A group of children's advocates and two lawmakers are raising questions about Amazon.com's The advocates led by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood said Friday that the presence of a voice-activated speaker on children's nightstands is an unwelcome development that could prove intrusive or potentially disruptive to their development. "AI devices raise a host of privacy concerns and interfere with the face-to-face interactions and self-driven play that children need to thrive," CCFC's Executive Director Josh Golin said in a statement. While the group is not suggesting Amazon's new product violates privacy law -- an accusation it has leveled at other tech giants such as Google -- its campaign wades into the murkier debate of how parents should evaluate their children's interaction with speakers. Research into that effect is still inconclusive.

Lawmakers, child development experts, and privacy advocates are expressing concerns about two new Amazon products targeting children, questioning whether they prod kids to be too dependent on technology and potentially jeopardize their privacy. In a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Friday, two members of the bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus raised concerns about Amazon's smart speaker Echo Dot Kids and a companion service called FreeTime Unlimited that lets kids access a children's version of Alexa, Amazon's voice-controlled digital assistant. "While these types of artificial intelligence and voice recognition technology offer potentially new educational and entertainment opportunities, Americans' privacy, particularly children's privacy, must be paramount," wrote Senator Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) and Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas), both cofounders of the privacy caucus. The letter includes a dozen questions, including requests for details about how audio of children's interactions is recorded and saved, parental control over deleting recordings, a list of third parties with access to the data, whether data will be used for marketing purposes, and Amazon's intentions on maintaining a profile on kids who use these products. Echo Dot Kids is the latest in a wave of products from dominant tech players targeting children, including Facebook's communications app Messenger Kids and Google's YouTube Kids, both of which have been criticized by child health experts concerned about privacy and developmental issues.

"The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed." This week I was once again reminded of that quote by science fiction writer, William Gibson, when I witnessed (via YouTube) Google Assistant's latest capabilities being demonstrated to stunning effect at the annual Google I/O developer conference. The scenario involved Google Assistant calling a hair salon and engaging in a natural-language dialog with the real-life receptionist to successfully book a hair appointment. I could have sworn that a human being was making that call, down to the "mm-hmms", pauses and inflections.

Many e-commerce and retail companies are leveraging the power of data and boosting sales by implementing recommender systems on their websites. In short, these systems aim to predict users' interests and recommend items that quite likely are interesting for them. Data required for recommender systems stems from explicit user ratings after watching a movie or listening to a song, from implicit search engine queries and purchase histories, or from other knowledge about the users/items themselves. Sites like Spotify, YouTube or Netflix use that data in order to suggest playlists, so-called Daily mixes, or to make video recommendations, respectively. In this blog post, we'll describe the broad types of the most popular recommender systems and give insights into how they work, going through a few examples. To give some motivation on the subject and help decide whether it's a worthwhile investment, we'll point to some real-life case studies, talk about the high level requirements for implementing recommender systems, and discuss how they can be evaluated fairly.

AI and Blockchain have been making waves in the tech world for several years now -- key drivers to popular technologies like chatbots, cryptocurrency, personal assistants (i.e. Get the entire 10-part series on Timeless Reading in PDF. Save it to your desktop, read it on your tablet, or email to your colleagues. As these technologies individually mature and see a wider range of applications, it's becoming more clear that they are headed towards a convergence, whether it be to improve self-driving cars or make mining Bitcoins more efficient. TiE Inflect has put together a handy infographic on where both technologies stand, and how they can work together -- however, if you're unfamiliar with AI and Blockchain, here's a little background on them: Artificial Intelligence -- AI for short -- is the capability of a machine, such as a computer, to imitate intelligent human behavior.

"Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships," Alexa says. It's something that Amazon knows very, very well, and is using to its advantage to continue leading in the smart speaker wars, which are of course just a prelude to our future of ambient, invisible computing. Every week I get a new email from Amazon Echo. Every single week there are significant, interesting, trivial, and funny new things that Alexa can do. This week for instance, Amazon's letting me know that just by asking, I can get Alexa to block all songs with explicit lyrics from playing in Amazon Music. Also, Alexa can tell me how many points King James is averaging in his demolition of LeBronto, or where I can buy flowers for Mother's Day.

Google's "terrifying" new artificial intelligence feature has prompted concerns about the takeover of the robots and the abuse of AI. Many commentators have suggested that "Duplex" is not only strange but entirely unethical, and that it could signal an important moment in the acceptance and use of artificial intelligence. This week, Google announced a whole range of new AI features. But it was just one of them that took almost all of the attention: Duplex. That feature allows the assistant to call people on its owners behalf, booking them appointments or checking on the availability of restaurants.

I laughed along with most of the audience at I/O 2018 when, in response to a restaurant rep asking it to hold on, Google Assistant said "Mmhmm". But beneath our mirth lay a sense of wonder. The demo of Google Duplex, "an AI system for accomplishing real-world tasks over the phone," was almost unbelievable. The artificially intelligent Assistant successfully made a reservation with a human being over the phone without the person knowing it wasn't real. It even used sounds like "umm," "uhh" and tonal inflections to create a more convincing, realistic cadence.

Google is working on some nifty new features for Google Maps, including a short list of your favorite places, the possibility of a'virtual positioning system' and more. Assistant is coming to Google Maps in a big way, with a ton of new shortcuts, as well as the ability for the digital assistant to text your friend when you're on your way. Google is rolling out a tool called'Your Match', which uses machine learning to determine your location and interests, serving up targeted suggestions for new businesses opening up in your area and more.

There are so many amazing ways artificial intelligence and machine learning are used behind the scenes to impact our everyday lives and inform business decisions and optimize operations for some of the world's leading companies. Here are 27 amazing practical examples of AI and machine learning. Using natural language processing, machine learning and advanced analytics, Hello Barbie listens and responds to a child. A microphone on Barbie's necklace records what is said and transmits it to the servers at ToyTalk. There, the recording is analyzed to determine the appropriate response from 8,000 lines of dialogue.