Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos thinks that we're at the "beginning of a golden era" when it comes to machine learning and artificial intelligence. "It's hard to overstate how much of an impact it's going to have over the next 20 years," he said on stage at Vox's Media's Code Conference on Tuesday night. Not only is it the first inning, "it might even be the first guy up at bat," he laughed. Amazon currently sells a voice-controlled smart speaker called Echo that's powered by its artificial intelligence assistant, Alexa. Right now, Alexa can help users do things like order groceries, play music, or make to-do lists.

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. - The emergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning to household gadgets is "gigantic," according to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Speaking to the Code conference here, Bezos, whose company has a huge 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 Echo speaker can turn on lights, access online music and answer queries by awaking the speaker and waking it by stating the word Alexa.

"It was magical, it was a moment in history," recalls Joseph Atick of the day in 1994 when the computer he and colleagues at Rockefeller University had built was able to recognize its masters' faces. As each of the three mathematicians introduced themselves, a metallic voice responded, "I see Joseph. Atick, who now chairs an organization that promotes identification technologies, says, "We didn't realize what we'd just done." Fast-forward two decades and picture a talking mannequin that greets a shopper by name as she enters a favorite store, informing her that pants that match the blouse she bought a week earlier have just been marked down. "It's just a matter of time until we start to see this technology reach shopping malls and beyond--it's ready right now," says Werner Goertz, a Gartner analyst who has authored a report on the adoption of facial recognition and other surveillance tools by retailers, casinos, and theme parks.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is investing in Israeli startup Twiggle to tap its search technology and solidify its lead in Chinese e-commerce, according to people familiar with the matter. The Tel Aviv-based company could help Alibaba improve the quality of online-shopping searches as the e-commerce operator expands in China and abroad, people familiar with matter said, declining to be named because the matter is private. The startup will get 5 million to 10 million from Alibaba, one of the people said. Refining search technology has proven pivotal to shopping services like Amazon.com Inc. Twiggle, led by former Google Inc. executives Amir Konigsberg and Adi Avidor, uses machine learning and natural language processing to guess what shoppers are after. When users search for the "best laptop," Twiggle will try to understand what that means: such as highest screen resolution, most memory, longest battery life and so on.

In today's guest post, Alex Casalboni and Giacomo Marinangeli of Cloud Academy discuss the design and development of their new Inspire system. Our Challenge Mixing technology and content has been our mission at Cloud Academy since the very early days. We are builders and we love technology, but we also know content is king. Serving our members with the best content and creating smart technology to automate it is what kept us up at night for a long time. Companies are always fighting for people's time and attention and at Cloud Academy, we face those same challenges as well.

Amazon has released a web-based version of Alexa, the voice-activated digital assistant that powers its Echo speaker. Called Echosim.io, the service simulates having an Echo -- to a degree. At the user's prompting, Alexa on the Echo can access Amazon Prime or Spotify music, call an Uber, check Google calendar, or listen to an Audible book. In the animation, the Echo's rim starts to pulse blue at the user's prompt. The web-based simulator is far more limited than Alexa in Echo or Amazon's smaller speakers, Dot and Tap.

We use artificial intelligence to power our visual product discovery technology. You can click on one of the 8 handbag images below to see similar products. Our convolutional neural networks have analyzed the images and are able to provide you relevant suggestions. What's cool is that the suggestions are triggered from more than 1,200 handbags. Similar technology can be applied to any product category.

The first wave of robots taking over human jobs is upon us. Apple Inc. AAPL, 0.79% supplier Foxconn Technology Co. 2354, 0.14% has replaced 60,000 human workers with robots in a single factory, according to a report in the South China Morning Post, initially published over the weekend. This is part of a massive reduction in headcount across the entire Kunshan region in China's Jiangsu province, in which many Taiwanese manufacturers base their Chinese operations. In a statement to MarketWatch, Foxconn Technology Group confirmed that it has been automating its manufacturing facilities throughout China, including Kunshan, for "many years," which it says has freed up its employees to focus on higher value-added elements of the manufacturing process, such as research and development, process control and quality control. "Across all of our facilities today, we are applying robotics engineering and other innovative manufacturing technologies to replace repetitive tasks previously done by employees," Foxconn said.

This week around 33,500 visitors flocked to the Jacob K. Javits Centre in New York City for the annual National Retail Federation (NRF) Convention and Expo. Held from January 17 – 20, the event is an opportunity to take stock following the busy holiday season and get a sense of how 2016 will shape up for retail. Much to this journalist's disappointment, nobody announced their plans for a hostile takeover of Amazon at the event, however several key themes emerged. "Tech has untethered customers dramatically and therefore we think that loyalty in itself has shifted dramatically over the past years, over this era of very powerful consumer empowerment," Bousquet-Chavanne said. In response, organisations will have to invest in their operations and systems to make them more agile.

The first wave of robots taking over human jobs is upon us. Apple Inc. AAPL, 1.76% supplier Foxconn Technology Co. 2354, -0.41% has replaced 60,000 human workers with robots in a single factory, according to a report in the South China Morning Post, initially published over the weekend. This is part of a massive reduction in headcount across the entire Kunshan region in China's Jiangsu province, in which many Taiwanese manufacturers base their Chinese operations. Roughly 600 companies are reportedly looking to reduce headcount with robots, as part of an effort to accelerate growth and reduce costs, according to the Chinese newspaper, which cited data from the Kunshan government. Last year, 35 Taiwanese companies, including Foxconn, spent a total of 4 billion yuan ( 610 million) on artificial intelligence as part of this initiative, according to the report.