Inc has launched a new program to help students build capabilities into its voice-controlled assistant Alexa, the company told Reuters, the latest move by a technology firm to nurture ideas and talent in artificial intelligence research. The e-commerce company said it is paying for a year-long doctoral fellowship at four universities for an undisclosed sum. Working with professors, the Alexa Fund Fellows will help students tackle complex technology problems in class on Alexa, like how to convert text to speech or process conversation. Amazon, Alphabet Inc's Google and others are locked in a race to develop and monetize artificial intelligence. Unlike some rivals, Amazon has made it easy for third-party developers to create skills for Alexa so it can get better faster – a tactic it now is extending to the classroom.

Amazon accidentally took down large swathes of the internet with just one typo. This week, many of the world's biggest websites and services stopped working because of a problem with Amazon Web Services, the platform that the retailer provides to power people's websites. One of its sites went offline because of the issue – and since thousands of websites rely on it, including many of the world's biggest, they immediately went competely offline or stopped working. Websites like Quora, Trello and some of the world's biggest news sites went offline or stopped working properly when the issue happened. It even emerged that people's houses broke down – internet-enabled ovens, lights and front gates stopped working as a result of the outage.

Netflix spent $1 million for a machine learning and data mining competition called Netflix Prize to improve movie recommendations by crowdsourced solutions, but couldn't use the winning solution for their production system in the end. This white paper takes a closer look at the real-life issues Netflix faced and highlights key considerations when developing production machine learning systems.

Upskilling is hard and even though this is the case, the last few years have seen a big increase in the number of people teaching themselves to code, or brushing up on their data science skills, in order to better position themselves and their companies for the future. Managers and employees in almost every industry, and even the Prime Minister, has recognised that to keep pace with a rapidly evolving world, they need to develop new skills tailored to emerging technologies. So what are the skills really needed in the next few years? Artificial Intelligence (AI) can give meaning to data patterns in minutes; humans can take days. Already big in corporate firms, the harnessing of AI to cut down on tasks is growing in popularity and is already a part of daily life for many people.

Baidu Ventures exists on the front-lines of the Chinese search giant's push to brand itself as an artificial intelligence company. In an effort to bridge the AI ecosystems of China and the United States, Baidu Ventures is partnering with Comet Labs, a San Francisco-based fund specializing in machine intelligence. Unlike other venture capital firms looking to diversify into AI, Comet Labs lives exclusively in the space -- providing capital, technical resources and mentorship to its startups. Wei Liu, now head of Baidu's $700 million venture arm, was part of the founding team at Comet Labs before he was poached into the world of corporate venture. "Baidu founded Baidu Ventures to build an ecosystem around AI technology and do investment to help AI startups with money, technology and connections to industrial players," asserted Liu.

As more self-driving cars hit the road in the coming years, sophisticated communications systems will rely on a fast, reliable network that's capable of being a data superhighway. Self-driving or autonomous cars are a hot topic, but the road to autonomous driving is curvy and complicated. It's full of blind turns as engineers, automakers, regulators and data scientists map out a radically different future for automobiles. That future is fast approaching. In January, the BMW Group, Intel and Mobileye said a fleet of about 40 of their autonomous test vehicles will be on roads by the second half of 2017.

Artomatix founder Eric Risser's idea to use AI to create 3D worlds is not so crazy after all. Dublin artificial intelligence (AI) company Artomatix has raised €2.1m in a seed round. It is still the start of the journey for founder Dr Eric Risser as his company makes headway in enabling movie houses and games companies to create immersive 3D worlds. "No, we have no money for your weird AI arts stuff," Risser was told by a professor when he was a computer science student at Columbia University. He persevered, completed his PhD at Trinity College Dublin instead, and started a company.

Researchers are looking at the vast opportunities presented by artificial intelligence (AI) to the Philippines to improve different local industries amid fears that the technology may soon replace the human workforce. UP Computer Science Department Chairman Dr. Pros Naval said AI as a "transformative technology" can create more jobs for Filipinos. "AI is not going to completely replace human beings. AI is a transformative technology. Sometimes it could be disruptive but the way I see it is that it could transform the lives of people, not only the lives but also the workplace," Naval said.

"We see AI making smart devices even smarter with improved user experiences," says Ian Fogg (pictured right), director of mobile and telecom analysis at IHS Markit. "Existing AI agents like Apple's Siri and Google Assistant will expand across the industry, complemented by embedded AI in all parts of mobile devices from cameras, to audio, to machine." "Smartphones will both be the interface for AI and deliver the vast amount of data technology companies need to train AI systems," Fogg says. Software investments and partnerships are critical for hardware companies to create smarter AI-enabled experiences, says the IHS Markit white paper. Vendors such as Google, Apple, Sony, Microsoft and Samsung have heavily invested in the development of their own AI and voice-assistant capabilities.

Yet another announcement from a global behemoth declaring itself committed to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning. In this article reported by the Irish Times and international press, it is notable that the consequence of American bank, JP Morgan Chase's commitment to AI is the redundancy of banking lawyers in mundane document or contract review work. They say 360,000 hours of lawyers billable work goes up in a puff of smoke because AI replaces lawyers reviewing banking documents. A headline to make any middle class professional quake in their boots. AI definitely has a role to play in the mass review of standard contracts.