Nara Rajagopalan, CEO of infrastructure software maker Accelerite, told eWEEK recently that "AI isn't just a hype; thinking machines will rule our lives--but perhaps not literally." He appears to be on the right track. Look at what Siri, Cortana, Google and Alexa are doing for us more and more all the time. Look at how many new chatbots pop up on our phones and laptops to help us through a purchase transaction. Look at how we're conversing with cars as if they are our BFFs.

Jeff Heepke knows where to plant corn on his 4,500-acre farm in Illinois because of artificial intelligence (AI). He uses a smartphone app called Climate Basic, which divides Heepke's farmland (and, in fact, the entire continental U.S.) into plots that are 10 meters square. The app draws on local temperature and erosion records, expected precipitation, soil quality, and other agricultural data to determine how to maximize yields for each plot. If a rainy cold front is expected to pass by, Heepke knows which areas to avoid watering or irrigating that afternoon. As the U.S. Department of Agriculture noted, this use of artificial intelligence across the industry has produced the largest crops in the country's history. Climate Corporation, the Silicon Valley–based developer of Climate Basic, also offers a more advanced AI app that operates autonomously. If a storm hits a region, or a drought occurs, it adjusts local yield numbers downward. Farmers who have bought insurance to supplement their government coverage get a check; no questions asked, no paper filing necessary.

Massachusetts-based software provider LogMeIn has unveiled a new artificial intelligence (AI) powered Bold360 product portfolio to bring chatbots and human agents together. The firm's plan is to use both self-service and agent-assisted engagement channels. With its Bold360 customer engagement platform, it now offers Bold360 ai, a chatbot and virtual customer assistant to make service "more engaging and intuitive". Some of the features include AI-powered agent assist, which automatically handles routine customer interactions "freeing agents up to focus on more complex or high-value work"; and intelligent self-service for search and FAQs. In addition, Bold360 can integrate with business systems – such as Salesforce and Zendesk – to provide information into the agent interface, without needing to toggle between applications.

My primary phone is an iPhone 7 Plus, although I use Android phones all week as part of my job. In my house, I use the Apple TV and quite a few HomeKit devices, so I'm already using Siri to turn my lights on and off and even to activate a sprinkler system. Product success can depend greatly on an established audience. When the Apple HomePod ships this December, I'll buy one or two or six. I'll probably even try to score one of the first ones at my local Apple store, as I did with an iPad long, long ago.

Advertising watchdog rejects Echo Dot owner's complaint that TV spot was irresponsible An Amazon Echo owner has tried to get a television advertising campaign for the smart speaker banned after the Alexa virtual assistant attempted to order cat food when it heard its name on an ad. An Amazon TV ad for the Echo Dot, which can perform functions such as make shopping lists and play music with voice commands, features people using the device in different situations. In one a man's voice says: "Alexa, reorder Purina cat food." Alexa responds: "I've found Purina cat food. Would you like to buy it?" A viewer lodged a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), saying that the ad was irresponsible because it caused their Echo Dot to order cat food.

A television ad for Amazon's Echo Dot smart speaker that caused a viewer's device to try to order cat food has been cleared by a UK regulator. The advert, which aired in October, featured a man asking Amazon's voice assistant Alexa to order Purina cat food. A viewer said the ad caused their Echo Dot device to respond after hearing the ad on the television. The viewer complained that the ad was "socially irresponsible". The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) announced that it would not uphold the consumer's complaint because it did not find the advert to be in breach of the UK Code of Broadcast Advertising.

Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, deep learning – all terms casually tossed about over recent years to paint a vision of a future only seen in Hollywood movies. But 2018, experts say, is the future -- the year when AI will start to dominate devices both at home and at work. Simply put, there will be less talk and more action as all energies sunk in investment and research and development of newer applications of AI start producing results in 2018. "Results are starting to appear beyond computers learning to beat humans at board games and TV game shows," said Bernard Marr, bestselling author and industry expert. "I expect 2018 to provide a continuous stream of small but sure steps forward, as machine learning and neural network technology take on more routine tasks."

The superposition of temporal point processes has been studied for many years, although the usefulness of such models for practical applications has not be fully developed. We investigate superposed Hawkes process as an important class of such models, with properties studied in the framework of least squares estimation. The superposition of Hawkes processes is demonstrated to be beneficial for tightening the upper bound of excess risk under certain conditions, and we show the feasibility of the benefit in typical situations. The usefulness of superposed Hawkes processes is verified on synthetic data, and its potential to solve the cold-start problem of recommendation systems is demonstrated on real-world data.

Many recommender systems suffer from the popularity bias problem: popular items are being recommended frequently while less popular, niche products, are recommended rarely if not at all. However, those ignored products are exactly the products that businesses need to find customers for and their recommendations would be more beneficial. In this paper, we examine an item weighting approach to improve long-tail recommendation. Our approach works as a simple yet powerful add-on to existing recommendation algorithms for making a tunable trade-off between accuracy and long-tail coverage.

Today, Vizio announced that owners of select TV models can now control displays with their voices, thanks to a new Amazon Alexa skill. All 2016 and 2017 SmartCast P-, M- and E-Series 4K models are compatible with this new feature. The 2018 Full HD and HD models will also be able to take advantage of the Alexa skill in coming weeks. The displays will respond to volume, channel, power and input setting changes with a voice command. Note that Alexa isn't built into the display; this is a skill integration, so it requires an Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Show or any other piece of Alexa-enabled hardware to work.