So how could a scalable retail artificial intelligence in the cloud – Brand AI – turn these challenges into unique opportunities for competitive advantage? But unlike today's arguably bland, soulless smartphone versions that focus on delivering simple functionality; Brand AI would have a unique, human character that reflects the retailer's values to inform its interactions and maturing relationship with an individual customer. Intended to be more than another'digital novelty', this disruptive form of customer engagement builds on and enhances a B&M's traditional brand as a trusted long term friend throughout the entire customer journey by offering compelling, timely presale insights, instant payment processing and effective after sales support and care. A customer is empowered to select what personal data they choose to share (or keep private) with the Brand AI to enrich their relationship. Social, location, wearable or browsing and buying behaviour data from complementary or even competing retailers could potentially be shared via its cloud platform.

The sprawling Amazon fulfillment center in DuPont, Washington, seems more like the set of a science fiction flick than a warehouse crammed with consumer goods. Thousands of bright orange robots haul heavy stacks of pallets and packages across the slick concrete floor, while hulking yellow robotic arms retrieve and return inventory to sky-high shelves.

In this special guest feature, Dave O'Flanagan, CEO and co-founder of Boxever, outlines how airlines are leveraging big data and predictive capabilities to transform how they engage with customers. Dave is the CEO and co-founder of Boxever, a data science and omni-channel personalization platform for travel companies. At Boxever, Dave's focus is enabling airlines and travel providers to improve the customer experience, generate revenue and enhance loyalty through one-to-one, personalized marketing. Dave has more than 15 years' experience developing and managing enterprise software in mobile telecoms, travel and cloud. Earlier he was VP of engineering at CUSP, a cloud-based document management startup and was a lead architect at CAPE Technologies.

Just yesterday, for example, Facebook Inc. (FB) rolled out a new feature, VoiceOver, that uses AI technology to give oral descriptions of FB photos for blind and visually-impaired users (iPad and iPhone users only, so far). Perhaps the big Stanley Kubrickian monolith moment for AI happened in March, with the resounding win by the Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) AI program AlphaGo,over a champion in the complex board game Go--a game previously thought to be far too complex for a computer to play better than a human. If true believers in AI are correct that this long-promised technology is ready for the mainstream, whichever company controls AI could steer the tech industry for years to come. Hence we are witnessing a high-stakes competition to develop the next platform to establish industry dominance in upcoming product cycles. While Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), FB, GOOGL and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) are all jockeying furiously, the one company with the most riding on the outcome is International Business Machines Corp. (IBM).

Digital technology is driving new forms of customer engagement that are rapidly eliminating the functional silos between online and offline retail channels. As a result many high street retailers are already experiencing falling footfall in their physical stores as customers increasingly switch to online competitors for better convenience, choice and prices. However, these bricks and mortar (B&M) businesses could use Liquid Big Data (cloud based analytics shared between partners, suppliers and potentially even competitors for their mutual benefit) to integrate the physical and digital customer experience into a unique, responsive personal customer journey online competitors can't imitate. So what might the Liquid Big Data Customer Experience be like for a global retailer selling ready to assemble home furniture, appliances and accessories for example? Traditionally high street retailers focus on their brand as source of differentiation to attract customers to their physical stores.

There's an Echo in Best Buy (and in a quantity greater than one). Tech Times reports that Amazon Echo, the voice-enabled, at-home assistant (whose own voice has a name, of course, and that name is Alexa), has made its way to Best Buy shelves (as well as to the retailer's website). It's been a bit of a long wait for Amazon Echo to connect with the major tech retailer, especially considering that the popular robo-helper has been available from chains, including Staples, Home Depot, Sears and others, going back to the winter holidays. According to Best Buy's website (as Tech Times points out), it is offering the device at the same price point as Amazon itself does -- 179.99 -- with quantities in stock and ready to ship in a day or two. So, any Best Buy loyalists who had been holding out until their preferred chain could avail them of the opportunity to ask Alexa to order them a pizza or a ride (to name just two of Amazon Echo's growing list of capabilities) can, at long last, do so. As for Amazon Echo's sibling products -- the battery-powered, portable Amazon Tap and the Echo Dot, a bridge device that connects to Amazon's web of services -- Tech Times reports that the Tap is expected to hit Best Buy stores (and site) later this month, while no such timeline has been announced for the Dot as of yet.

If artificial intelligence has its way, discounting could disappear, thanks to software that tells retailers exactly what and how many products to buy, and when to put them on sale to sell them at full price. Online shopping could become a conversation, where the shopper describes the dress of their dreams, and, in seconds, an AI-powered search engine tracks down the closest match. Designers, merchandisers and buyers could all work alongside AI, to predict what customers want to wear, before they even know themselves. In the last few years, a trifecta of cheap, ubiquitous, powerful computing; big data; and the development of deep learning have triggered a revolution in artificial intelligence. The computing devices that now fill our everyday lives generate large data sets, which "deep learning" algorithms analyse to find trends, make predictions and perform specific tasks, such as identifying specific objects in an image.

Amazon's acquisition of the robotics company Kiva Systems in 2012 has helped the retail giant efficiently ship almost any product on earth to just about anyone. But those robots are pretty good stagehands as well.

TROISDORF, Germany (Reuters) - Germany's Deutsche Post is testing robots that could help postal workers cope with increasing numbers of parcels on their delivery rounds, a company manager said on Thursday. The volume of parcels being delivered by Deutsche Post in Germany is rising steadily as more and more Germans buy goods online from retailers such as Amazon.com That is making up for declining letter volumes, but posing problems due to the larger size of items involved. "Robots could be used in deliveries in three to five years' time," Clemens Beckmann, head of innovation at the group's parcel and letter division, said in an interview with Reuters. The robots, which look like a table on wheels on which goods can be placed, would follow delivery workers, helping them to transport and carry heavy parcels. If the postie stops walking, the robot stops too, and it only starts again when they move on.

If its first quarter is anything to go by, 2016 may be shaping up historically as the 1491 of space discovery. The month preceding Valentine's Day alone provided what would once have been a year's worth of cosmic news. Blue Origin, the aerospace company owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, took one giant leap toward a new Age of Discovery by relaunching and landing a rocket that had already made a round-trip journey through the stratosphere – a revolutionary moment in private space exploration. A pair of researchers kicked off a frenzied planet hunt by demonstrating that a massive, heretofore undetected planet could be lurking on the outer edge of our solar system. Cosmologist Stephen Hawking suggested that unforeseen effects of rapid scientific progress might, paradoxically, cause the extinction of life on Earth in the next thousand years or so, adding, "By that time, we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race." And scientists announced they'd detected gravitational waves, evidence of a billion-year-old collision between black holes, thus confirming the final and most obscure principle of Einstein's theory of relativity – and opening a window that may soon offer a glimpse of the universe's very creation.