The Echo family of smart speakers is central to Amazon's consumer-facing deep-learning technology. Did you just unwrap a shiny, new Amazon Echo device? Or maybe you already have one and you're getting a little tired just streaming endless hours of holiday music. You might already know that Alexa can convert teaspoons to tablespoons, time the food you put in the oven and tell jokes you can repeat at work. But the digital assistant in Amazon's Echo speakers is capable of so much more.

Could robots change the way we think? While that might seem the stuff of dark science fiction, New Zealand artificial intelligence (AI) experts say there's real fear that computer algoritms could hijack our language, and ultimately influence our views on products or politics. "I would compare the situation with the subliminal advertising that was outlawed in the 1970s," said Associate Professor Christoph Bartneck, of Canterbury University's Human Interface Technology Laboratory, or HIT Lab. "We are in a danger of repeated the exact same issue with the use of our language." Bartneck has been working in the area with colleague Jurgen Brandstetter and other experts at the New Zealand Institute of Language Brain and Behaviour and Northwestern University in the US.

During Apple's fourth-quarter earnings call with analysts, CEO Tim Cook said, "AR is going to change everything." Augmented reality (AR) is shaping an entirely new paradigm for mass technology use. We've quickly evolved from typing on our PC keyboards, to the point-and-click of the mouse, to the smartphone's tap or swipe, to simply asking Alexa or Siri to do things for us. Now AR brings us to the age of holographic computing. Along with animojies and Pokémon and face filters, a fresh and futuristic user interface is emerging.

In this paper, we propose a unified framework and an algorithm for the problem of group recommendation where a fixed number of items or alternatives can be recommended to a group of users. The problem of group recommendation arises naturally in many real world contexts, and is closely related to the budgeted social choice problem studied in economics. We frame the group recommendation problem as choosing a subgraph with the largest group consensus score in a completely connected graph defined over the item affinity matrix. We propose a fast greedy algorithm with strong theoretical guarantees, and show that the proposed algorithm compares favorably to the state-of-the-art group recommendation algorithms according to commonly used relevance and coverage performance measures on benchmark dataset.

Last year, we saw VR surge in prominence, but our picks this year are more conventional -- not to mention more diverse. The usual suspects include the iPhone X and Surface Laptop for getting helping us get things done, and the Nintendo Switch and the Sonos One for their ability to let us luxuriate at home and on the road. There's some more unexpected stuff on our list, too, like the easy-to-use DJI Spark drone as well as the Mighty, a tiny music player that won over much of the Engadget staff. Ultimately, we appreciated these picks for the ways they made our lives more pleasant, even if only a little. Apple's latest iPhone is a radical departure from the company's tried-and-true smartphone formula, but you'd better get used to it.

The rate of acceleration in the tech sector continues to astound consumers--and provide them with a steady stream of new gadgets to chase after. For marketers and professionals, these forward bursts in technology represent even more opportunities, for productivity, cost-efficiency, and greater brand perceptions. But regardless of which side you're on, what you hope to get out of technology, or why you're interested in it, 2017 was a spectacular year in tech. Let's take a moment to visit--or revisit--some of the most important tech trends that shaped 2017: Machine learning has made massive progress in 2017, in multiple different directions. For starters, consider that last year, Google's AlphaGo program was able to beat one of the best human Go players in the world--a momentous occasion, by all standards.

If you haven't started using artificial intelligence in your business, you're falling behind on the curve. Many business owners today are leveraging AI, whether they are aware of it or not. This is done through everyday business software suites that integrate machine learning and automation to carry out such functions as email communications, voice recognition and response and predictive analysis. The extent to which businesses employ AI solutions needs to be increased if they are to remain competitive within the current economic landscape. One survey involving 230 technology and business executives established that less than 30 percent have leveraged automate tools to carry out repetitive tasks.

Chatbots are the personal assistants of the future. Ask them a question, they'll tell you the answer. Need something ordering, they'll do it automatically. Want to take down a multinational corporation, they'll sue them for you. . . With products such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant now being welcomed into our homes, we're getting used to the convenience of robot helpers.

Despite being an important part of everyday dealings for most businesses and big-ticket purchases, negotiations and drafting of contracts can be tricky. Moreover, oversights can lead to unnecessary costs or loss of revenue in the long run, and can end up being a drain on company resources. Enter SpotDraft, an artificial intelligence-powered platform that uses advanced machine learning algorithms to automate drafting and negotiating of legal contracts. The Gurgaon-based startup, run by Draft Spotting Technologies Ltd, provides solutions to complex legal dealings, including drafting, managing and storing paperwork online, analysing contracts and automating invoices, besides sending reminders and offering expert advice on legal compliances. Launched by Harvard Law graduate Shashank Bijapur and former Google Classrooms tech lead Madhav Bhagat, SpotDraft not only makes life easy for users, but is also Goods and Services Tax-compliant.

The NORAD Tracks Santa website, NoradSanta.org, also features a mobile version. This year, you can ask Alexa, Amazon's artificial intelligence software, for fun facts about Santa as well as where he is and when he'll be over your house.