelligence will be the next big thing in the tech innovation arena.

Welcome to Mossberg, a weekly commentary and reviews column on The Verge and Recode by veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg, now an Executive Editor at The Verge and Editor at Large of Recode. Last week, I interviewed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on stage at our third annual Code Conference. It wasn't my first such public conversation with Bezos -- we had done an earlier interview in 2008 at the D conference, the predecessor to Code. Bezos joked that he appeared at our conferences "every eight years like clockwork." Back in May of 2008, the Kindle was still quite new, and we focused on that.

At the upscale Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, California, people are taking selfies with a roving robot that looks like a cross between Wall-E's girlfriend and R2D2. It's actually a K5 robot security guard--a 300-pound, sensor-filled droid made by a startup called Knightscope that patrols the area and detects suspicious behavior. K5 is part of a small but growing number of human-scale mobile robots that are finding employment outside the confines of industrial settings like factories. They're invading consumer spaces including retail stores, hotels, and sidewalks in a quest to deliver services alongside human staff members for a fraction of the price of employing people to do a variety of typically unexciting tasks. The machines come with navigation capabilities and safety features to allow them to perform simple jobs autonomously without putting people at risk.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos talks with The Verge's Walt Mossberg about the "gigantic" potential of artificial intelligence to change everything from shopping to self-driving cars. Bezos also discusses his purchase of the Washington Post in 2013, which he says is transforming from a local to a global institution. He explains why he opposes both Peter Thiel's campaign against Gawker Media and Donald Trump's attempts to "freeze or chill" press scrutiny. Plus: Why Bezos's other company, Blue Origin, is trying to lower the cost of entrepreneurship in space.

I'm Gwyn, your gift concierge, and I will help you pick the perfect gift." With this introduction, 1-800-Flowers.com is aligning the customer-centric traditions of its signature floral and gourmet gift delivery business with the emerging technology of the 21st century. GWYN, an acronym for Gifts When You Need, is an artificial intelligence (AI) engine based on the IBM Watson-powered Fluid Expert Personal Shopper (XPS) digital commerce platform, and her customer service skills add a new page to the Carle Place, New York-based gifting empire's playbook. On the surface, the concept is straightforward. GWYN (or more informally, Gwyn) is an online representative, or virtual concierge. She--and the AI definitely identifies as female--is designed to mimic natural language and assist customers in navigating through the products available at 1-800-Flowers.com. GWYN can make suggestions, answer questions and help complete a purchase. Of course, it's not easy to make tech look this effortless. To that end, she uses a rather intricate question analysis API. "We developed GYWN as another way to create a great customer experience," Dave Taiclet, president of 1-800-Flowers.com's Gourmet Food Group, told Retail Dive. "When people want to give a gift, there's a lot of ways they go about it.

Shoppers on the hunt for a new pair of shoes, clothing or makeup typically find themselves navigating through crowds at the mall, browsing a website, searching through a mobile app or picking up the phone. "Hi, welcome to Sephora! Get makeup tips and reviews by chatting with us. Do you want to take a short quiz so I can get to know your makeup style?" a chatbot for makeup retailer Sephora asked on Kik, a messaging app that's popular with teens. With a growing number of people using messaging apps, including Kik, Facebook-owned WhatsApp, Line, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger, major brands are experimenting with chatbots as a way to interact with customers in a more natural way, build a loyal following and drive sales. Powered by artificial intelligence, a chatbot is a computer program designed to mimic human conversations.

While Musk's description of an injectable human-computer link may sound like science fiction, top tech executives repeatedly said that artificial intelligence (AI) was on the verge of changing everyday life, during discussion at a conference by online publication Recode this week. It is no secret that tech companies are diving into AI analytics research, an industry that will grow to 70 billion by 2020 from just 8.2 billion in 2013, according to a Bank of America report citing IDC research. AI, which combs through large troves of raw data to predict outcomes and recognize patterns, is already used in web search systems, marketing recommendation functions and security and financial trading programs. The technology will spread to driverless cars and service robots in the future, the Bank of America report said. Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet Inc's Google, said he sees a "huge opportunity" in AI.

Users of Google's voice-control features such as OK Google are probably aware that the company stores the voice recordings it receives when they talk to it. But it's still a bit of a shock to be confronted with a list of all the recordings the company has ever made of you. Google's voice and audio activity page isn't promoted heavily by the company, and visiting it gives a hint as to why. If you have (or have ever had) an Android phone with Google's "OK Google" voice-control system, the page should show a list of every command you have ever given it – replete with a little play button next to it. In my case, that means I found a recording of me asking for the nearest Waitrose in Glasgow (well, I am a Guardian journalist), lazily doing Fahrenheit conversions for cooking, trying to get driving directions to an Ikea, and just hurling random obscenities as a dumb, unfeeling computer (like I said, I am a Guardian journalist).

The drone technology will be replacing the jobs of inventory quality assurance employees, cutting inventory checks across massive distribution centers (the one in Bentonville is 1.2 million square feet) from one month down to a single day. When Natarajan joined Walmart in November 2014, he and his team were tasked with investigating cutting-edge technologies, asking, "How can we can converge them in ways that make sense for us?" he said. The application at the top of the list was using drone technology to improve the safety and efficiency of Walmart's 190 US distribution centers. In collaboration with the Federal Aviation Administration and NASA, Walmart is developing internally autonomous drone technology that allows a quad-copter drone, roughly 3 feet by 3 feet, to take 30 images per second from a top-mounted camera. The camera is linked to a control center and scans for tracking number matches.