There aren't many Echo-oriented accessories beyond Amazon's own Echo Button, but that's about to change very shortly. Amazon has released a beta Alexa Gadgets Toolkit that lets hardware brands make Echo-focused Bluetooth accessories that respond to Alexa commands. You can have a cuckoo clock that responds to your Echo's wake word or a notification, a switch that releases dog food after an alarm, or a chime that sounds when time's up. A future update will even allow visual interaction with music -- it's easy to see a lamp that pulses in sync with Amazon Music tracks. Child-oriented updates will also let developers build gadgets that include compatible kid-friendly skills.

Businesses across the world are rapidly leveraging the Internet-of-Things (IoT) to create new products and services that are opening up new business opportunities and creating new business models. The resulting transformation is ushering in a new era of how companies run their operations and engage with customers. However, tapping into the IoT is only part of the story. For companies to realize the full potential of IoT enablement, they need to combine IoT with rapidly-advancing Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, which enable'smart machines' to simulate intelligent behavior and make well-informed decisions with little or no human intervention. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are terms that project futuristic, sci-fi, imagery; both have been identified as drivers of business disruption in 2017.

Conversational agents are gaining popularity with the increasing ubiquity of smart devices. However, training agents in a data driven manner is challenging due to a lack of suitable corpora. This paper presents a novel method for gathering topical, unstructured conversational data in an efficient way: self-dialogues through crowd-sourcing. Alongside this paper, we include a corpus of 3.6 million words across 23 topics. We argue the utility of the corpus by comparing self-dialogues with standard two-party conversations as well as data from other corpora.

If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. However, our picks and opinions are independent from USA TODAY's newsroom and any business incentives. Amazon's original Echo smart speaker was first made available for purchase on November 6, 2014. In the short time since, it's estimated that around 28 million Echo devices have found homes on American coffee tables and countertops. Alexa herself has ventured into all manner of products, from bathroom mirrors to sprinkler systems, so we keep a running list of everything that works with Amazon Echo and Alexa.

Today's digital assistants can sometimes fool you into believing they are human, but vastly more capable digital helpers are on their way. Behind the scenes, Siri, Alexa and their ilk use sophisticated speech-recognition software to figure out what you are requesting and how to provide it, and they generate natural-sounding speech to deliver scripted answers matched to your questions. Such systems must first be "trained"--exposed to many, many examples of the kinds of requests humans are likely to make--and the appropriate responses must be written by humans and organized into highly structured data formats. That work is time-consuming and results in digital assistants that are restricted in the tasks they can perform. The systems can "learn"--their machine-learning capabilities allow them to improve their matching of incoming questions to existing answers--but to a limited extent. Even so, they are extremely impressive.

Google's next voice-activated device could be a smart speaker with a screen. Leaked photos claim to show a smart display, called the'Google Home Hub,' which features a 7-inch display mounted on top of a speaker. The photos give credence to previous rumors that Google may soon launch its own smart display. Google's next voice-activated device could be a smart speaker with a screen. For all of 2017, 35 million smart speakers were shipped worldwide, Canalys data reveals.

On October 9th, Google will reveal its latest hardware lineup. Rumors have spread for some time that the company is preparing to unveil a smart display at the event, and a leak unearthed by MySmartPrice corroborates the existence of the device, indicating that it will be called Home Hub. Meanwhile, a separate leak of a retail listing suggests the smart display will cost $149, according to Android Authority. The Home Hub appears to have a seven-inch screen and apes the design of Google's other smart home products such as Google Home Max and Mini. The Google Assistant-powered device is said to weigh just 480 grams, which as the same as Google Home.

It's a simple question that any person with a watch can answer with minimal effort. But when you ask an Amazon Echo the same question, a vast system powered by natural resources and human labor is activated to drum up the answer. As many of us reckon with Silicon Valley's impact on the world and consider how it has upended life, work, and even democracy, we also must consider the infrastructure–and the tangible harm it can do–that usually remains hidden beneath these seemingly simple user experiences. It's an aspect of AI that is nearly impossible to comprehend, let alone visualize, but a new map created by the AI researcher Kate Crawford and data visualization specialist Vladan Joler attempts this dizzying task anyway. Called Anatomy of an AI, the map and the corresponding essay lay out the components of the Amazon Echo, from the human workers mining the rare earth materials that power its chips to the black box of Amazon Web Services to the submarine internet cables that pass information across oceans.

It's Tuesday, and we're testing out new Siri Shortcuts on iOS 12 (you've updated, right?), getting all the details on Audi's high-tech SUV and rejoicing that Twitter plans to revive the purely chronological timeline. If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford the trip. SpaceX reveals identity of the world's first lunar space tourist When the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) launches in 2023, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa will go on a five-day expedition with six to eight artists -- from architects and musicians to fashion designers and visual-media creators -- selected from around the globe. The BFR is expected to be ready for ground testing at some point in 2019. Musk believes the first uncrewed BFR flight to Mars will take place as early as 2022 while crewed flights should start two years after that.

Google has launched a new venture capital program focused on artificial intelligence, Axios is reporting. Google declined to comment on the report, which states that the initiative will be led by longtime Google VP of engineering Anna Patterson and involve a rotating cast of engineers instead of the venture investors who work for Alphabet Inc.'s corporate venture unit, GV . It isn't completely surprising that Google might create an investing practice around AI, particularly given Google CEO Sundar Pichai's recent pronouncement that Google is becoming "AI first" rather than "mobile first." Indeed, AI was the running thread throughout the recent Google I/O developer conference, where the company introduced new tensor processing unit (TPU) chips that promise to more quickly train and run AI models for researchers and businesses; it also announced (among many other things) that its Google Assistant, the company's virtual personal assistant that's available on devices like the Google Home and Pixel phone, will soon grow more conversational. According to Axios, Patterson and company will reportedly be co-investing with GV when it makes sense to do so.