Apple has been building data centers powered by renewable energy across the US for some time, now, with facilities in North Carolina, Arizona and Reno. The tech company plans to build it's latest data center -- a 400,000 square foot facitlity -- in Waukee, Iowa by 2020. Construction should begin early next year with the resulting center aimed at supporting users of Apple's online services in North America. "Our new data center in Iowa will help serve millions of people across North America who use Siri, iMessage, Apple Music and other Apple services -- all powered by renewable energy," said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a statement. Apple says that the center will add 550 construction and operations jobs in the Des Moines area.

AI-powered virtual assistants are dedicated pieces of software that implement machine learning and natural language processing to communicate with users. AI-powered virtual assistants can directly help your sales team close more deals by providing them information during a sales call. By analyzing browsing and purchasing patterns, interests, and other relevant demographics, you can qualify prospects and show your sales team where each prospect is located within the buyer's journey. Although developing and perfecting an AI-powered virtual assistant takes time, you can increase your sales conversion rates if you implement it correctly.

In the days before white supremacists descended on Charlottesville, Bumble had already been in the process of strengthening its anti-racism efforts, partly in response to an attack the Daily Stormer had waged on the company, encouraging its readers to harass the staff of Bumble in order to protest the company's public support of women's empowerment. Bumble bans any user who disrespects their customer service team, figuring that a guy who harasses women who work for Bumble would probably harass women who use Bumble. After the neo-Nazi attack, Bumble contacted the Anti-Defamation League for help identifying hate symbols and rooting out users who include them in their Bumble profiles. Now, the employees who respond to user reports have the ADL's glossary of hate symbols as a guide to telltale signs of hate-group membership, and any profile with language from the glossary will get flagged as potentially problematic. The platform has also added the Confederate flag to its list of prohibited images.

In the name of convenience, Amazon and Walmart are pushing people to shop by just talking to a digital assistant. Shopping by voice means giving orders to the Alexa assistant on Amazon's Echo speaker and other devices, even if your hands are tied up with dinner or dirty diapers. And next month, Walmart will start offering voice shopping, too, with the Google Assistant on the rival Home speaker. FILE - This file photo provided by Amazon shows models of the Amazon Echo Show. With Echo Show, Amazon has given its voice-enabled Echo speaker a touch screen and video-calling capabilities as it competes with Google's efforts at bringing'smarts' to the home. Amazon has been ramping up efforts to get more people to shop using the Alexa voice assistant on Echo speakers and other Amazon devices.

Bumble, the "women-first dating app," recently swiped right on a $450 million acquisition offer, Forbes reported this week. Tinder also ranks first in terms of revenue in the lifestyle category on Google Play and Apple's App Store. "For me, all the dating apps are so flawed that I feel like I need to try my luck on all of them for the greatest chance of luck," an active user of both Tinder and Bumble told me. Google Play does have a Dating category whereas App Store does not.

Advisors wondering how Amazon will enter wealth management should look to its cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services, which is pitching the natural language processing, machine-learning brain behind its voice interactive service to wirehouses, broker-dealers and robo advisors. All Financial Planning content is archived after seven days.

This article was originally published at Stratfor.com. In the world of espionage, developing and exploiting access to vital sources of information are the primary objectives. And these days, finding a way into information systems seems easier than ever amid the growing number of "smart" devices connected to our homes and businesses. Voice-controlled and hands-free microphones and speakers -- Amazon's Echo and Alexa, Google's Home Assistant, Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana, to name a few -- welcome technology into our lives and trumpet the dawn of a new era: the age of artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things. According to their makers, virtual home assistants are "always ready, connected and fast," "work across your devices, and integrate with hundreds of apps," and when you "tell it to do things … it's your own personal Google!"

The iPhone has been my primary smartphone for well over a decade, and therefore I've had Siri on my phone ever since its introduction in 2011. But I never really found a reason to use it. I've always felt self-conscious when talking to my phone -- I find people who use voice commands in public really annoying -- so I wanted to avoid doing it myself. I have Bluetooth in my car so I don't have to use my phone while driving, and when I'm at home, I have my trusty fingers instead. So I imagined that being forced to use Siri for a whole week was going to be a nightmare.

When Amazon first coined the strapline "Ask Alexa" for its virtual assistant, it couldn't have predicted the X-rated nature of some of the requests. "She" may boast an encyclopaedic knowledge, but research by consumer behaviour analysts Canvas8 reveals that some users are more interested in a virtual hook-up than fact finding. And she's not the only target: the equally smooth voice of Microsoft's Cortana is getting customers just as hot under the collar apparently. From perma-smiling avatars in traditionally female support roles, to hyper-sexualised "fembots" pandering to male fantasies, the female form is everywhere in techno-world - attractive, servile and at your command. A little more conservative, but just as eager to please, is virtual personal assistant Amy Ingram, the brainchild of New York start-up X.ai.

The prospect of lower costs and bigger markets is driving the adoption of AI in retail banking and wealth management, writes Aggie Anthimidou. It doesn't take a super computer to work out that artificial intelligence is going to make banking more effective. Banks have been using basic customer data to sell more products to the right people for decades. The ability to crunch more data, in real time, and learn from customer behaviour means they can refine this process to the nth degree. According to research group Forrester, AI will be one of the 15 fintech technologies to watch over the next four years.