I was just given an Amazon Echo as a gift and was very excited to connect it and set it up. For those of you less familiar with Echo, it is Amazon's cloud based intelligent agent, which interacts using voice recognition and performs some useful tasks using voice commands. The hardware is a cylinder about 9 inches tall and 3 inches in diameter. The "wake up phrase," and therefore the name of the agent, is "Alexa." After setting it up I walked through some of the features – asking about the weather, setting a timer, listening to a radio station, asking about specific facts (like capitals of states or countries, measures, math problems), asking about local movies, getting an NPR "flash briefing" and a few other interesting functions.

Artificial intelligence has made significant inroads in the consumer world, but use of the technology in the enterprise is still in its infancy. Stephen Pratt, who recently quit his job as global leader of Watson for IBM Services, is looking to change that. On Monday, he launched Noodle Analytics, a company that promises to bring the power of AI to businesses. Billed as "the enterprise artificial intelligence company," Noodle is built on the premise that AI is the next big thing that will set companies apart. Anyone who searches on Google, navigates with Waze or shops on Amazon has already used a consumer AI service.

Dire predictions that humans will be replaced by machines in the workplace continue to make headlines. Drones are delivering packages to your doorstep. The manufacturing, automotive and healthcare industries are already highly automated in many countries, and technology companies are racing to create the next "new and improved" version of artificial intelligence (AI). In fact, a much-cited Oxford study that looked at 702 occupations in the U.S. concluded that 47% of U.S. employment is at risk of being lost to computerization. U.S. employee anxiety notwithstanding, this begs the question: What has your company done in the wake of such news?

Office work is also set to change. Earlier this week, Blue Prism announced plans to debut on the London Stock Exchange. The company, which grew 35 percent in 2015, develops "software robots" which can perform clerical and administration tasks. "Software robots have been deployed successfully and strategically by large, blue chip organizations that have derived tremendous value from this new solution to the labor market," said Alastair Bathgate, the company's co-founder and CEO, in a press release. However, workers should not be overly worried.

It's hard to tell if there's anything left to invent. While the world is full of infinite possibilities, sometimes it seems that every n 1 of those possibilities has already been addressed. A platform for selling musical instruments to strangers or post fetish wanted ads? How about a robot that instantly pulls and returning info from the internet when requested? Sixteen years ago, three guys had that exact idea--and it didn't exist.

Dmitry Slepov is the managing director and a co-founder of Tibbo Technology. Before we begin, I feel compelled to make an important disclosure: I love robots! To me, robots are cooler than people, who are only cool occasionally. I especially love industrial robots: They help us "make" things. Now please allow me to make an obvious observation: Like me, many folks think robots in general, and industrial robots in particular, are very cool.

In two previous posts, I covered the emerging industry of cloud-based machine learning solutions. First, I covered Microsoft's Azure Machine Learning and IBM's Watson Analytics. Microsoft's Azure ML provides a graphical drag-and-drop interface for connecting preprogrammed components of a data science pipeline together. The service is similar to KNIME and seemed targeted for users who knew just enough to know what to do, but not so much that they would want to code up fresh algorithms. One value added for Microsoft's product is a smooth integration for companies which already have their data stored in Microsoft's Azure compute cloud.

Artificial intelligence or AI is the future of the legal profession. The good news for anyone worried by that statement is people have been making it for several decades. The first international conference on law and artificial intelligence was held in Boston in 1987, before the invention – let alone the mass use of – the worldwide web. Despite the early enthusiasm the concept of computers taking over legal reasoning tasks from human lawyers has yet to become reality. Partly this is because artificial intelligence developed more slowly everywhere than the enthusiasts predicted.

A competitive video gaming team from Harvard University was disqualified from a tournament featuring the game Heroes of the Storm for "violating several tournament rules." In a statement, Blizzard Entertainment, makers of Heroes of the Storm, and fellow tournament organizer Tespa announced Team Ambush from Harvard was removed from the ongoing Heroes of the Dorm event. An investigation found one of the members of the team shared his account for Battle.net "We have zero tolerance for cheating in our tournaments," reads a joint statement from Blizzard and Tespa. "The rules are in place to ensure a fair playing field for all participants--when these rules are abused, they put the integrity of the competition at risk."

Domino's latest "deliveryman" stands three feet tall and doesn't need to be tipped. It has ferried pizzas in Brisbane at a top speed of 19 km/h, and the company's Australian master franchise said it's excited for what could come next. "We have a relentless passion to push the boundaries of what's possible with pizza delivery," said Michael Gillespie, chief digital officer for Domino's in Australia. "As we get further, it's not hard to believe that we might have a store with a couple of [robots] that are doing deliveries." Domino's has started using a robotic cart named DRU, which stands for Domino's Robotic Unit, to deliver its offerings.