Humans can communicate a range of nonverbal emotions, from terrified shrieks to exasperated groans. Voice inflections and cues can communicate subtle feelings, from ecstasy to agony, arousal and disgust. Even when simply speaking, the human voice is stuffed with meaning, and a lot of potential value if you're a company collecting personal data. Now, researchers at the Imperial College London have used AI to mask the emotional cues in users' voices when they're speaking to internet-connected voice assistants. The idea is to put a "layer" between the user and the cloud their data is uploaded to by automatically converting emotional speech into "normal" speech.

Enthusiasts predicted the plan would relieve the pressure on hard-pressed GPs. Critics saw it as a sign of creeping privatisation and a data-protection disaster in waiting. Reactions to news last month that Amazon's voice-controlled digital assistant Alexa was to begin using NHS website information to answer health queries were many and varied. US-based healthcare tech analysts say the deal is just the latest of a series of recent moves that together reveal an audacious, long-term strategy on the part of Amazon. From its entry into the lucrative prescription drugs market and development of AI tools to analyse patient records, to Alexa apps that manage diabetes and data-driven experiments on how to cut medical bills, the $900bn global giant's determination to make the digital disruption of healthcare a central part of its future business model is becoming increasingly clear.

The machines haven't taken over. However, they are seeping their way into our lives, affecting how we live, work and entertain ourselves. From voice-powered personal assistants like Siri and Alexa, to more underlying and fundamental technologies such as behavioral algorithms, suggestive searches and autonomously-powered self-driving vehicles boasting powerful predictive capabilities, there are several examples and applications of artificial intellgience in use today. However, the technology is still in its infancy. What many companies are calling A.I. today, aren't necessarily so. As a software engineer, I can claim that any piece of software has A.I. due to an algorithm that responds based on pre-defined multi-faceted input or user behavior.

The global healthcare virtual assistant market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 24.7% from 2018 to reach $1.76 billion by 2025, according to market research published by Meticulous Research. Virtual assistants are AI and rule-based systems that interact with humans to perform various tasks. These assistants use cognitive technologies such as machine learning, natural language processing, and neural networks to enable interactive communications with the end-users. Virtual assistant technology in the healthcare industry can assist in transforming various health processes and improve healthcare delivery, worldwide. It helps in improving healthcare quality, patient care, and patient outcome at lower costs.

Hey, Google, enough is enough already. Google was caught having contractors listening in to our conversations from its personal assistant, which sounds bad until you realize Google wasn't alone in this. Apple and Facebook were doing the same thing. And this week, Microsoft got stung by Vice's Motherboard, and now admits it, too, listens. The companies, which also include Amazon, have said they do this on a limited basis to learn and make their assistants better.

Over the last few years, Artificial Intelligence (AI), has spread beyond the realm of IBM's super-computer Watson, into the houses and pockets of billions around the globe courtesy of the likes of Apple's Siri & Amazon's Alexa. While AI may have evolved from a rather abstract, sci-fi concept, to a real-life, practical part of our conscious everyday lives, there are many around the globe who question its relevancy & impact to the small-medium business (SMB) community -- a community that is still so important to the economic prosperity of almost every country around the globe. One of the first & most obvious challenges to the SMB space is the associated cost. Fortunately, for businesses on a budget, AI investment & deployment doesn't need to break the bank. While developing your own AI is undoubtedly a complex and time-consuming process requiring a considerable amount of investment, fortunately, several tech companies have open-sourced their AI efforts in a bid to make AI more accessible to greater sections of society (including SMBs).

Now is the best time to buy a laptop--even if you're not a student. Here's what you need to know to find the best deals! 'Tis the season for heading off to school for another year of higher learning. But at the very least, there are some cool back-to-school gadgets to get excited about – including high-tech devices to keep you organized, productive and entertained while in a dorm room. And the good news is you don't have to blow your budget to get some great gear.

Though conversational AI has been around since the 1960s, it's experiencing a renewed focus in recent years. While we're still in the early days of the design and development of intelligent conversational AI, Google quite rightly announced that we were moving from a mobile-first to an AI-first world, where we expect technology to be naturally conversational, thoughtfully contextual, and evolutionarily competent. In other words, we expect technology to learn and evolve. Most chatbots today can handle simple questions and respond with prebuilt responses based on rule-based conversation processing. For instance, if user says X, respond with Y; if user says Z, call a REST API, and so forth.

For the business leader or entrepreneur, every day can seem like a battle. Phone calls, text messages, setting appointments, taking notes of conversations, attending meetings. Even prioritizing your email inbox seems like a daunting task. Wouldn't it be great if you could have a personal assistant who would take care of all that for you? Well, that is the promise of Artificial Intelligence Apps.

"Our AI takes about 20 moves, most of the time solving it in the minimum number of steps," Baldi says. "Right there, you can see the strategy is different, so my best guess is that the AI's form of reasoning is completely different from a human's." The ultimate goal of projects such as this one is to build the next generation of AI systems, Baldi says. Whether they know it or not, artificial intelligence touches people every day through apps such as Siri and Alexa and recommendation engines working behind the scenes of their favorite online services. "But these systems are not really intelligent; they're brittle, and you can easily break or fool them," Baldi says.