Developers interested in extending the capabilities of Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant have some more free tools in their arsenal, thanks to a program the company announced Wednesday. Developers with an active Alexa skill -- a service that expands the capabilities of the virtual assistant -- can apply for $100 in Amazon Web Services credits every month to help pay for what they've built. After that, they can receive up to $100 per month in additional credits if they incur usage charges for their skills. The credits are meant to build on AWS's existing Free Tier, which offers developers a small bundle of free services every month, but charges them for any usage that goes over those low caps. According to a blog post by Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, the move is supposed to make it free for developers to operate most Alexa skills.

Editor's Note: This article first appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft, Scientific American's sister publication, as "Digitale Demokratie statt Datendiktatur." "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another." The digital revolution is in full swing. How will it change our world? The amount of data we produce doubles every year. In other words: in 2016 we produced as much data as in the entire history of humankind through 2015. Every minute we produce hundreds of thousands of Google searches and Facebook posts. These contain information that reveals how we think and feel. Soon, the things around us, possibly even our clothing, also will be connected with the Internet. It is estimated that in 10 years' time there will be 150 billion networked measuring sensors, 20 times more than people on Earth. Then, the amount of data will double every 12 hours. Many companies are already trying to turn this Big Data into Big Money. Everything will become intelligent; soon we will not only have smart phones, but also smart homes, smart factories and smart cities. Should we also expect these developments to result in smart nations and a smarter planet? The field of artificial intelligence is, indeed, making breathtaking advances. In particular, it is contributing to the automation of data analysis. Artificial intelligence is no longer programmed line by line, but is now capable of learning, thereby continuously developing itself. Recently, Google's DeepMind algorithm taught itself how to win 49 Atari games. Algorithms can now recognize handwritten language and patterns almost as well as humans and even complete some tasks better than them. They are able to describe the contents of photos and videos. Today 70% of all financial transactions are performed by algorithms. News content is, in part, automatically generated. This all has radical economic consequences: in the coming 10 to 20 years around half of today's jobs will be threatened by algorithms. It can be expected that supercomputers will soon surpass human capabilities in almost all areas--somewhere between 2020 and 2060. Experts are starting to ring alarm bells.

Samsung is expected to launch its own AI assistant for the Galaxy S8, but its name has always been a subject of debate. Thanks to the Italian Samsung website, it does appear like the company's assistant will indeed be called Bixby. Samsung's AI assistant for the Galaxy S8 has a few names floating around, namely Viv, Bixby and Kestra. On the Italian Samsung website under its updated privacy policy, the site mentions Bixby by name located in the voice services section, according to TechRadar. The webpage doesn't give out any specific tasks that Bixby is capable of doing, but it did shed some light on what it can do.

Serko, a corporate travel booking and expense management business, is like a baby, Kiwi version of Concur, the SAP-owned technology company that is a developer of software that help businesses manage travel expenses. Serko's travel booking tool is used by more than 60 percent of enterprise businesses in Australia and New Zealand. The world's largest travel management companies (namely, BCD Travel, American Express Global Business Travel, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, and Hogg Robinson Group) all resell Serko's tool to their customers in Asia Pacific. So it is of regional significance that Serko plans to unveil a fresh travel-and-expense management platform with artificial intelligence (AI) baked in. In July 2017, the company will release a corporate online booking user interface as an optional premium solution alongside its booking tool for its 3 million users.

We have been hearing a number of rumors about Samsung's artificial intelligence assistant which will launch with the Galaxy S8, we previously heard it would be called Bixby. Now it would appear that Samsung has confirmed the Bixby name as it was recently listed on Samsung's website in Italy, although it looks like the reference to it has now been removed. As yet there are not many details known about what sort of functions the new Samsung Bixby virtual assistant will come with. The software will launch on the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus when they are made official later this month, Samsung is also expected to bring the software to other handsets in its range in the future/. Samsung are holding a Samsung Unpacked press event on the 29th of March where they will make the new Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus official, we are also expecting them to unveil Bixby at the event.

Any great sci-fi movie has artificial intelligence (AI), but to be entertaining, a movie needs drama. So in the real world, advances in AI are less about robot overlords and more about "Siri, take me home." Below, a few members of Forbes Technology Council offer their insights on why we should all stop worrying about AI, and possibly even embrace it as the future. Pop culture always portrays AI as an attempt to reproduce human consciousness - computers becoming self-aware and then turning on their human masters. In practice, there are very few groups in academia or industry that are trying to address machine consciousness.

The Galaxy S8 should hit store shelves in April, but there's some debate as to exactly when. Samsung has confirmed it will unveil the phone at a special New York event on March 29. While the company isn't sharing many details, its invite to the event showed a silhouette of a smartphone with two small bezels at the top and bottom, suggesting the device will indeed feature a curved screen that could be substantially bigger than last year's Galaxy S7. According to a recent report from ETNews, Samsung's highly anticipated smartphone will be available for sale globally on April 21. However, a separate report from VentureBeat says the release of the Galaxy S8 has been pushed back a week to April 28.

Paralysis of choice is a real problem, and to help mitigate it, Google has updated the app formerly known as Chromecast. Next time you open Google Home, you'll see a new "Listen" tab at top of your device's screen. A post on The Keyword blog says that the idea is to pull in curated playlists from apps like Google Play Music and Spotify into one place so you always have the perfect soundtrack to beam to your connected speakers. Pandora and the semi-redundant YouTube Music apps are pulled into the fray as well. All told, it's a minor update, but it shows Google's ambitions for the app: becoming a hub for all your digital media needs.

In the beginning (1966), there was ELIZA – she was the first bot of her kind, had roughly 200 lines of code and was extremely smart. But you probably don't know her. Later, came PARRY who was smarter than ELIZA (and could imitate a paranoid schizophrenic patient). But you probably don't know PARRY either. But you do know Siri!

It's Monday morning, and you've just stepped into a driverless car with three colleagues to chair your first meeting of the day. You enter the office by placing your hand on a biometric scan, and, sensing your feelings as you start the working week, the lights and temperature are adjusted to improve your mood. Your virtual assistant orders you a coffee, which is brought to your desk by a co-bot working alongside you. This may sound like a sci-fi film, but these innovations could be coming to your workplace sooner than you think… Here, I explore the key technologies set to reshape the professional landscape by 2020, making the workplace of the future much more virtual, mobile, collaborative and flexible. Gartner predicts that 21 million new cars will be equipped with data connectivity this year alone.