Palantir CEO Alex Karp Says Going Public Is'A Possibility' Chatbots and other assorted bots are clearly on their way to becoming our eternal BFFs. Every day we are talking more and more to some sort of machine learning AI, demanding answers or pithy conversation. The next step in bot technology and customization appears to be coming from the very company that pioneered the technology, way back in the 1990s. Today NoHold is launching its Quickstart platform, called Albert. Albert is your new best friend.

Google's not new to the hardware game, but with its "made by" range, the company is making a concerted effort to marry its smart software and the gear we run it on. We've already tried the Pixel phones, Daydream View VR headset, Chromecast Ultra and Google Home, but until now, there was one made by Google gadget we'd yet to test, and it's the one that arguably ties all the rest together: Google's aptly named "WiFi" router. If you're looking for a router that mixes smart design with simple features and solid performance, Google WiFi is a solid choice. However, users who like to get their hands dirty may prefer the control and flexibility of more conventional products. For the rest of us, Google WiFi will likely eliminate some key pain points and provide an easy transition to the connected home. Google WiFi builds on the idea of OnHub.

Companies that advertise on podcasts hope they can align their brand with a hit show, but increasingly some marketers are plunking down even more cash to make their own audio programs instead. The latest brand to try its hand at a sponsored, or "branded" podcast? Tinder, the dating app owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp subsidiary Match Group Inc. The new show is called "DTR," short for "define the relationship" (the anxiety-inducing conversation where two millennials mutually agree on the degree to which things are casual or serious). The six-part series, hosted by journalist and "This American Life" music supervisor Jane Marie, covers various topics surrounding dating in the digital age, like how to best construct an online profile or the precarious transfer of nude photographs.

Productivity and work-life balance are constantly at the forefront of our minds when it comes to the Monday to Friday life. Everyone wants to work less, while being more productive. Luckily, this is completely plausible with the help of the advancements in technology, enterprise productivity apps, and new AI startups that are completely changing the way we can efficiently balance work and home life. Let's look at the 7 artificial intelligence startups that can help us reach a better work life balance: Something we could all use a little more of is to relax and distress. This is one of the most difficult things to do when we're so focused on finishing our work days, cleaning the house, getting a workout in, taking care of the kids, etc.

Leading tech companies ship AI free within their products (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant), powering our phones and the rapidly growing home personal assistant market. Indeed, they are becoming increasingly good at answering our questions, making us smarter. Teaching not rote facts and figures, but instead teaching students the paths to find this knowledge on their own. Teaching students -- as we do with computers through AI -- how to learn. We are stuck with centuries old methodologies, where schools and teachers act like the gateway to knowledge, but at a time when students can access all they want by simply asking Alexa.

AWS (Amazon Web Services) introduced a handful of new artificial intelligence (AI) services at its re:Invent conference last week. Among the new products are Polly, a more lifelike text-to-speech service, Rekognition, an image analysis and face recognition service that can be added to applications and Lex, a standalone version of the technology that powers the company's Alexa AI assistant. "Amazon AI services are fully managed services so there are no deep learning algorithms to build, no machine learning models to train, and no up-front commitments or infrastructure investments required," the company said in a statement. "This frees developers to focus on defining and building an entirely new generation of apps that can see, hear, speak, understand, and interact with the world around them." So far, few developers have been able to build, deploy, and broadly scale apps with AI capabilities due to the vast amount of data and specialized expertise in machine learning and neural networks required, Amazon said.

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When Amazon first coined the strapline "Ask Alexa" for its virtual assistant, it couldn't have predicted the X-rated nature of some of the requests. "She" may boast an encyclopaedic knowledge, but research by consumer behaviour analysts Canvas 8 reveals that some users are more interested in a virtual hook-up than fact finding. And she's not the only target: the equally smooth voice of Microsoft's Cortana is getting customers just as hot under the collar apparently. From perma-smiling avatars in traditionally female support roles, to hyper-sexualised "fembots" pandering to male fantasies, the female form is everywhere in techno-world - attractive, servile and at your command. A little more conservative, but just as eager to please, is virtual personal assistant Amy Ingram, the brainchild of New York start-up X.ai.

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If you got an Amazon Echo or Google Home voice assistant, welcome to a life of luxurious convenience. You'll be asking for the weather, the news, and your favorite songs without having to poke around on your phone. You'll be turning off lights and requesting videos from bed. That little talking cylinder is always listening to you. And not just listening, but recording and saving many of the things you say.