Introductory hands-on courses such as our smartphone-based coding courses, SuaCode require a lot of support for students to accomplish learning goals. Online environments make it even more difficult to get assistance especially more recently because of COVID-19. Given the multilingual context of our students (learners across 38 African countries), in this work, we developed an AI Teaching Assistant (Kwame) that provides answers to students' coding questions from our SuaCode courses in English and French. Kwame is a Sentence-BERT(SBERT)-based question-answering (QA) system that we trained and evaluated using question-answer pairs created from our course's quizzes and students' questions in past cohorts. It finds the paragraph most semantically similar to the question via cosine similarity. We compared the system with TF-IDF and Universal Sentence Encoder. Our results showed that SBERT performed the worst for the duration of 6 secs per question but the best for accuracy and fine-tuning on our course data improved the result.

It names smartwatches, TVs and connected cars, but voice searches are one of the fastest growing search areas right now. Most people are familiar with Amazon's Alexa's voice-assistant, which lets you ask questions instead of typing them in. Amazon is still the market leader in the smart speaker market, followed by Google with Apple trailing in third place. But those voice assistants are gaining users outside of speakers. Google's Assistant, for example, is already built into other products like Android and smartwatches as the default voice interface.

Apple has rolled out HomePod Software 14.1, adding intercom functionality and a handful of other updates to its devices a month before the launch of the HomePod Mini. The 14.1 update allows the speakers to work as an intercom system, sending announcements to other HomePods in the house. Messages can be sent to specific rooms or zones on your network. Today's update also brings new Siri features to HomePod, including the ability to stop alarms, timers and media across devices. Siri suggestions will now appear in Maps after asking HomePod about a location, and search results can be sent from the HomePod to your iPhone. Podcasts are getting voice recognition support for multiple users as well.

Google's influence in our lives is overwhelming, which is perhaps one of the reasons the Department of Justice and several state attorney generals banded together to file an anti-trust lawsuit against the company. But just how wide is Google's reach? We decided to take a look, and the results may surprise you. Start with the fact that Google ads are all over the Internet, and despite the initial stated goal of "organizing the world's information," the Alphabet unit is designed to have more ads appear, to keep the earnings up. In its most recent earnings, Alphabet reported $38.30 billion for Google.

People using dating apps to'hook up' are more likely to have a sexually transmitted infection and not use protection than those who meet in other ways, a study finds. The increasing popularity of dating apps means that finding a new sexual partner is as easy as a few swipes on a screen – but researchers found this comes with risks. A team from the Public Health Agency of Sweden surveyed more than 14,500 men and women aged 16 to 84 about the sexual behaviour, online dating and health. They didn't ask which apps or services people used, but found those turning to digital dating tools were more likely to have an STI and less likely to use a condom. People using dating apps to'hook up' are more likely to have a sexually transmitted infection and not use protection than those who meet in other ways, study finds.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become the semiconductor equivalent of software -- pervasive, intangible, and capable of transforming the fiber of society and business. It is integrated into a growing number of applications and systems today in a manner that is both seamless and transformational. From Amazon's Alexa to self-driving vehicles, the development of AI has been revolutionary to the point that it seems to mimic human features, intelligence, and behavior. Although experts and scientists have warned against the dangers and hazards associated with highly mature AI machines, the market is expected to expand rapidly. According to Forbes, AI is a strategic priority of 83% of businesses today and is expected to drive global sales from nearly $8 billion in 2016 to more than $47 billion by 2020.

I've often wondered why Google doesn't come out with an answer to Amazon's Echo Dot with Clock. Lenovo must have been on the same wavelength, because that's just what the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential is. Actually, it's a better value than the Echo Dot with Clock, because it simultaneously displays all the information you want most frequently--not just the time--and it does it for $10 less than the 4th-gen Echo Dot with Clock. A shrunken sibling of the Lenovo Smart Clock, the Essential is a smart speaker with a 4-inch LED display that shows the current time (with an a.m./p.m. indicator, unless it's set to 24-hour mode), the day of the week (the date would be more useful), the current outdoor temperature (obtained via the internet), and an indicator for an alarm (if one is set). Four LEDs on its face light up when you say the'Hey Google' wake word.

Social media algorithms, artificial intelligence and our own genetics are among the factors influencing us beyond our awareness. This raises an ancient question: do we have control over our own lives? This article is part of The Conversation's series on the science of free will. Have you ever used Google Assistant, Apple's Siri or Amazon Alexa to make decisions for you? Perhaps you asked it what new movies have good reviews, or to recommend a cool restaurant in your neighbourhood.

Google's Nest Hub video displays are getting a new look today, adding more recommendation features to help people with their day. Most use cases for the display units revolve around people using them to play music via voice commands or operate their smart home. Google execs say they wanted to showcase different things people could do by showcasing them in discovery, and to offer more personalized recommendations on music to listen to, videos to watch and news to read. Beyond the Google Nest Hub and Hub Max, the Google Assistant lives on other displays made by others, including the Lenovo Smart Display. The display units had always had a "Your Day" feature which showed you scheduled appointments and the like in the morning.

In 2016 and 2017, Andrea Silenzi hosted and produced the hit dating podcast Why Oh Why, with the mission to chronicle her hilarious, maddening, and sometimes disastrous expedition into online dating. For guy listeners like me, it was also a window into what single women had to put up with when they were looking for love (or even just a decent date) on the internet. Her excruciatingly detailed exploration of how men and women approach digital courtship led Vulture to dub her "a genius of the cringe." After the show went on hiatus, Silenzi continued to post about the horrors of online dating on her Instagram account, a lifeline for fans who missed the show. But then this week, something else appeared on the account: She posted a very sweet engagement story, announcing her impending nuptials to a man reportedly from Hinge. Who will post screenshots of men saying things like, "Yeah i got the cure for coronavirus! I called Silenzi to ask.