We've quickly come to accept that brands know as much about us as we know about ourselves. Facebook serves you ads for cat food after you talk about getting a cat. Target knows you're pregnant before you tell your friends and family. Even Instagram knows about your shameful predilection for Hallmark Christmas movies. So it stands to reason that fewer pics of you with your significant other on Instagram could signal to apps and brands that your relationship may be coming to an end.

A.I. is this year's buzzword of choice across the Tech industry, and speculation about what this field can achieve is already running rife. Let's separate fact from fiction and make some sense of all the hype. As we start the new year, the Tech propaganda machine is already ramping up its next generation of buzzwords, promising paradigm shifts and silver bullets that will make whole industries obsolete, enable huge efficiency gains, and make the world a better place. Blockchain, which used to top keyword search trends and social media posts, suffered a significant decline in interest, partly due to the fact that its initial hype was residual from the Bitcoin bubble. It seems that this year's buzzword of choice is going to be Artificial Intelligence.

The CES trade show is powering up again in Vegas. Most of the biggest names in tech and stacks of start-ups you've never heard of will compete for attention over the next week. Some products may launch new categories - past events presented a first look at video cassette recorders (VCRs), organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TVs and Android tablets. But many more will flop or never even make it to market. We've scoured the internet for hints about what will be on show... One of the biggest developments at the last few CES expos has been Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant's rival efforts to extend their reach in the home and beyond.

Artificial intelligence is a moving target. Here's how to take better aim. Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be everywhere. We experience it at home and on our phones. Before we know it--if entrepreneurs and business innovators are to be believed--AI will be in just about every product and service we buy and use. In addition, its application to business problem solving is growing in leaps and bounds. And at the same time, concerns about AI's implications are rising: we worry about the impact of AI-enabled automation on the workplace, employment, and society.

Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei, recently gave an interview with CNBC. During the chat, Yu confirmed a Huawei voice assistant will launch globally at some point soon. This upcoming voice assistant would be a direct competitor to Google Assistant, Amazon's Alexa, and Apple's Siri, all of which already have a global presence. "In the beginning, we are mainly using Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa" for its smartphones and other smart products, Yu said. "We need more time to build our AI services…later, we will expand this outside of China."

After all, whether it's self-driving cars or robots who talk to each other, we've all been hearing about how AI and machine learning are on an upward trend and are leading to advancement after advancement. For example, would-be eaters are making use of digital assistants like Siri and voice search to find places to eat nearby, consumers are using visual search to find exactly what they want at the tap of a button, and marketers are using probability and statistics in data science to tailor their strategies. As we close 2018 and near 2019, it's time to do what all marketers should do at the end of every year: analyze stats and trends to get an idea of what's to come. Seeing as how big AI is right now, up today are artificial intelligence stats for 2019, a couple of accompanying images and an artificial intelligence growth chart or two so you can visualize what you read. According to a PwC study of 2,500 U.S. consumers and business decision makers, business leaders, believe AI is going to be fundamental in the future.

Amazon Echo dot devices allow kids and teens to do things like practice math and remember to do chores by asking Alexa to launch specific skills. If you have a preschooler and an Amazon device like an Echo, that's a command you've probably uttered many times. If you're like the adorable 2-year-old Zoe Turner, who got a taste of fame after a video of her sweet baby voice struggling to get Alexa to play "Baby Shark" went viral, you know learning how to get Alexa to listen is a skill. But, once you've mastered how to talk to Alexa, it can help entertain and teach kids and teens with interactive games and educational exercises. The folks at Common Sense Media put together a list of nearly 20 things kids, from preschoolers to teens, can ask Alexa to do.

D-Link is expanding its mydlink smart home ecosystem, adding new indoor and outdoor smart plugs for lighting and small appliance control, as well as a battery-powered water sensor to detect leaks in your home before they can do serious damage. All three devices are controlled via Wi-Fi, so they don't require a smart-home hub to operate. And since they're all compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, they can be controlled with voice commands, too. They're also compatible with IFTTT (If This Then That, the free web-based service that enables a device or application to trigger an action in another product). The D-Link DSP-W118 Indoor Wi-Fi Smart Plug can't dim a lamp, but it can turn lights and small appliances on and off.

"Based on feedback", Microsoft is getting rid of Cortana's voice walkthroughs for Windows 10 clean instals by default on Pro, Enterprise, or Education editions, the company said in a blog post. That doesn't mean the AI is gone forever: Microsoft states you can fire up Narrator at any time by pressing "WIN Ctrl Enter." Home users, on the other hand, will still have Cortana enabled by default. The change will come into effect with the next Windows 10 feature update, codenamed 19H1, which is expected in April. When Microsoft introduced Cortana integration during setup last year, it seemed like an attractive feature for Windows 10 newcomers, as it allowed users to offload some tasks to the AI helper.

Given the significant advances made by Artificial Intelligence, it's time India makes good use of this technology to encourage higher farm yields and weed out the many problems that bedevil this sector Artificial intelligence (AI) is much closer to our lives than ever before. Be it Apple's Siri or Google's Alexa, every intelligent assistant relies on speech recognition software whose backbone is AI. But for its untapped potential, human beings are turning to AI not only to play their favourite song from the playlist, but also to safeguard the environment, win over the climate change challenge and increase agricultural productivity. AI-driven technology holds immense potential. The best-laid plans, emanating from the elite minds in the scientific world, have neither been able to stave off worsening environmental conditions, nor could they ensure better state of affairs for our agricultural sector.