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.

However, the IoT is not a static force, and developers and users are constantly finding news ways to exploit the simple yet powerful concept of connected everything. In 2019, the industry should expect emerging trends to help set the trajectory of the IoT for years or even decades to come. Here are a few to keep an eye on next year. We often get caught up in the excitement of new technology, and low levels of regulation across the tech field mean it's easy to focus almost exclusively on innovation. The IoT, however, has posed a number of concerns, and 2019 will likely see various legislatures and regulatory entities start proposing and enforcing new regulations.

More than 4,400 exhibitors showed off their hardware at CES 2018. That's a lot of gadgets, and the show can become an unmanageable circus if you don't enter with a game plan--and that counts for people following the action at home, as well. To give you a little head start, here's our cheat sheet on what to look for at CES 2019. It's pretty easy to predict what AMD will be revealing at CES--because the company has already told us. AMD chief executive Lisa Su will host a keynote address on Wednesday, Jan. 9 where she'll talk up the company's 2019 plans to "catapult computing, gaming, and visualization technologies forward with the world's first 7nm high-performance CPUs and GPUs."

Imagine saying "Alexa, buy insurance!" You would not even have to specify what type of insurance policy you need, as the artificial intelligence working in the background will already have worked out when your renewals occur, and what your preferences for any given policy would be. These kinds of innovations have already happened in other industries such as online retail. Amazon, for example, can automatically select the best-matched product to your Alexa voice command, while UK online supermarket Ocado offers an automated weekly grocery shop based on customers' tastes and the amount of time it takes them to use their favourite items. However, despite some already functional AI tools such as telematics in motor insurance and wearable fitness technology in life and health, buying an insurance policy on a single voice command is still pretty much science fiction.