You are likely very familiar with artificial intelligence, even if you don't recognize it as such: all your tech assistants, from Siri to Alexa, run on the technology, but just because it's ubiquitous, doesn't mean it couldn't be made better: more inclusive, more diverse, and more useful. And no one is in a better place to figure out how than Kriti Sharma, Vice President of AI at SAGE, and one of Forbes' 30 Under 30. "When I was 15, I got some exposure to a government research facility where a scientist could use his voice to make a computer do something," Sharma tells Bustle. "That was magical for me. How awesome would it be if I had my own personal machine that could understand my voice?"

Microsoft has acquired a natural language AI firm called Semantic Machines to help Cortana and other bots carry on natural conversations, it announced. The tech "uses the power of machine learning to enable users to discover, access and interact with information and services in a much more natural way, and with significantly less effort," wrote Microsoft AI & Research CTO David Ku. What's more, Microsoft will establish a "conversational AI center" in Berkeley to amp up its language tech and "take conversational computing to a new level." Microsoft pointed out that while Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant and Alexa can execute commands, they can't carry on a conversation in any meaningful way (Google's much-debated Duplex conversation aside). Semantic Machines, however, has developed tech that can understand entire chats, not just orders to do this or that. "For rich and effective communication, intelligent assistants need to be able to have a natural dialogue instead of just responding to commands," said Ku. Semantic Machines should be able to help Microsoft with all that via its primary product, the Conversation Engine.

Vymo, a software-as-a-service start-up, is gearing up for expansion across Asia Pacific, following a round of engagements with key banking and insurance customers. On the back of customer success in Singapore and Hong Kong, the start-up is currently building strong pipeline within the wider region. As part of this expansion, Anurag Srivastava, former head of financial services at Kofax, has been appointed head of APAC for the business, reporting directly to CEO, Yamini Bhat. "We will follow this up with building the regional capability of customer success, delivery and support teams in key strategic markets in Asia Pacific apart from relationships with cloud solution providers and services partners for local deployments," Bhat said. A developer of an AI-personal assistant used by some leading banks and insurers sees the APAC region as a major growth opportunity.

Microsoft has acquired Semantic Machines, a "conversational AI" startup in Berkley, Calif., to further its work in building machines that can converse naturally with humans. Semantic aims to advance the state of voice-based AI, like virtual assistants Alexa, Siri, Cortana and others, from understanding and responding to commands to being able to have compete conversations. The company is led by accomplished startup entrepreneurs, a former chief speech scientist for Apple's Siri and leading AI researchers and professors from Stanford and University of California Berkley. With the acquisition, Microsoft will set up a "center of excellence" focused on pushing "forward the boundaries of what is possible in language interfaces," David Ku, corporate vice president and chief technology officer of Microsoft AI & Research, wrote in a blog post announcing the acquisition. "Combining Semantic Machines' technology with Microsoft's own AI advances, we aim to deliver powerful, natural and more productive user experiences that will take conversational computing to a new level," Ku wrote.

Over the last two years, academic researchers have identified various methods that they can transmit hidden commands that are undetectable by the human ear to Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Google's Assistant. According to a new report from The New York Times, scientific researchers have been able "to secretly activate the artificial intelligence systems on smartphones and smart speakers, making them dial phone numbers or open websites." This could, perhaps, allow cybercriminals to unlock smart-home doors, control a Tesla car via the App, access users' online bank accounts, load malicious browser-based cryptocurrency mining websites, and or access all sort of personal information. In 2017, Statista projected around 223 million people in the U.S. would be using a smartphone device, which accounts for roughly 84 percent of all mobile users. Of these 223 million smartphones users, around 108 million Americans are using the Android Operating System, and some 90 million are using Apple's iOS (operating system).

We have seen a variety of Recommender Systems. But we left an important issue aside: How do we evaluate RecSys? Before answering that question per se, I want to make emphasys on something. Using just one error metric can give us a limited view of how these systems work. We should always try to evaluate with different methods our models, almost as picky as your ex, but prorizing quick iteration with the lowest cost possible.

This week, OpenAI published an analysis that documents an explosion in compute power over the past six years, which is driving advances in artificial intelligence. Compute power used in the largest AI training runs, the piece found, has doubled every 3.5 months since 2012. The breakdown of compute power necessary to create well-known AI systems like ResNets and AlphaGo Zero provides some of the clearest metrics available to demonstrate why AI is growing faster and proliferating to all corners of society. Together with big data and improvements to algorithms, this boom in compute is carving paths to the future for both businesses and the rest of the world. This week, the international community met in Geneva for the AI for Good Global Summit to discuss how AI can be used to make progress toward the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals like zero hunger, no poverty, and good health.

This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. After spending more than 40 hours researching and two months testing 12 monitored home security systems, we found SimpliSafe to be the best self-installed option for most people. SimpliSafe gives you the benefits of a 24/7-monitored security system without locking you into a long-term contract, and it's affordable, reliable, and easy to install and use. SimpliSafe also offers the most comprehensive choice of systems for homes and budgets of all sizes. The current incarnation of SimpliSafe sports a stylish design that can go almost anywhere, and offers add-ons like video cameras, smoke alarms, and additional sensors to cover your entire home, large or small. SimpliSafe also has the lowest price we've found for live monitoring--low enough that it could be mostly covered by the discount you receive from your homeowners insurance for having a security system. If you want to integrate security into a smart-home setup, the Abode system includes support for Z-Wave and Zigbee, as well as Nest, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and IFTTT, though not Apple's HomeKit.

Only 22% without a strategy said the same. This means having solid prediction capabilities with your AI will be the key to keeping your customers. This means having solid prediction capabilities with your AI will be the key to keeping your customers. By the 2030s, they predict that around 38% of all U.S. jobs could be replaced by AI and automation. These top three responses, which total 75% of all AI applications, demonstrate that AI is more pervasive and prominent than respondents realize.

Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant are all female. The topic has been much discussed and researched in recent years, with data offering as one explanation for the phenomenon that both men and women prefer the sound of female voices. "They're warmer and more relatable, and make people receptive to voice-activated technology," Fast Company explained in March. Many virtual assistant users (and critics) weren't satisfied--why is that we're so OK bossing around a female voice and not a male one? Writing for the Atlantic in 2016, Adrienne LaFrance said, "The simplest explanation is that people are conditioned to expect women, not men, to be in administrative roles--and that the makers of digital assistants are influenced by these social expectations."