As Amazon's gadgets seem to go from strength to strength, I sat down with David Limp, the senior vice president of devices and services at Amazon, to learn about the Alexa's next steps and the company's future plans. However, since one of the big successes of the company's devices division has been the Kindle ebook reader, I began by asking David Limp about that. "We've just got done with another Prime Day, which was a record day. On Kindle, which is coming up on its 10-year anniversary this November, a big milestone for us, it was the best-selling day in the history of Kindle. So, 10 years and you know if you were to listen to the pundits talk, they say nobody's buying readers anymore. But I can assure you lots of people are. And we're really excited that people still love dedicated readers and we're going to continue inventing there."

Almost everyone loves to spend their leisure time to watch movies with their family and friends. We all have the same experience when we sit on our couch to choose a movie that we are going to watch and spend the next two hours but can't even find one after 20 minutes. We definitely need a computer agent to provide movie recommendation to us when we need to choose a movie and save our time. Apparently, a movie recommendation agent has already become an essential part of our life.. According to Data Science Central "Although hard data is difficult to come by, many informed sources estimate that, for the major ecommerce platforms like Amazon and Netflix, that recommenders may be responsible for as much as 10% to 25% of incremental revenue."

Amazon may be adding a new feature to its Echo products that would improve the experience and take on classic speaker systems. The company is reportedly launching multi-room audio, which would allow users with multiple Echo products to play music or any other audio simultaneously in multiple rooms. This would allow users to keep listening as they walk around their homes. Amazon is reportedly launching multi-room audio, which would allow users with multiple Echo products to play music or any other audio simultaneously in multiple rooms. Amazon Echo is a voice-controlled smart speaker that works alongside a smartphone app.

Over the past few years, e-commerce has been slowly and steadily transformed by artificial intelligence (AI). The world has watched Amazon go from bookseller to voice-activated, product-recommending, Internet of Things behemoth over the last 15 years, and -- for many reasons -- e-commerce has been an area of great AI adoption, particularly in marketing. That being said, the retail space (which encompasses a much broader array of businesses beyond just e-commerce) often doesn't get the same degree of limelight when it comes to AI use cases. I've set out to display some real use cases that highlight how and where AI is pushing the boundaries in the retail sector. While the applications below are by no means a complete list, it serves as a nice general overview of the possibilities in this space, along with related startups and technology companies working on those specific applications.

Not all consumers share the enthusiasm of Google and Apple though, and rarely - if ever - use Google Assistant and Siri. Whether you use them or not, by default the two assistants are always listening out for their trigger words, and this uses up battery life. On Android, you can switch this off by going to Settings, Google, Search, Voice and "Ok Google" detection. On iOS, go to Settings, Siri and Allow "Hey Siri". Virtual assistants are becoming increasingly capable, and therefore increasingly important in tech companies' eyes.

Anker, the China-based accessory maker, blew up on Amazon with a simple plan: make decent-quality versions of everyday gadgets lots of people want, and sell them for less than Apple or Samsung. They don't have fancy TV ads or cool packaging, but they do have a pile of good reviews and Prime shipping. The company started with portable chargers, but now its Bluetooth headphones, portable speakers, dash cams, and Lightning cables are all among the best-reviewed and most popular products in their category. If that strategy sounds familiar, by the way, it should: It's straight out of the Amazon Basics playbook. Anker's latest Amazon-conquering move goes even further.

Tom Romeo is general manager of U.S. Federal Services at MAXIMUS. At a recent event, Chris Liddell, assistant to the president and director of strategic initiatives, spoke about the White House Office of American Innovation's focus on improving federal customer service, with the ultimate goal of providing citizens with "the same experience as they [receive] in the private sector." As noted by Liddell and other senior officials, modernizing the government's outdated legacy systems will be an important part of this process. But this effort can also include incorporating more AI and machine learning-driven technologies into the systems that directly handle an enormous amount of citizen requests: engagement and contact centers. Today, and in the near future, voice is expected to remain the most prominent channel for citizens to interact with the government.

You've probably encountered the term "machine learning" more than a few times lately. Often used interchangeably with artificial intelligence, machine learning is in fact a subset of AI, both of which can trace their roots to MIT in the late 1950s. Machine learning is something you probably encounter every day, whether you know it or not. The Siri and Alexa voice assistants, Facebook's and Microsoft's facial recognition, Amazon and Netflix recommendations, the technology that keeps self-driving cars from crashing into things – all are a result of advances in machine learning. While still nowhere near as complex as a human brain, systems based on machine learning have achieved some impressive feats, like defeating human challengers at chess, Jeopardy, Go, and Texas Hold'em.

It was a rough weekend at Google. On Friday, a 10-page memo titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber" started circulating on the company's internal networks, arguing that the disparities between men and women in tech and leadership roles were rooted in biology, not bias. By Saturday afternoon, the tech news site Gizmodo had obtained and published the entire thing. The author, a male software engineer, argued that women were more neurotic and less stress-tolerant than men; that they were less likely to pursue status than men; that they were less interested in the "systematizing" work of programming. "We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism," he concluded before offering recommendations.

Writer, commentator, and professor Roxane Gay joins Prudie this week for your questions! How do I avoid matching with my students on online dating apps? Should I report the places my ex-husband frequented for sex for human trafficking? I'm in love with a prude--how do I spice up our sex life? I just found out I have a 6-year-old son and I'm furious with his mother's choices.