It is midnight on January 18, 2017, and the Outbrain Click Prediction machine learning competition has just finished. It has been three and a half months of working late. As I scroll through the leaderboard page, I found my name in the 19th position, which was the top 2% from nearly 1,000 competitors. Not bad for the first Kaggle competition I had decided to put a real effort in! One of the reasons why I managed to score well was the fact that Google Cloud Platform (GCP) made my life easier and I could focus on the data.

This is the first time we've seen the Apple HomePod on sale (Photo: Apple) 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. Apple finally joined the smart assistant party in February with the release of the Apple HomePod. At $349.99, it's also the most expensive compared to Amazon's Echo or Google Assistant. But if you're an Apple die-hard, it might be the only smart speaker you want so you can sync it with your other Apple products.

Facebook has decided not to unveil its new home products range at the firm's developer conference in May. Mark Zuckerberg had planned to use the occasion to launch its smart speakers, which come equipped with a digital assistant and video chat. The decision comes in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which saw details from 50 million Facebook users leaked to political activists. Believed to have operated on behalf of the Trump 2016 presidential campaign, the information was used to target voters in the US based on psychological profiling. The scandal has led to many users debating whether to delete their profiles on the social network, with the hashtag #DeleteFacebook trending on Twitter.

We are well into 2018 and it is already looking at the watershed year for technology. A more efficient way to "discover" these services will make it even easier for the users to extract full benefit from their smart home appliance. We are finally getting close to practical, flexible, easy to build ad-hoc solutions for home automation. We will see more and more appliances growing ears and programmable brains guided by Echo, Google Home and HomePods. AI and capsule: Neural networks are passé – AI now comes in a capsule!

The recent successes of AI have captured the wildest imagination of both the scientific communities and the general public. Robotics and AI amplify human potentials, increase productivity and are moving from simple reasoning towards human-like cognitive abilities. Current AI technologies are used in a set area of applications, ranging from healthcare, manufacturing, transport, energy, to financial services, banking, advertising, management consulting and government agencies. The global AI market is around 260 billion USD in 2016 and it is estimated to exceed 3 trillion by 2024. To understand the impact of AI, it is important to draw lessons from it's past successes and failures and this white paper provides a comprehensive explanation of the evolution of AI, its current status and future directions.

Many recommendation algorithms rely on user data to generate recommendations. However, these recommendations also affect the data obtained from future users. This work aims to understand the effects of this dynamic interaction. We propose a simple model where users with heterogeneous preferences arrive over time. Based on this model, we prove that naive estimators, i.e. those which ignore this feedback loop, are not consistent. We show that consistent estimators are efficient in the presence of myopic agents. Our results are validated using extensive simulations.

Artificial Intelligence is often overlooked as being a general-purpose application technology that already inhabits many aspects of our lives. We're bombarded with prophecies of the'future' of AI, Skynet-inspired stories and doomsday divinations. But what about the way in which AI is already integrated into our daily lives and has improved our current technologies? Whether we're wanting to find directions to the nearest cafe or settle a debate, Siri, Cortana and Alexa (among others), have our backs. Intelligent personal assistants are at our disposal. As a program, they use location data, user input and a variety of database information to carry out requests from both voice command and text.

Universal remote controls have been around for a while, but with a product like the Logitech Harmony Elite, simplicity and future-proofing go hand-in-hand. The Elite's Hub system lets you control IR, Bluetooth and even network-based products beyond your home entertainment system. Not only can you condense your media remotes into one easy-to-set-up package, but your power extends to connected home products like Philips Hue lights or Nest thermostats. That power goes one step further when you link a smart speaker like Google Home Mini to the Hub. Now that single remote can get a little dusty as you turn on your TV and navigate to preset channels using your voice alone.

Over the past few years there has been dramatic rise in the use of data, analytics, and most recently, artificial intelligence (AI). With AI rapidly moving into the daily operations of a rising number of uses and enterprises, the disruption to human capital and the labor workforce of tomorrow is inevitable. What's more, this change mostly likely will be amplified by innovation and commoditization that AI brings as it enters every aspect of the modern workplace. Modern industry stands on a precipice between platforms and automation. Uber, Lyft, Gigster, Deliveroo, and the multitudes of other platforms are still heavily dependent on human labor, but all are aggressively investing in artificial intelligence to automate processes and decrease risk in business operations.

When it comes to smart speakers, Amazon's Echo Show is one of the best on the market, and right now you can get one for $159.99, Powered by Amazon's Alexa AI assistant, this speaker gives you access to everything from weather forecasts to audiobooks all in one central voice-activated location. There's also another added benefit: the Echo Show includes a 7-inch screen, so you can see what's it's telling you. After testing every Echo device to date and comparing them against other smart speakers, the Echo Show is one of our favorites and easily the best in its class. Its many features and compatibility with other devices, as well as its solid sound quality, make it a top pick in its category. At $229.99, it's the priciest of the Echo family--and this deal doesn't change that--but the price cut brings it more in line with the Echo Spot, which retails for $129.99.