Artificial Intelligence (AI) is making progress in great strides, or at least it appears so! Almost no week passes by without some major announcements of new challenges solved by AI technology or new products powered by AI. Indeed many quantifiable factors attest an unprecedented level of activity: capital investments, number of academic papers, number of products involving AI technology, they all are on a steep rise in the past five years. Computers are already very capable at some specialized tasks that require reasoning and other abilities that we typically associate with intelligence. For example, computers can play a decent game of chess or can help us order our holiday photos. Despite this genuine progress, we are still a long way from human level intelligence because our best artificial intelligence systems are not general purpose. They cannot quickly adapt to novel tasks the way most humans can do.

It may be Tesla's Elon Musk who most often invites comparison to Marvel's superhero Iron Man – the alter ego of billionaire inventor Tony Stark – but it is Mark Zuckerberg who might be the first to bring Stark's technology to life. Memorably, the Facebook CEO sets himself annual goals such as learning Mandarin in 2010, eating only meat from animals he killed himself in 2011, or reading two books a month in 2015. In January, the Facebook founder said that his 2016 challenge would be to build an artificial intelligence-based personal assistant for his home. In his Facebook post announcing his aim, Zuckerberg said that "You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man." In a Facebook conversation on Thursday, Zuckerberg invited suggestions for who should voice his real-life Jarvis (which, in the Iron Man and Avengers movies, stands for Just A Rather Very Intelligent System). Suggestions included actors Morgan Freeman, Benedict Cumberbatch and Paul Bettany – who voices Jarvis in the movies – as well as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Artificial intelligence is one of those tech terms that seems to inevitably conjure up images (and jokes) of computer overlords running sci-fi dystopias -- or, more recently, robots taking over human jobs. But AI is already here: It's powering your voice-activated digital personal assistants and Web searches, guiding automated features on your car and translating foreign texts, detecting your friends in photos you post on social media and filtering your spam. But as practical uses of AI have exploded in recent years, one critical element remains missing: an industrywide set of ethics standards or best practices to guide the growing field. Now, the industry heavyweights are partnering to fill that gap. Called the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society, the group consists of Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and IBM. Apple is also in talks to join.

Samsung's reportedly planning to pull out all the stops for the its next flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S8. The Korean electronics company is rumored to be increasing the current Galaxy S7's 5.1-inch display to a 5.7-inch screen on the S8 to appease users who were burned (whoops!) by the Galaxy Note7, according to The Investor, which is published by The Korea Herald. SEE ALSO: Samsung's Siri killer to debut on the Galaxy S8 The report also claims Samsung will release an even larger model with a 6.2-inch screen, mirroring the two-model launch the company's had in the last two years. Slated for release early next year, the Galaxy S8 will be Samsung's chance at earning back lost consumer trust after Galaxy Note7s started exploding and prompted two recalls and its eventual discontinuation. A larger screen doesn't necessarily mean a larger phone.

Google Home is a lovely prison for Google Assistant. Perhaps Google's new assistant should be asking for help instead of offering it. One of today's biggest opportunities for IT to make an impact is by automating business processes, manufacturing, repetitive tasks, and more. It's bad enough that the search and mobile OS giant chose to launch its answer to Siri and Alexa without a name, but it hasn't given it much of a home, either. While Siri has transitioned across Apple's product line and Amazon's Alexa is starting to creep into (admittedly) niche products such as portable Internet radios, and robots, Google Assistant has dribbled out into three products that represent an almost negligible percentage of the Android's enormous mobile footprint.

With Google, Microsoft and Facebook all pushing artificial intelligence, AI is becoming the next battleground for agencies, perpetually on the hunt for new service lines. AI basically gives machines the ability to think like humans. A simple example: You can have a one-on-one conversation with another person, but AI can talk to 500 people at the same time and make decisions based on real-time data to learn what's going on in each conversation, explained Dave Meeker, vp of Isobar's U.S. operations. In the context of advertising and marketing, AI theoretically means more personalized and interactive consumer experience, including targeted programmatic ad buys, identification of site visitors' decision-making patterns, conversational commerce like bots, as well as smarter search and recommendation engines on websites, according to six agency executives interviewed for this article. At the moment, with the help of AI developed by big tech companies, agencies are able to serve cognitive ads and integrate voice-activated assistants in their campaigns.

This month Stanford launched a 100-year study of AI (AI100) with a report: Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030. The 16 member study panel issuing the report sees increasingly useful applications of AI, with potentially profound positive impacts on our society and economy over the next decade. The study identifies eight domains where AI is already having or is projected to have the greatest impact: transportation, healthcare, education, low-resource communities, public safety and security, employment and workplace, home/service robots and entertainment. Check out this Pearson video (and our review of their report): Over the next few months, we'll be exploring developments in these eight categories and the implications for employment and education. This series, #AskAboutAI, will encourage parents, teachers, mentors and advisors to engage young people in a dialog about the emerging automation economy and the ethical and economic implications of artificial intelligence (AI).

We cover many emerging markets in the startup ecosystem. Previously, we published posts that summarized Financial Technology, Internet of Things, Bitcoin, and MarTech in six visuals. This week, we do the same with Artificial Intelligence (AI). At this time, we are tracking 855 AI companies across 13 categories, with a combined funding amount of $8.75billion. To see all of our AI related posts, check out our blog!

Microsoft was originally planning on launching an Xbox-branded streaming stick that would function pretty much like Google's Chromecast. However, it looks like the tech company has canceled the device's development entirely. Microsoft's streaming stick was first leaked back in June just before the annual E3 conference. Instead of announcing the Xbox TV device, Microsoft announced the Xbox One S and next year's Project Scorpio instead. It's being speculated that the company decided to do this in response to the leak of Sony's PlayStation 4 Pro, according to Windows Central.

In this post, we will build a voice control smart light with Azure IoT hub. All hardwares we need are shown in the picture below, a Raspberry Pi, 3 LEDs, 3 220Ω resistances, a breadboard, some DuPont lines, and Amazon Echo Dot. Don't worry if you do not have one of them or even any of them, we still can make things work with simulated device, and I will explain how to do that and the end of this post. Before we begin this awesome job, let's make it clear how does the entire flow of the information go from your voice to the light turn off or on status. Firstly, Amazon Echo Dot records your voice and send it to Amazon Cloud, and Amazon Cloud transforms your voice to command.