Machine learning has been driving innovation in product features for several years, becoming a vital component of enhancing the consumer experience. However, in terms of what machine learning (ML) -- and specifically, artificial intelligence (AI) -- can do, we've only seen the tip of the iceberg. As a business leader, you may feel a bit like Chevy Chase in Fletch trying to flub your way into appearing knowledgeable about machine learning (it's all ball bearings nowadays…). Nevertheless, it's vital to understand what machine learning is and how to get the most out of it for your business. While it sounds technical, machine learning, in the simplest sense, is a branch of artificial intelligence that uses computer algorithms to learn from data and make better predictions.

Great people always have an assistant by their side. Through quick conversations, Youper helps you monitor and take control of your emotional health. Youper is a useful AI tool to help reformulate thought patterns, think through scenarios, emotions and arrive at healthier states of mind. AI is the way of the future. I really love this app.

Machine learning is used extensively in recommender systems deployed in products. The decisions made by these systems can influence user beliefs and preferences which in turn affect the feedback the learning system receives - thus creating a feedback loop. This phenomenon can give rise to the so-called "echo chambers" or "filter bubbles" that have user and societal implications. In this paper, we provide a novel theoretical analysis that examines both the role of user dynamics and the behavior of recommender systems, disentangling the echo chamber from the filter bubble effect. In addition, we offer practical solutions to slow down system degeneracy. Our study contributes toward understanding and developing solutions to commonly cited issues in the complex temporal scenario, an area that is still largely unexplored.

On 21 November 2015, James Bates had three friends over to watch the Arkansas Razorbacks play the Mississippi State Bulldogs. Bates, who lived in Bentonville, Arkansas, and his friends drank beer and did vodka shots as a tight football game unfolded. After the Razorbacks lost 51–50, one of the men went home; the others went out to Bates's hot tub and continued to drink. Bates would later say that he went to bed around 1am and that the other two men – one of whom was named Victor Collins – planned to crash at his house for the night. When Bates got up the next morning, he didn't see either of his friends. But when he opened his back door, he saw a body floating face-down in the hot tub. A grim local affair, the death of Victor Collins would never have attracted international attention if it were not for a facet of the investigation that pitted the Bentonville authorities against one of the world's most powerful companies – Amazon. Collins' death triggered a broad debate about privacy in the voice-computing era, a discussion that makes the big tech companies squirm.

At its streaming service event in Cupertino on Monday, Apple announced that in addition to more than 300 magazine titles (including TechCrunch) as part of its newly revealed News app, the company will also include subscriptions to the LA Times and Wall Street Journal. What's more, users will get access to the entire digital newsstand for $9.99 a year. Given that users would have to shell out more than $8,000 annually to acquire these magazines individually, that's a pretty good deal. Another interesting feature included in News is the app's recommendation engine. Unlike the recommendation algorithms you'd find on other streaming services like Netflix, News's feature runs on the device itself, rather than remotely on Apple's servers.

Amazon today is launching a new feature called "Song ID" that aims to help users discover music they like by using Alexa. When enabled, Alexa will announce the title and the artist name before playing each song while you're listening to a radio station, playlist or new release on Amazon Music over your smart speaker. The optional feature for Echo devices can be enabled or disabled by voice at any time by asking Alexa to "turn on Song ID" or "turn off Song ID." When listening to music through mobile or desktop apps, it's easy to give a quick glance at your streaming app to note an artist's name or song's title. But when you're streaming music over a smart speaker, your device may be put away and not as easily accessible. And unlike on terrestrial radio, there's no DJ to announce what's coming up next as the music streams over an Amazon Echo.

Amazon's decision to design its second-generation Amazon Echo smart speaker with a removable sleeve makes the device customizable. But there's a hidden feature I wasn't aware of until I installed Ninety7's Sky Tote Portable Battery Base: a set of electrical contacts tucked behind a rubber plug on the bottom of the speaker. These contacts enable the Echo 2 to draw power directly from the Sky Tote's large battery, which is charged in turn by the AC adapter that comes with the Echo 2. Operating your Echo 2 on battery power allows you to take the smart speaker with you into any room in your home or even into the yard if your Wi-Fi network is strong enough to reach there. That's a much less expensive alternative to putting an Echo in every room for smart home control, or investing in a multi-room audio system so you can listen to music everywhere. You can also take a battery-powered Echo 2 on picnics and camping trips if you create a mobile hotspot with your smartphone.

If you want to control a Roku player or Roku smart TV by voice, you have lots of options. Many Roku devices include a remote control that supports voice commands, and you can also control Roku hands-free with an Amazon Echo or Google Home smart speaker. But along with all those voice control options comes several limitations, especially when it comes to launching videos or TV channels directly. Knowing what Roku can and can't do will spare you some headaches when you're barking out orders. We'll talk through how to get set up with Roku voice controls, a list of supported voice commands, and some tips for making your experience smoother.

Most companies utilize demographic information to develop their strategy in a market. However, such information is not available to most retail companies. Several studies have been conducted to predict the demographic attributes of users from their transaction histories, but they have some limitations. First, they focused on parameter sharing to predict all attributes but capturing task-specific features is also important in multi-task learning. Second, they assumed that all transactions are equally important in predicting demographic attributes. However, some transactions are more useful than others for predicting a certain attribute. Furthermore, decision making process of models cannot be interpreted as they work in a black-box manner. To address the limitations, we propose an Embedding Transformation Network with Attention (ETNA) model which shares representations at the bottom of the model structure and transforms them to task-specific representations using a simple linear transformation method. In addition, we can obtain more informative transactions for predicting certain attributes using the attention mechanism. The experimental results show that our model outperforms the previous models on all tasks. In our qualitative analysis, we show the visualization of attention weights, which provides business managers with some useful insights.

Your current TV is showing its age. Its resolution is resolutely HD (so very 00s) and it doesn't even respond to voice commands, no matter how loud you bawl. Maybe the time has come to upgrade to something cutting edge. Connected smart TVs are now standard fare. With integrated streaming services, you can season binge from Netflix and Amazon Prime Video without the need for an additional set top box or dongle – or multiple remotes.