Amazon has three big pillars: the retail marketplace, Amazon Prime, and Amazon Web Services. But there certainly would be room for a fourth pillar. It's possible that Amazon Studios, which is producing original video content for Prime Video, could be that fourth pillar, but it's also possible that the Alexa voice assistant, which is packaged inside of the Echo speaker, could end up being the fourth pillar, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos told Recode's Walt Mossberg today at Recode's Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Google revealed its own Echo competitor earlier this month, and Apple is also working on an answer to the Echo. But Bezos does not seem to be worried about that.

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.

Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) playbook, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is developing drones for their supply chain management. The company's VP of Emerging Sciences, Shekar Natarajan, showed off the big box retailer's new distribution center tech in Bentonville, Arkansas on Thursday. The main reasons to implement drones in distribution centers is to replace inventory quality assurance employees, while also cutting inventory checks from a month to one day. Also, with the use of drone technology, Wal-Mart can improve the safety of all of the U.S. distribution centers. As for how it works, the drones would be able to take 30 images per second from a mounted camera that is linked to a command center.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) said Thursday it was six to nine months from beginning to use drones to check warehouse inventories in the United States, taking a step closer to using the technology to compete better with rivals. In October 2015, the world's largest retailer applied to U.S. regulators for permission to test drones for home delivery, curbside pickup and checking warehouse inventories as it planned to use drones to fill and deliver online orders. Federal regulators are still considering rules for commercial operation of drones that would be involved in package delivery - viewed as the next frontier for big retailers such as Walmart and Amazon Inc (AMZN.O). Walmart's Vice President of Last Mile and Emerging Sciences Shekar Natarajan demonstrated the use of drones to reporters in one of the company's regional distribution centers. "We are still in early phases of testing and understanding how drones can be better used in different types of business functions," he said.

Shekar Natarajan, Wal-Mart's vice president of logistics strategy, told reporters the technology is custom-built on top of the drone and is proprietary for Wal-Mart. A control tower will oversee the images on a screen and will send alerts when items are flagged so that workers can go back to the stacks to fix the issue.

Streaming video helps sell shoes because Amazon Prime members buy more, Bezos says. Inc. chief executive officer spoke at Recode's Code conference Tuesday night about artificial intelligence, privacy on the internet, his goals with the Washington Post, Amazon's ambitions in entertainment, and more. Amazon is No. 1 in the Internet Retailer 2016 Top 500 Guide. For Netflix, Amazon is a particularly complex competitor because their goals aren't the same. The way Bezos looks at streaming video: "It helps us sell more shoes," he said.

The Washington Post owner talks a big game about defending the media. At the 2016 Code Conference, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos talked with The Verge's Walt Mossberg about the „gigantic" potential of artificial intelligence to change everything from shopping to…

Where else but the Code Conference can you expect to hear from the Tech industry's biggest players like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Google CEO Sundar Pichai? Corrections & Clarifications: An earlier version gave the wrong year Amazon won Emmys for Transparent. Speaking to the Code conference here, Bezos, whose company has a hit on its hand with the Echo connected speaker, said, "it's hard to overstate how big of an impact this will have on society over the next 20 years. It doesn't mean phones are going to go away or that voice actions will replace screens. As long as people have eyes, they have screens."

The technology behind Alexa, the voice inside Amazon's Echo speaker, could become Amazon's fourth business pillar, alongside retail marketplace, Amazon Prime, and Amazon Web Services. Amazon has more than 1,000 people working on artificial intelligence and third-party apps that people have built using the company's SDK, Bezos, the founder and CEO of the company, said at Recode's Code Conference Tuesday. During an interview with Walt Mossberg, he said the company licenses the technology to others so they can embed it in an app or device. There's also a program that allows companies to build apps that teaches Alexa new skills. Bezos called artificial intelligence, natural language processing and machine learning intelligence "gigantic" and says it's probably difficult to "overstate the impact it will have on society over the next 20 years."

Amazon as it sits today is propped up by three major pillars: its retail marketplace, Amazon Prime subscription service and Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud computing service. Jeff Bezos, however, is open to a fourth pillar. The Amazon founder and CEO recently told Re/code's Walt Mossberg that there are at least two potential fourth pillars in the works: Amazon Studios, the original content arm of Amazon Video, and Alexa, the voice assistant that powers the Echo speaker. Speaking of the latter, Bezos said he thinks there are going to be a bunch of artificially intelligent agents in the world, adding that users may not ask the same AI for everything. The executive said he believes the average household will use a number of specialized AIs and is excited to have helped plant the seed.