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What It Would Look Like If Disney Princesses Used Dating Apps

Huffington Post - Tech news and opinion

Not even Disney princesses can find a decent match on dating apps. In the comics below, which originally appeared on College Humor, illustrator Paul Westover shows us what it would look like if Disney princesses had met their princes online. Let's just say they'd be better off doing happily ever after alone.


Google's CEO wants to build a personal Google for every user

#artificialintelligence

Google's CEO wants Google to become more than a search engine for everyone -- he wants it to be personalized. Sundar Pichai opened up Google's event Tuesday talking about the history of computing and how it's gotten to where it is today. Specifically, how artificial intelligence is the future of Google and the future of computing in general. "When I look ahead at where computing is headed, it's clear to me that we're moving from a mobile-first to an AI-first world," Pichai said. "Our goal is build a personal Google for each and every user. Just as we built a Google for everyone, we want to build each user his or her own Google."


Google Assistant is getting smart as hell

#artificialintelligence

At its #madebygoogle event today, the company's engineering lead for Google Assistant, Scott Huffman, explained how the AI-powered system would get several new features and capabilities in the days to come โ€“ and it all sounds pretty exciting. For starters, Huffman noted that, beyond featuring in Allo and Home, Assistant will be an open platform that developers can build functionality for, and also integrate the service into their own products. It'll allow people to do things like find information about local businesses, search YouTube for videos and surface content through deep links into installed apps. To that end, Assistant will support two kinds of actions: Direct actions, which allow it to accommodate simple requests like'turn off the lights', and Conversation actions, which require a bit of back-and-forth between the user and the system (such as booking an Uber to go to a specific destination). The possibilities for developers to build actions for their own services into Assistant are seemingly endless: Huffman said that the platform will allow for complex activities like ordering groceries and playing games through text, voice and hybrid interactions.


"Google Assistant" Is Not a Good Name for Google's Assistant

#artificialintelligence

"Google" is a great name. Twenty years ago it was a playful, made-up word (a riff on "googol," which is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros). But it's time to let Google go. We've already witnessed the unfortunately named Google Play Music All Access, Google Videos, and Google, among many others. The latest victim of this stubborn branding strategy is the company's digital assistant.


10 Artificial Intelligence Apps For SMBs - CXOtoday.com

#artificialintelligence

The era of Artificial Intelligence [AI] has certainly redefined work in many industries. It has already proved to be effective at automating repetitive tasks that salespeople, HR specialists, and CXOs would otherwise spend more time and effort. For SMB business owners, these AI apps can bring tremendous gain to their operational processes and workflows, as they can now spend more time growing their businesses. Researchers and scientist have presented AI tools to solve a specific problem, one that uses datasets in order to learn and replicate information and behaviors. Going forward, AI will bring new opportunities for industries, starting new company, creating jobs and eventually bring changes in the workplace.


How Google is going from mobile-first to AI-first while competition heats up

#artificialintelligence

Google on Tuesday officially announced a major change in its strategy to go after the smartphone market, as the search giant unveiled a'family of products' -- Pixel, Daydream, Home, and WiFi -- to venture into a new category of products which have both'hardware and software made by Google'. Taking the stage at the event, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, noted that when Google was founded in 1998, there were about 300 million people using the internet, the vast majority of whom were sitting at desktop computers and looking for answers that came in the form of blue links. But today, the internet community is closer to three billion people, and users are searching for all kinds of help across different contexts and devices, from cars and your classrooms to homes and the phones in people's pockets. When I look at where computing is heading, I see how machine learning and artificial intelligence are unlocking capabilities that were unthinkable only a few years ago. This means that the power of the software -- the'smarts' -- really matter for hardware more than ever before.


Not OK, Google

#artificialintelligence

At its hardware launch event in San Francisco yesterday, Alphabet showed the sweeping breadth of its ambition to own consumers' personal data, as computing continues to accelerate away from static desktops and screens, coalescing into a cloud of connected devices with the potential to generate far more data -- and data of a far more intimate nature -- than ever before. Along with two new'Google designed' flagship Android smartphones (called Pixel), the first Androids to be preloaded with the company's AI assistant (the Google Assistant), and also including fully unlimited cloud storage to suck users' photos and videos into Google's cloud; there were Google Wifi routers, designed to be bought in bundles to plug all those pesky in-home Internet blackspots; the Google Home always listening connected speaker, which is voice controlled via the Google Assistant and has limited support for third party IoT devices (such as Philips Hue lightbulbs); an updated Chromecast (the Ultra) to ensure any legacy TV panels are Internet-enabled; and Google's less disposable mobile VR play, aka the soft-touch Daydream View headset -- just in case consumer eyeballs seek to stray outside the data-mined smart home by escaping into virtual reality. The scope of Alphabet's ambition for the Google brand is clear: it wants Google's information organizing brain to be embedded right at the domestic center -- i.e. In other words, your daily business is Google's business. "We're moving from a mobile-first world to an AI-first world," said CEO Sundar Pichai kicking off yesterday's event.


Here's what Wall Street is saying after Google's big hardware event

#artificialintelligence

Wall Street was impressed by Tuesday's big Google event, which unveiled new hardware like the Pixel phone and the Google Home device, and launched the company's new artificial intelligence-powered Assistant onto several new devices. The company's stock has remained stable since then -- it's up slightly, about 0.46% as of 10 a.m. Wednesday -- but analysts say the new products are a good sign for Google, despite the fact that Google appears to be following in the footsteps of other more accomplished hardware companies like Apple and Amazon. Macquarie remains bullish on Google, affirming its "outperform" rating and setting a price target of 975. It describes Google's new products as "me too" -- meaning it's showing up to the game a bit late, after Apple has already mastered the smartphone and Amazon has dominated the AI-powered device market with Alexa and the Echo.


Google's Software Sell for Hardware

The New Yorker

It was a bit surprising, on Tuesday morning, to see Google's C.E.O., Sundar Pichai, stride onstage in San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square and start talking about the quality of Google's software and the information it brings to people. The event had been billed as a presentation of new hardware devices; some were even describing it as the most significant event of its kind that Google had ever held. And yet, there was Pichai, going on about how Google's software allows people to connect with "over seventy billion facts about people, places, and things." Only at the end of this speech did he get to a hardware-related point: all this impressive software would be embedded in Google's new devices. Google is in the middle of an awkward transition.


Google Home and Amazon Echo usher in future of voice-controlled AI computers that nobody ever sees

The Independent - Tech

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display