By now you've probably heard tons about artificial intelligence (AI) and how it's shaping up to be the next big thing in the technology sector. But I'll forgive you if you're skeptical about jumping on AI stocks right now. Tech companies by default have to chase new trends in order to stay ahead of the curve, and they don't always get it right. But there are a handful of reasons why you shouldn't be skeptical of what's going on in AI. Specifically, artificial intelligence is already embedded into many technologies currently in use, the tech will transform far more than just the technology sector, and it's probably not as risky an investment as you might think.

Artificial intelligence (see the Wikipedia definition), specifically machine learning, is an increasingly integral part of many industries, including marketing. Here are a whole bunch of case studies and use cases, as a complete primer for AI in our industry. Predictive analytics allows Netflix to surface and finesse recommendations. This kind of clustering algorithm is continually improving suggestions, allowing users to make the most of their subscription. Uniting information from diverse datasets is a common use of AI.

The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus have been on the market for just over one month and continue to be a hot topic among smartphone enthusiasts. Whether it's Samsung celebrating favorable sales of the handsets or hackers attempting to spoof the device's iris scanner, there is still a lot to say about the Galaxy S8. The smartphone introduces to Samsung's line a new design and new software features, such as the AI assistant Bixby. It also touts several feature improvements, including a sharper and faster camera and more efficient processors. Whether the Galaxy S8 is worth the buy is completely up to the consumer; however, there are many things to take into consideration when selecting a new premium smartphone. The Samsung Galaxy S8 is a beautiful smartphone. It stands out during a time when mobile devices have become just ubiquitous enough for many consumers to not care about design, and would rather just have a functional device.

Speculation over what Apple will do to compete in the home hub market is spinning up ahead of Apple's annual developers conference next week, where many analysts expect Apple will confirm a project. And what will be the Apple home hub's distinguishing feature? It may be sound quality, according a report from Bloomberg. The Siri-infused speaker will focus on producing quality surround sound and may also have a feature that can measure the room it's in and adjust its sound accordingly, the report said. While there were not any details on how this room-adapting feature works, it sounds similar to one already on Sonos speakers, called TruePlay, which uses the microphone in an iOS device to measure a room. Apple declined to comment on the report.

Surprisingly, Amazon Alexa doesn't have a good way to search for Alexa skills by voice. You can't say that you want to play word games, need a skill to check airport security wait times, or feel like meditating. Alexa doesn't know what to tell you. Amazon released its own "Skill Finder" skill last year, but it's a bare-bones experience that can only read off the most popular apps in certain vague categories, or list the top or newest Alexa skills. You can't ask it for a skill with a specific use case or functionality.

Users simply need to make a request to Alexa that includes the event name and time. With the new feature, users can ask Alexa about upcoming events or add new appointments exclusively via voice commands. MacRumors noted the feature makes iCloud Calendar the latest calendar service to be supported by Alexa. In addition to standard Echo functionality like Alexa support, the Echo Show features the ability to make video and voice calls to other users akin to a Skype session or telecom unit.

PyData London 2017 Description This talk will demonstrate how to harness a deep-learning framework such as Tensorflow, together with the usual suspects such as Pandas and Numpy, to implement recommendation models for news and classified ads. Abstract Recommender systems are used across the digital industry to model users' preferences and increase engagement. Popularised by the seminal Netflix prize, collaborative filtering techniques such as matrix factorisation are still widely used, with modern variants using a mix of meta-data and interaction data in order to deal with new users and items. We will demonstrate how to implement a variety of models using Tensorflow, from simple bi-linear models expressed as shallow neural nets to the latest deep incarnations of Amazon DSSTNE and Youtube neural networks. We will also use TensorBoard and particularly the embedding projector to visualise the latent space for items and metadata.

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Amazon's Echo and Google's Home smart speakers may soon need to make way for a new challenger: Apple. According to Bloomberg, citing "people familiar with the matter," Apple is working on a smart speaker supporting digital voice assistant Siri. The company could unveil the speaker as soon as next week, when they kick off the annual Worldwide Developers Conference. The big differences between Apple's speaker and its competitors: virtual surround sound and deeper integration with Apple services, says the report. Apple declined to comment on the report.

If you're interested in smart lighting and you want to do it right, you've got to go with a smart dimmer switch. Unlike smart bulbs, which become dumb with the flick of a switch, these dimmers always stay powered since they have a direct power line. After all of our testing, it was clear that Lutron's Caséta Wireless system was the best dimmer around. While dimmers, and even smart dimmers, have been around for decades, these new models are taking off thanks to the promise of anywhere smartphone control, as well as voice control via Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, and Google Home. Even though pretty much all dimmers work the same, there can be big differences in the quality of their app-connected smarts. That's why we found the most popular dimmer switches on the market and put them to the test to find the very best for you and your smart home ecosystem of choice.