Zego is a company that produces smart home management software and S2 Capital is specialized in purchasing and renovating under leased and poorly managed properties. Markets Insider reports Zego and S2 Capital are linking smart home devices in around 30,000 apartments over the next three years in cooperation with Amazon. Our partnership with S2 is a significant move and validation in the market and their subsequent collaboration with Amazon helps us make units more attractive to prospective residents while improving operational efficiencies for property owners. We are committed to bringing this technology to the masses, and with this news, it's clear smart home technology is no longer reserved for luxury homes and apartments. Zego's smart home management platform consists of a single mobile app that connects residents, property staff, in addition to a marketplace of products and local services.

Shouldn't young people know about the most important change force that will influence their lives and livelihoods? That's why every high school should offer a course on artificial intelligence (AI). Or, better yet, incorporate a set of competencies into graduation requirements that ensure that every young person understands the technology drivers and the implications for the economy and society. The prevalence of AI has increased dramatically in the last few years. Most people are unaware that AI is a key technology behind personal assistants (Alexa, Siri, Google), autonomous vehicles, predictive analytics (Amazon and Netflix recommendations) and medical diagnostics just to name a few.

You sit down to watch a movie and ask Netflix for help. Zoolander 2?") The Netflix recommendation algorithm predicts what movie you'd like by mining data on millions of previous movie-watchers using sophisticated machine learning tools. And then the next day you go to work and every one of your agencies will make hiring decisions with little idea of which candidates would be good workers; community college students will be largely left to their own devices to decide which courses are too hard or too easy for them; and your social service system will implement a reactive rather than preventive approach to homelessness because they don't believe it's possible to forecast which families will wind up on the streets. You'd love to move your city's use of predictive analytics into the 21st century, or at least into the 20th century. You just hired a pair of 24-year-old computer programmers to run your data science team. But should they be the ones to decide which problems are amenable to these tools? Or to decide what success looks like? You're also not reassured by the vendors the city interacts with.

From the moment you see one, a smart thermostat looks cool. The cover plate is smooth, and there's a clear digital read-out. Unlike that grimy little hockey puck, with its analog dial and worn-out numbers, the smart thermostat feels futuristic, like something out of a science fiction movie. Yet smart thermostats are real – and it's changing lives. And it also offers a level of convenience that most of us have never imagined before.

A hotel chain in Tokyo is trying to be the first run by robots, albeit with a few malfunctions along the way, according to a new report. Japanese travel company H.I.S. has been opening hotels where robots man the front desk, check-in is handled by a kiosk, and face recognition opens the door to your room. The hotel name, Henn na Hotel ("henn na" means strange in Japanese) underscores the eerie presence of robots and the relative dearth of humans. The first hotel opened in 2015 and was recognized by Guinness World Records as "the first robot-staffed hotel" in the world, according to the Japan Times. H.I.S. is slowly expanding the number of robot-centric locations.

Everyone, it seems, is talking about artificial intelligence these days. AI, a broad term variously describing either a grandiose goal or a toolbox of technologies and techniques, is poised to profoundly transform the ways we do business, monitor our health, commute to work and more. AI is now a $20 billion global industry -- and investment in it is projected to triple in just the next three years. Siri and Echo use AI-type processes. So do Google Maps and Translate.

Some time ago when we talked about artificial intelligence we immediately thought of those futuristic films with technologies that seem impossible today. But just look around to realize that this area has evolved in such a way that it is already possible to integrate artificial intelligence into many of our day-to-day activities. Of course, because of the incredible possibilities that this type of technology brings, it has received attention from several industries, including marketing. By the way, did you know that artificial intelligence and marketing are already walking side by side? How does this partnership work?

From the moment you see one, a smart thermostat looks cool. The cover plate is smooth, and there's a clear digital read out. Unlike that grimy little hockey puck, with its analog dial and worn-out numbers, the smart thermostat feels futuristic, like something out of a science fiction movie. Yet smart thermostats are real – and they're changing lives. And they also offer a level of convenience that most of us have never imagined before.

We address the problem of designing a conversational avatar capable of a sequence of casual conversations with older adults. Users at risk of loneliness, social anxiety or a sense of ennui may benefit from practicing such conversations in private, at their convenience. We describe an automatic spoken dialogue manager for LISSA, an on-screen virtual agent that can keep older users involved in conversations over several sessions, each lasting 10-20 minutes. The idea behind LISSA is to improve users' communication skills by providing feedback on their non-verbal behavior at certain points in the course of the conversations. In this paper, we analyze the dialogues collected from the first session between LISSA and each of 8 participants. We examine the quality of the conversations by comparing the transcripts with those collected in a WOZ setting. LISSA's contributions to the conversations were judged by research assistants who rated the extent to which the contributions were "natural", "on track", "encouraging", "understanding", "relevant", and "polite". The results show that the automatic dialogue manager was able to handle conversation with the users smoothly and naturally.

Tech giants are battling to position their smart speakers as the center of the digital home. But Microsoft, which lost the mobile wars to Apple and Google, is trying to ensure that it will have a place, no matter who wins. Microsoft has its own voice-based digital assistant, Cortana, that could theoretically power a challenger to the Amazon Echo, Google Home, or Apple HomePod for countertop space. Indeed, Cortana is already core to a smart speaker from Harman Kardon. But CEO Satya Nadella is also thinking about how Cortana can live in harmony with other digital assistants.