From Amazon shopping recommendations, Facebook image recognition, and personal assistants like Siri*, Cortana*, and Alexa*, your phone is becoming a portal to real-world applications of artificial intelligence. Learn more about how A.I. is becoming part of your everyday life, and how your phones are your direct connection to the evolving world of artificial intelligence.

My wife used to love reading but since her stroke has aphasia, no speech, limited vision and limited dexterity in her left hand only. She can select TV channels on a remote but she cannot read a short news story let alone a novel, so she listens to the radio and watches a lot of TV. I thought of getting her a Kindle e-reader but they don't seem to do text to speech any more. A shop assistant suggested a tablet with a text-to-speech app. It needs a really simple interface or my wife will not be able to use it without assistance.

Autonomous or driverless vehicles are a hot topic on the AI scene right now. Google, Volvo, Tesla, Uber… these are just some of the big names in the race to prove that driverless or autonomous vehicles are better and maybe even safer than human-driven vehicles. I was at a family event recently and two guests were chatting about the Artificial Intelligence (AI) component of driverless or autonomous vehicles and more specifically, how these vehicles are currently unable to detect human movement at high speed. One cited the example of a child stepping into the road whilst a vehicle was approaching at high speed. Some debate ensued about the width of lanes in the road (surrounding the vehicle) and the impact they have on the judgement of the driverless/autonomous vehicles.

Determining the value of some of that old gear taking up space in your closet or garage might become a lot easier if you have a Google Home. In an onstage demo at Google Cloud Next, eBay chief product officer RJ Pittman showed how the online auctioneer might tie into Google's digital assistant. He started in by asking the bot if eBay could find the value of his Canon digital camera. You can ask me what something is worth," the bot introduced itself. The chatbot asked a couple of follow-up questions, including the model of the camera (it was an EOS 5D), if it was new, and its overall condition.

Technology must be controlled in order to safeguard the future of humanity, Stephen Hawking has warned. The physicist, who has spoken out about the dangers of artificial intelligence in the past, says a'world government' could be our only hope. He says our'logic and reason' could be the only way to defeat the growing threat of nuclear or biological war. We are living through the most dangerous time in the history of the human race, according to Professor Stephen Hawking. 'Since civilisation began, aggression has been useful inasmuch as it has definite survival advantages,' he told The Times. 'It is hard-wired into our genes by Darwinian evolution. 'Now, however, technology has advanced at such a pace that this aggression may destroy us all by nuclear or biological war.

The Amazon Echo, a voice-controlled virtual assistant, is seen at its product launch for Britain and Germany in London, in 2016. After several months of pushback, Amazon has agreed to release user data from an Amazon Echo device involved in a high-profile Arkansas murder trial. The device, a popular, hands-free artificial intelligence assistant named "Alexa" that responds to human directives, contains audio recordings that prosecutors say could could provide information in the murder of Victor Collins, 47, who was found dead in his hot tub on Nov. 22, 2015, in Bentonville, Arkansas. James Bates, 31, was charged with first-degree murder and tampering with evidence in the case. Benton County Prosecuting Attorney Nathan Smith wrote in an email that prosecutors were "pleased" with Amazon's decision.

Just a couple years ago, the idea of asking questions to a voice -controlled speaker would seem completely foreign. Now there are multiple devices to choose from, with more on the way. That competition begs the question: which AI speaker can answer more questions: Google Home or Amazon Echo? Luckily, you won't have to sit down with both the devices to find out the answer to that question. Digital marketing and research company Stone Temple Consulting put the speakers head-to-head and quizzed them each on a number of questions to see who came out on top.

The Lime Dating App is here to match people based on the compatibility of their step count. A link has been sent to your friend's email address. The Lime Dating App is here to match people based on the compatibility of their step count.

The people building information management solutions have little interest in conversational applications. The inertia of ongoing projects (and of the new AI snake oil salespeople who promise the world) will siphon all available resources away from approaches requiring a strong knowledge architecture foundation. Because we have few examples of big successes in this area, executives can break out in a sweat when asked to back something lacking short-term ROI. At the same time, executives are justifiably concerned about being left behind. To move ahead, executives need to know the limitations and when they are engaging in pure research versus experimenting with innovative approaches and business models.

You might think the current flood of dating apps would mean people are having more sex than ever, but in fact for many, the exact opposite seems to be true. A new study published by the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior and reported by the Washington Post found that people are having less sex overall than they were in the 1990s. The study, which used data from the giant General Social Survey, found that on the whole American adults in the early 2010s had sex nine fewer times per year than they did in the 1990s. When you spread that over 12 months, that's not exactly a heinous dry spell, thank goodness. Still, more sex is usually better than less.