Health care is a $3 trillion a year industry, and tech companies such as Amazon are vying for a slice of it. In January, the e-commerce giant announced a partnership with JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway to "revolutionize health care." Chiefly, this joint partnership would work toward developing a less costly health care network for their employees, but the exact aims and methods are otherwise vague. It's also been rumored periodically that Amazon might enter the pharmaceutical business. Now, reports suggest Amazon is interested in building health care applications directly into its virtual assistant, Alexa.

Mother's Day is on Sunday, which makes this a great time to buy...well, a lot of things. Amazon's Mother's Day deals are still going on strong. So is this unbelievable deal on the Plantronics Voyager 8200 UC headphones, which our headphone connoisseur Jeffrey Van Camp loved, and which is still $135 off. You also still have time to pick up some Beats headphones from Apple. But even if you're not in the market for a Kindle or headphones, we've worked together with our pals at TechBargains to find other great tech deals for you this weekend.

BROADBAND BREAKFAST INSIGHT: I watched this video of Google CEO Sundar Pichai demonstrating Google Assistant, and I also was impressed. While I agree that there are some real social engineering issues raised by the assistant, I'm not sure that "disclosure" requirement called for by some of the technology's critics really meet the mark. Is there a need for "disclosure" that one is riding in a driverless car? Google Duplex was the talk of Google I/O, the company's annual developer conference that kicked off this week. Google CEO Sundar Pichai unveiled the new product himself on Tuesday: Basically, you can ask Google Assistant to call a business on your behalf, and Google's AI will schedule an appointment for you.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai took a giant leap in the wrong direction this week. At his company's I/O developer conference, Pichai wowed the crowd by using a virtual assistant to fool people, making unsuspecting humans the target of laughter and raising serious ethical questions about future uses for AI. Hair salon: Hello, how can I help you? Google Assistant: Hi, I'm calling to book a woman's haircut for a client. Hair salon: Sure, give me one second.

Artificial intelligence is the yin and blockchains are the yang of digital business. Artificial intelligence is the yin and blockchains are the yang of digital business. While AI helps us assess, understand, recognize and decide, blockchains can help us verify, execute and record. While the machine learning methods that are a part of AI help us find opportunity and improve decision making, smart contracts and blockchains can automate verification of the transactional parts of the process. AI and blockchains in that sense are complementary and synergistic.

Artificial intelligence is the yin and blockchains are the yang of digital business. Artificial intelligence is the yin and blockchains are the yang of digital business. While AI helps us assess, understand, recognize and decide, blockchains can help us verify, execute and record. While the machine learning methods that are a part of AI help us find opportunity and improve decision making, smart contracts and blockchains can automate verification of the transactional parts of the process. AI and blockchains in that sense are complementary and synergistic.

Amazon released its first Echo device for kids last month, but now lawmakers are raising privacy concerns due to a feature that records children's voices and stores them online. Called the Echo Dot Kids Edition, it looks just like Amazon's other Alexa-enabled devices, but includes new parental controls, child-friendly content and a range of colorful protective cases. Senator Edward Markey, a Democrat, and Congressman Joe Barton, a Republican, questioned the giant corporation over the privacy issues. Lawmakers have raised privacy concerns over the Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition because it records children's voices and stores them online. In a response, Amazon said parents can permanently erase the recordings whenever they choose.

The AI Weekly usually dives deep into a single subject, but with Microsoft and Google hosting their annual developer conferences, this is no ordinary week. Each conference -- here's everything from Microsoft's Build and everything from Google's I/O -- resulted in dozens of headlines, making it tough to interpret what really matters. Well, here's a handful of important developments to follow from both events at the heart of the AI world. FPGA and TPU Perhaps the most important advances in computing power for training AI systems announced this week were the beta release of Microsoft's Project Brainwave, which uses field programmable gate array (FPGA) chips, and Google's plans to release a third generation of tensor processing unit (TPU) chips. Two new AI services worth following Also announced this week: The ML Kit SDK for fast application of AI for Android and iOS developers is now available, and edge deployment of Microsoft Cognitive Services is coming later this year.

Among the more modern anxieties of parents today is how virtual assistants will train their children to act. The fear is that kids who habitually order Amazon's Alexa to read them a story or command Google's Assistant to tell them a joke are learning to communicate not as polite, considerate citizens, but as demanding little twerps. This worry has become so widespread that Amazon and Google both announced this week that their voice assistants can now encourage kids to punctuate their requests with "please." The version of Alexa that inhabits the new Echo Dot Kids Edition will thank children for "asking so nicely." Google Assistant's forthcoming Pretty Please feature will remind kids to "say the magic word" before complying with their wishes.

Tuesday morning, many people on my Facebook feed shared this this video of Google's new AI assistant. The article accompanying the video called it "jaw-dropping." It was shared thousands of times, with many calling it "amazing." In the video, recorded at Google's I/O developers conference, CEO Sundar Pichai played a recording of a Google Assistant calling to make a haircut appointment. The audience seemed enthralled, oohing and aahing at all the appropriate moments. The announcement isn't a surprise; we knew AI would dominate the conference.