As Microsoft partners and customers watched Satya Nadella take the stage at the Inspire conference this week in Washington, D.C., Harry Shum, executive vice president of Microsoft's AI and Research Group was speaking at an entirely unrelated, but arguably as important, meeting in London. While Nadella was unveiling Microsoft 365 and a number of complementary apps like Connections, Shum was outlining the Redmond, Wash.-based giant's vision for artificial intelligence (AI). Shum's announced the creation of a new research lab during his address. The Microsoft Research AI hub is based in Microsoft's headquarters and will focus on developing artificial intelligence technologies for both the business and consumer markets. More than 100 scientists from cross-disciplinary AI fields including reasoning, natural language processing, perceptions and learning will comprise the Research AI team.

E-commerce retail is abuzz about artificial intelligence (AI), and for good reason. The artificial intelligence market is projected to be worth over $16 billion by 2022, and the retail sector is one of the main drivers of growth. Some of the largest retailers have entered a tech arms race -- acquiring startups and building their own tech stacks. It's official: Retail has gone all in on marketing technology. AI-powered assistants and beyond, how will e-commerce marketers and consumers benefit from artificial intelligence?

So you got yourself a brand new Amazon Echo Dot. You'll get along great with it. But before you start yelling at your shiny new toy, take a quick look at the full range of what it can do for you. It's more than you might have imagined. The tips and tricks below also mostly work for, well, any Alexa-powered device.

Like every other industry sector, project management is being transformed by new technologies, such as big data, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). Data already plays a pivotal role in decision-making processes, enabling project managers to track progress. So it is perhaps inevitable that the next few years will see more project management tasks being undertaken by intelligent systems. Bernard Marr, a global expert in data and author of Data Strategy, believes that we are experiencing the calm before the storm. He says: "AI is not yet widely applied in project management, but I believe this will change. We've seen a rise in the use of AI natural language virtual assistants like Siri and Cortana to co-ordinate tasks in other areas of our lives, so it is inevitable that project management will be next. "Large projects generate huge amounts of complex data that needs to be analysed and monitored to create valuable insights and predictions about a project's progress.

It also seems that Los Angeles singles, in their entirety, have been to Machu Picchu. Are you a veteran of L.A.'s current dating scene? Finding this common ground, even in blocks of time, is part of what makes online dating so attractive: It's the verbal foreplay and virtual courtship that often precede anything face-to-face. L.A. Affairs chronicles the current dating scene in and around Los Angeles.

Everyone is already expecting Samsung to announce the Galaxy Note 8 soon, but it looks like the South Korean phone maker will also be announcing a new app along with it. A recent report is claiming that Samsung is planning to release its very own news app that will be called News Today. Information on the new Samsung app was first reported by SamMobile, which cited "trusted sources." The app will not only provide the latest news articles, but it will also apparently be able to provide users with podcasts. It's believed that users will be able to subscribe to podcasters and channels, and they should also be able to search for podcasts as well.

Imagine doing your morning workout with the help of a virtual personal assistant that instructs you while you are at it and even encourages you to do another lap so that you can meet your fitness goals. A product of Delhi-based Boltt Sports Technologies, B is powered by artificial intelligence. "We launched Boltt two years ago.Arnav Kishore was a professional tennis player and tech freak. We started with smart shoes that can track all biomechanical data," said Aayushi Kishore, 27, who cofounded Boltt with her 24-year-old brother Arnav two years ago. Their family runs Globalite Retail, a sport lifestyle brand.

Amazon's Alexa has made it onto a variety of platforms in the past few months and the virtual assistant will head into home TVs next. In a post Thursday, Amazon confirmed that Alexa will now be able to support home theater equipment like TVs and AV receivers natively. As part of these new functions, users can now call for Alexa to control functions like device power and playback. These skills can also be natively controlled straight from Alexa without having to go through a secondary skill prompt. At launch, the skills will be available on devices from Sony, Logitech and BroadLink.

Amazon Echo is a hands-free speaker controlled with your voice. It features a personal assistant called Alexa, who will perform various tasks for you and control various systems. There are seven microphones within Echo, all of which feature enhanced noise cancellation and far-field voice recognition, meaning you can ask Alexa a question from any direction, even when playing music, and she should still hear you. Amazon Echo's personal assistant will respond to the wake word "Alexa". If you have more than one Echo, or Echo Dot in your home, Alexa will respond from the device closest to you.

Microsoft Corp. is setting up a new research lab focused on artificial intelligence with the goal of creating more general-purpose learning systems. The new lab, called Microsoft Research AI, will be based at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, and involve more than 100 scientists from across various sub-fields of artificial intelligence research, including perception, learning, reasoning and natural language processing. The goal, said Eric Horvitz, the director of Microsoft Research Labs, is to combine these disciplines to work toward more general artificial intelligence, meaning a single system that can tackle a wide-range of tasks and problems. Such a system, for instance, might be able to both plan the best route to drive through a city and also figure out how to minimize your income tax bill, while also understanding difficult human concepts like sarcasm or gestures. This differs from so-called narrow AIs, which are just designed to perform a single task well -- for instance, recognize faces in digital photographs.