Pine64 has released a budget-friendly single-board computer with the high-powered Rockchip RK3399 system on chip (SoC). Available from around $60, the RockPro64 board comes in two flavors, either with the hexa-core RK3399 SoC or the RK3399Pro, Rockchip's first "artificial-intelligence processor". Unveiled at CES 2018, it combines a CPU, GPU, and neural-network processing unit (NPU). As noted by CNX-Software, a number of RK3999-based boards have been released in the past week but, priced at around $200 each, they've been aimed at business customers rather than home developers. The RockPro64 with 2GB of RAM will cost between $59 and $65 and will be available from March, while the RockPro64-AI will cost $99 but won't be available until August 1, according to Pine64.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) isn't a bright, shiny toy that's going to fade away after the newness wears off--in fact, far from it. The AI market is booming, impacting everything from HR to customer service to--you guessed it--marketing. A recent survey found 58 percent of CMOs around the globe believe they'll have to compete in AI to succeed within the next five years--and that means getting the ball rolling today. Here are five key ways AI should impact your marketing strategy and, in turn, your marketing budget. According to a recent study from Techmergence--Machine Learning Marketing--Expert Consensus of 51 Executives and Startups--companies are widely using AI to help generate new revenue, secure competitive differentiation, and enhance marketing efforts.

If you got a Google Home Mini to go with your Android phone this Christmas, one of the first things you probably asked it to do was send a text. But instead of asking what you wanted to say, your Google Home said this: Sorry, I can't send texts yet. But starting today, if you ask the same question to your Amazon Echo, it will happily oblige. Here's how to send SMS text messages with Amazon Echo. Echo devices have long been able to send messages to each other, but now Amazon has expanded that to the Android community as a whole, adding hundreds of millions of new devices to its ranks.

Kraft and Pringles are among some of the few. It only takes a couple seconds, but Amazon gave consumers their first listen to Alexa's new voice. The change is part of a 90-second ad running during Sunday's Super Bowl LII, called "Alexa Loses Her Voice." The ad starts with a very concerned Jeff Bezos discovering his prized digital assistant has lost her voice, with the company scrambling to replace it. Alexa's replacements feature some hilarious alternatives, including chef Gordon Ramsey, rapper Cardi B, actress Rebel Wilson, and actor Anthony Hopkins, who is downright creepy as he answers an Amazon Echo Spot owner.

Today's artificial intelligence market is not easy to quantify. Besides the lack of consensus on a coherent definition for "artificial intelligence" as a term, the field's nascent stage of development makes it difficult to carve out silos or hard barriers of where one industry or application ends, and another begins. In one of our more popular recent articles, we aimed to derive a valuation of the artificial intelligence market, based on current market research and our own insights. In this week's article, I've set out to determine more of a "lay of the land" of the AI industry, including it's various segments and application areas. If you're interested in how developments in machine learning and AI might impact your own company or business, then keeping an eye on trends of industry and application growth is pertinent; we hope that this article will be a good jumping off point to some of the most thought-out assessments of AI and it's "segments" as we could collate from the web.

KOBE, Japan -- The smart speaker comes in the guise of a bright yellow chicken or a brown bear and seems just as smart as Alexa. Sorry folks, the Clova Friends speaker is not for sale in the U.S. Talking Tech just spent eight days in the land that pioneered the Sony Walkman and PlayStation, with much of our time in those mega, multi-story electronics shops that sell everything from cameras and TVs to toilets, LCD home lighting and toys. While much of what we saw was available in the U.S., at similar prices, many products we ogled were not available here. Come walk the showroom floor with us. Line's Clova smart speakers come in the guise of a chicken or bear.

The future is here, and the future is artificial intelligence. A technology that once sounded futuristic is now here, and smart businesses have realized it's not an optional tool in this tech-crazed climate, and begun implementing AI in order to create the easiest possible user experience. Analysts predict that by 2020, 85% of a consumer's relationship with a business will be managed without interacting with a human. The internet provides consumers with an unprecedented amount of information and options, but it also makes conversions harder for businesses, due to abundant options and price matching. With AI, businesses can use algorithms to gain insight into the wants and needs of the consumer.

Ng announced Tuesday that he raised money from venture capital firms New Enterprise Associates, Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners as well as SoftBank Group Corp. In an interview with Reuters, Ng said his goal was to identify new business ideas around artificial intelligence and be able to put cash into them quickly from the so-called AI Fund, of which he will serve as general partner, so that founders of the portfolio companies will not need to burn time pitching traditional venture capitalists. Ng said he plans to draw on his experience at Baidu, one of China's largest internet companies, where he led the artificial intelligence team to develop a range of new business lines. Under Ng, Baidu released a voice-based operating system that users can talk to - much like Amazon's Alexa voice assistant or Apple's Siri - and also started working on self-driving cars and face recognition technology to open things like transit turnstiles when users approach. "Based on that experience, I have an unusual point of view on the building of AI businesses. I think it's a more systematic, repeatable process than most people think," said Ng, who also taught artificial intelligence courses at Stanford University.

Digital Assistants (sometimes seen as AIs) are becoming ubiquitous in living rooms and smartphones everywhere. Now, these devices are taking the leap to the business world. With Amazon's announcement of the Alexa for Business Platform, AIs may soon be able to assist with everything from conference calls to office supply orders. All that utility may come at the cost of security, however, since these AI devices are vulnerable to potential hacking. Digital Assistants Enter the Business World Digital assistants have exploded in popularity over the last two years.

With all the excitement and hype about AI that's "just around the corner"--self-driving cars, instant machine translation, etc.--it can be difficult to see how AI is affecting the lives of regular people from moment to moment. What are examples of artificial intelligence that you're already using--right now? In the process of navigating to these words on your screen, you almost certainly used AI. You've also likely used AI on your way to work, communicating online with friends, searching on the web, and making online purchases. We distinguish between AI and machine learning (ML) throughout this article when appropriate. At TechEmergence, we've developed concrete definitions of both artificial intelligence and machine learning based on a panel of expert feedback. To simplify the discussion, think of AI as the broader goal of autonomous machine intelligence, and machine learning as the specific scientific methods currently in vogue for building AI.