This week at MWC, Husqvarna announced its first all-wheel drive (AWD) option with the 435X. In addition to some other unique features, this new "automower" works with Amazon's Alexa and Google Home to fit in with the rest of your smart home devices. And yes, the integration with virtual assistants means you can control the robotic landscaper with your voice. AWD adds the ability to handle slopes and rough terrain better. Husqvarna says the 435X can handle an incline of up to 70 percent, which is quite steep.

With artificial intelligence (AI) recommendations driving 75% of Netflix selections and 35% of Amazon purchases, businesses must start looking to market to their newest customer – AI. As the technology continues to mature, it will be able to augment mundane and/or routine purchasing decisions that are still important to the customer but are not necessarily the most experiential or engaging. When AI offers the ability to offload routine actions and support and extend ongoing communication between brands and customers, the businesses that are investing heavily in AI will be the ones that can sell through, and to, to AI assistants. It's critical for businesses to stay ahead of this, as AI assistants are bound to have significant purchasing power in the near future. A virtual assistant, also called an AI assistant or digital assistant, is an application program that understands natural language voice commands and completes tasks for the user.

Pocket Casts, widely hailed as the best podcasts app around, is coming to Amazon's Echo smart speakers. An Alexa skill is a natural progression for the premium app, allowing users to pick up where they left off on their smartphone at home. Using a series of voice commands, you'll be able to continue listening on your Echo device, ask for a recommendation, request a random podcast, or play the latest episode of your favorite show. Of course, you can currently beam audio from Pocket Casts to smart speakers like Google Home (via Cast) and the HomePod (via AirPlay 2), but the Alexa skill lets you go hands-free. It follows a major update to the app in November -- just months after its acquisition by a collective of public radio stations, including NPR -- that brought with it Siri Shortcuts, enabling iPhone users to set up voice prompts.

Nearly 70 years since Alan Turing posed the question "Can machines think?" artificial intelligence (AI) is finally beginning to have an impact on the global economy. Proponents of AI believe that it has the potential to transform the world as we know it. So what is AI in business and what are the main themes? Within the AI industry, there are seven key technology categories: machine learning, data science, conversational platforms, computer vision, AI chips, smart robots and context-aware computing. Machine learning (ML) is an application of AI that gives computer systems the ability to learn and improve from data without being explicitly programmed.

Rotten Tomatoes is no longer allowing people to post comments about films before they come out, to try to stop trolling. The site announced the change in a blog post, saying some comments are "a disservice to our general readership". It says there's been an "an uptick in non-constructive input, sometimes bordering on trolling". But the movie site assured fans they would still be able to review films once they're released. "We have decided that turning off this feature for now is the best course of action," the blog said.

The Spanish term "mañana, mañana" is all about putting off what you should be doing now in favor of something more fun – like smoking cannabis and getting nude in public – both of which are legal in Spain. Unrelated to the country's lackadaisical outlook on life, the economy has suffered for almost ten years after the 2008 collapse of the housing market and the global financial crisis that followed. Unemployment rates peaked at 26% with youth unemployment stagnating around 55% for more than a year. Today, the economic decline is finally over and the country's economy has returned to its pre-recession size, although unemployment still remains above 18%. The newly invigorated environment has helped Spain's startup ecosystem grow, and this growth is underpinned by the quality of their education system, the availability of public and private funding, and the growth of incubators and accelerators.

Take, for example, EVA, a "digital voice assistant" created by Silicon Valley startup Voicea. The AI agent can automatically read users' calendars, dial itself into their meetings, and use natural-language processing algorithms to create real-time transcripts of what's said. As a meeting progresses, EVA can also respond to voice commands ("EVA, add that to my to-do list") and "trigger" words ("that's a good point") to highlight what's most important. In an interview, Voicea CEO Omar Tawakol described the technology as a way to help the masses employ the same listening and learning skills as top executives. "Really good CEOs are 100 percent focused on their conversations, not looking at a screen," Tawakol said.

A series of new Google Assistant ads aired during the 91st annual Oscars Sunday night, reimagining how some classic and recent films would change with Google's AI helper. Movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ladybird, Psycho, and Scream all appeared in short ads that played throughout the award show. The ads reconsidered how crucial scenes from each movie would work with Google Assistant saving time or assisting the characters. This isn't the first time Google Assistant has appeared in classic movies; a previous commercial also reimagined Home Alone with an AI-friendly scenario back in December. A collection of the commercials that aired tonight can be seen below.

Talks of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) have taken over the business world in the past few years. We have seen implementation of innovative solutions created using A.I. across various industries. How well does A.I. influence or impact the world of hospitality, and what varieties of innovation are we bound to see in 2019? Any piece of technology built to address any of these factors will create a major impact in the hospitality industry. As hotels step up their game to deliver personalized solutions, we will see more businesses hire experts to created brand experiences, such as personalized toiletries, pillow cases, custom food menu etc.

The human mind is still an unknown process of neuroscience in many aspects. Nevertheless, for decades the scientific community has proposed computational models that try to simulate their parts, specific applications, or their behavior in different situations. The most complete model in this line is undoubtedly the LIDA model, proposed by Stan Franklin with the aim of serving as a generic computational architecture for several applications. The present project is inspired by the LIDA model to apply it to the process of movie recommendation, the model called MIRA (Movie Intelligent Recommender Agent) presented percentages of precision similar to a traditional model when submitted to the same assay conditions. Moreover, the proposed model reinforced the precision indexes when submitted to tests with volunteers, proving once again its performance as a cognitive model, when executed with small data volumes. Considering that the proposed model achieved a similar behavior to the traditional models under conditions expected to be similar for natural systems, it can be said that MIRA reinforces the applicability of LIDA as a path to be followed for the study and generation of computational agents inspired by neural behaviors.