It is amply established that whether in science or business, machines will represent the greatest collaborators for human beings. Some of the early wins that have been witnessed across sectors is almost complete disintermediation, but, will AI ever be cognitive to customer needs? A click away from your next decision: The Indian e-commerce players were some of the natural early adopters of AI in India, with not just bots taking over from humans, but also building in an experience that the customer now expects and appreciates. They were followed by brick-and-mortar retailers to gather stock keeping unit (SKU)-performance and customer preferences to personalise their product promotions. Today, it is no longer restricted to e-commerce; a lot of other sectors, especially traditionally inclined ones like real estate and even B2B (business to business) firms are seeing the value of an online experience that counsels customers into making informed decisions, while still keeping it human. Bots at play: From virtual tours of a place to understanding your carbon-footprint based on where you choose to stay, to farmers getting AI assistants to predict weather patterns and when to sow next, these bots have clearly taken over much of the mundane tasks with very little human intervention.

Leviton is no stranger to the light switch, and it was an early mover into the smart home space. That kind of maturity is good news for those seeking product stability, but it also means shoppers face a daunting, complex market, as Leviton now sells more than a dozen smart switch products based on Bluetooth, HomeKit, Z-Wave, and--in this case--Wi-Fi protocols. We looked several models in Leviton's Decora Smart Wi-Fi lineup earlier, but largely found them wanting because of their limited options: You could control them with Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant voice commands (or by manipulating the devices themselves), and that was about it. Leviton has since updated this product line to add compatibility with IFTTT (If This Then That) and some Nest devices (specifically, Nest Learning Thermostats, Nest Cams, and the Nest Protect smoke/carbon-monoxide detector). The Leviton app has also been updated with home and away occupancy modes.

It's no secret that Tesla wants to use more artificial intelligence in its business. Elon Musk even left Open AI's board due to potential conflict with Tesla's own AI effort. Now we learn that Musk wants Tesla to have a KITT-like AI in its vehicles. Last year, Tesla hired Andrej Karpathy to lead its computer vision and AI team. We also learned that the automaker is working on its own new AI chip. If you take into account Tesla's several artificial intelligence efforts and Musk's desire to expand voice command features, it's not surprising that Tesla would want to implement an AI assistant in its vehicles.

About half of smartphones sold globally this year will have an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered assistant, a report by an industry consulting firm showed Sunday. According to Strategy Analytics (SA) Inc., 47.7 per cent of smartphones sold on the global market will be equipped with some kind of on-device AI assistant, up from 36.6 per cent last year, Yonhap news agency reported. On-device AI is growing fast among smartphone vendors and by 2023, around 90 per cent of smartphones will have a built-in AI assistant, according to the Strategy Analytics report. In 2017, Google Assistant rose to be the top AI assistant with a 46.7 per cent market share, followed by Apple's Siri with 40.1 per cent, it said. The report said the market share of Google's AI assistant is expected to climb to 51.3 per cent this year and 60.6 per cent by 2023.

Conversational AI is a subfield of artificial intelligence focused on producing natural and seamless conversations between humans and computers. We've seen several amazing advances on this front in recent years, with significant improvements in automatic speech recognition (ASR), text to speech (TTS), and intent recognition, as well as the rocketship growth of voice assistant devices like the Amazon Echo and Google Home, with estimates of close to 100 million devices in homes in 2018. But we're still a long way away from the fluent human-machine conversation promised in science fiction. Here are some key advances we should see over the next decade that could get us closer to that long-term vision. Machine learning, and in particular deep learning, has become an extremely popular technique within the field of AI over the past few years.

The underlying factors affecting users' choices of what to watch on TV have for several years been of interest to commercial and academic research. In the midst of a rapidly changing device and multimedia landscape, TVs continue to be at the core of multimedia consumption in the home with scenarios covering, among others, social gatherings and solitary immersive moments. The inherent complexity of viewing situations challenges the creation of experiences that match personal preferences as well as temporal and social contexts. Due to the increased availability of multimedia, research has been focused on improving the users' decision process by reducing large catalogs of content to a few personalized suggestions [1]. Commercial recommender solutions are now considered core to the business of engaging users and thereby preventing abandonment [2]. To do so, recommender systems have explored various features for personalization, such as history of watching, ratings, user/item similarity, and time of the day, the last of which is an example of features characteristic to context-aware recommender systems (CARS) [3]. The main objective of a recommender system is to personalize the experience to the individual, often by studying the user-item matrix. This could be an issue, since an account on a TV is often shared by multiple members of a household that end up diluting the user profile.

USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham takes a look (and listen) to the new Sonos Beam which incorporates Amazon's Alexa.voice They make the best consumer wifi speakers, and their flavor of Alexa, the Sonos One connected speaker, is my favorite choice for anyone looking to bring Alexa and music into the home. So I was itching to test the Sonos Beam, the new soundbar for TV viewing with built-in Alexa. Now that I've had it for a few days, my verdict--well, it's not the same as for the Sonos One, that's for sure. The good news with the Beam is that the sound, as always, is great and it mixes nicely with other Sonos speakers.

There's a reason why people deride banking hours; banks never seem to be open when you need them most, such as later in the day or on holidays and weekends. Fortunately, AI in banking is one of the most impactful applications of artificial intelligence through the use of conversational assistants, or chatbots, to engage customers 24/7. Customers are handling many things using chatbots, even private conversations regarding bank transactions, bank services and other tasks that don't necessarily require human intervention. For example, Bank of America introduced Erica, an AI assistant to help with customer transactions, and the bot has shown significant positive ROI. Many banks have quickly followed suit, although some saw mixed results.

Apple's App Store launch feels like a distant memory now -- the glossy buttons, overused gradient, and harsh drop shadows have faded in the rearview for most of us. Similarly, in a few years we'll have forgotten the arguments we're now having with our voice assistants -- the casual request "Hey Siri" eventually turning into a frustrated "HEY SIRI -- SET THE STUPID TIMER." It may seem to us now that voice user interfaces (VUIs) aren't learning quickly enough, but they're actually evolving at a pretty good pace. Primary platforms are making substantial strides to define the process and practice of crafting a VUI, for example, so that third-party UX designers can bring us new and hopefully better experiences. But UX designers also need time to adapt.

Half of smartphones sold globally this year will have an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant, a report by an industry consulting firm showed Sunday. According to Strategy Analytics (SA) Inc., 47.7 percent of smartphones sold on the global market will be equipped with some kind of on-device AI assistant, up from 36.6 percent last year. The report further finds that on-device AI is growing fast among smartphone vendors and by 2023, 89.9 percent of smartphones will have a built-in AI assistant. In 2017, Google Assistant rose to be the top AI assistant with a 46.7 percent market share, followed by Apple's Siri with 40.1 percent, it said. The report said the market share of Google's AI assistant is expected to climb to 51.3 percent this year and 60.6 percent by 2023.