Augmented reality and digital assistants are not the only applications of AI that will become important on mobile devices. Apple is reportedly working on a chip called the Apple Neural Engine, which would be dedicated to carrying out artificial intelligence (AI) processing on its mobile devices. Although it is already being used extensively to power digital assistants like Siri and Google Assistant, these technologies rely on computer servers to process data sent to them rather than the processing happening on the mobile device itself. Augmented reality and digital assistants are not the only applications of AI that will become important on mobile devices. Once the capability is made available to all mobile application developers, it will bring new types of capabilities to mobile devices.

Basic machine learning technology is already used by some procurement applications in areas such as spend analytics and contract analytics. This is mostly limited to automating the processes of collecting, cleaning, classifying and analyzing expenditure data in an organization -- to identify savings or paths to greater efficiency. Today, procurement technology vendors are creating cognitive procurement advisors (CPAs) and virtual personal assistants (VPAs) that use natural-language processing (NLP) and natural-language generation to further increase automation and efficiency. "A procurement VPA can improve the end-user experience of traditional procurement tools and increase spend under management by guiding people to the correct purchasing tool," said Magnus Bergfors, research director at Gartner. "A CPA can provide summaries, recommendations and advice in everything from supplier assessments and performance management, to risk management and compliance."

We first heard about Harman Kardon's smart speaker earlier this month, but haven't gotten a chance to try it out or even see what it looks like in person. The Cortana-powered Echo rival made an oh-so-brief appearance here at Microsoft's keynote for Computex 2017. Even though we still couldn't physically touch it, we were at least able to take some (very few) close-up pictures of the device. We also caught a fleeting look at an upcoming HP Cortana speaker that looked sort of like a white Echo Dot, but that was only a picture on a slideshow -- the device itself was nowhere to be found at the event. We'll surely hear more about it soon enough, though.

During an interview with Walt Mossberg tonight at the Code Conference, Android creator and now Essential Products CEO Andy Rubin showed off his latest creation, the Essential Phone. When it was announced this morning and reservations opened the company didn't say much about when to expect shipments, but in response to a question from Mossberg, Rubin said that he "wouldn't take reservations if it wasn't going to ship in, you know, 30 days or so." He also mentioned that the company's Home assistant would be able to support AI helpers from other companies like Google, Amazon or Apple (if they choose to make them available on its Ambient OS). Essential has its own AI assistant that runs on both the PH-1 phone and Home, but as Rubin put it, "All these people that have ecosystem envy...they have a thing. Like SmartThings as an example which is Samsung's thing...but consumers don't want just Samsung's stuff in their house."

Apple is reportedly working on a chip called the Apple Neural Engine, which would be dedicated to carrying out artificial intelligence (AI) processing on its iPhones. Although artificial intelligence is being used extensively already to power digital assistants like Siri and Google Assistant, these technologies rely on computer servers to process data sent to them rather than the processing happening on the mobile device itself. Augmented reality and digital assistants are not the only applications of AI that will become important on mobile devices. Once the capability is made available to all mobile application developers, it will bring new types of capabilities to mobile devices. Health applications for example will be able to tell when body readings from sensors on the phone or associated wearable devices are abnormal and need acting on.

The founder of Android, Andy Rubin, has unveiled his new Android smartphone. It also boasts Qualcomm's high-end Snapdragon 835 processor and what Rubin claims is'one of the world's best phone cameras.' The phone is made out of titanium, instead of aluminium, to help it survive accidental drops. It also features a ceramic back. It is modular and can be fitted with a 360-degree camera accessory.

Just when you thought there was an app for practically everything, prepare to have your mind blown. Popular dating apps like Bumble and Tinder have dominated and morphed the modern dating world to what we know it to be today. But for individuals with a niche interest in all things Disney: Mouse Mingle hopes to help them find the one. Likewise, the website prides itself on being a "place to connect people who love Disney and who want that same magic in their relationship." No longer will obsessive Disney fans need to venture to one of the famed Disney theme parks to pick up a potential mouse-loving soulmate.

We consider the online one-class collaborative filtering (CF) problem that consists of recommending items to users over time in an online fashion based on positive ratings only. This problem arises when users respond only occasionally to a recommendation with a positive rating, and never with a negative one. We study the impact of the probability of a user responding to a recommendation, p_f, on the sample complexity, i.e., the number of ratings required to make `good' recommendations, and ask whether receiving positive and negative ratings, instead of positive ratings only, improves the sample complexity. Both questions arise in the design of recommender systems. We introduce a simple probabilistic user model, and analyze the performance of an online user-based CF algorithm. We prove that after an initial cold start phase, where recommendations are invested in exploring the user's preferences, this algorithm makes---up to a fraction of the recommendations required for updating the user's preferences---perfect recommendations. The number of ratings required for the cold start phase is nearly proportional to 1/p_f, and that for updating the user's preferences is essentially independent of p_f. As a consequence we find that, receiving positive and negative ratings instead of only positive ones improves the number of ratings required for initial exploration by a factor of 1/p_f, which can be significant.

The father of Android, Andy Rubin, has unveiled his Essential Phone and Essential Home devices. A link has been sent to your friend's email address. A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. The father of Android, Andy Rubin, has unveiled his Essential Phone and Essential Home devices.

Palo Alto-based Essential said the new Essential Phone features an edge-to-edge screen, a titanium-and-ceramic case and dual cameras. The phone sells for $699 and will run the Android operating system.