Technology that can understand regional accents and gender-neutral voice assistants are among the developments expected in the voice technology field in 2020. Products such as Alexa and Siri have faced mounting criticism that the technology behind them disproportionately misunderstands women, ethnic minorities and those with accents not represented in datasets that have historically favoured white and Chinese male voices. In response, a wave of new projects aims to redress the balance and make the growing voice tech industry more inclusive. "Voice tech has failed by not being programmed to respond adequately to abuse," she said. "The example of Siri stating'I'd blush if I could' when told it was a bitch is a well-known example, as is Alexa replying'Well, thanks for the feedback' when told'You're a slut'."

The global IoT healthcare market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 29.9% to reach $322.2 billion by 2025. This can be attributed to the fact that this technology has tremendous potential to transform healthcare operations and efficiencies, including patient care and operational workflows. While it is still at a developing stage, and may have its fair share of obstacles, it is revolutionizing the entire healthcare industry in many ways. Virtual assistants are commonplace in our everyday life with Siri, Alexa, Google Home being the forerunners. The same technology i.e., conversation-based assistance using AI is also used in the healthcare sector for increasing patient engagement.

Tech experts have long warned about the dark side of virtual assistant AI, from Alexa to Siri, but the masses haven't listened. Now Fox is kicking it up a notch with their upcoming drama, NeXt, about Artificial Intelligence that gets super personal while creating human misery. Creator and executive producer Manny Coto brought his cast, including John Slattery, to Television Critic's Association winter press tour in Pasadena to give a first look at the series coming to Fox this spring. The NeXt in the title refers to an artificial intelligence project that takes its programming to extremes as it seeks to wipe out the humans who want to thwart its goals. Coto told reporters that the series idea actually came from a creepy incident involving his son and their Amazon Alexa. "My son woke me up and said, 'Alexa started talking to me at three a.m." Unsettled, the showrunner said they never got to the bottom of why their Alexa went midnight rogue several times, but it got him thinking about what we're allowing into our homes.

Many people perceive automation and artificial intelligence within the enterprise as job killers. Instead, I argue that AI -- and digital employees in particular -- open up new opportunities for learning cutting-edge, higher-value and higher-paying skills. Take, for example, some of the more recent research from the McKinsey Global Institute on the Future of Work, which includes this statement: "Millions of jobs with a high share of automatable tasks could be phased out in the decade ahead. Others will be created, more than making up for those losses in many scenarios -- although they may be different occupations located in different places." I've often put forward that we're rapidly approaching a time when humans and digital employees will fuse into a hybrid workforce, fundamentally transforming how we live and work.

It's about to be in even more places as the industry in charge of developing it pushes for dominance on their own platforms and standards. While for them it means new technologies -- and more importantly products -- that can be packaged up and sold, for us it means consistency and assuredness in a technology still somewhat shrouded in mystery and fragmented across platforms as companies compete for supremacy. In an attempt to bring some clarity into the smart home, key industry leaders like Apple, Amazon and Google (who make the Siri, Alexa, and Assistant digital voice AI platforms that power many smart homes) joined forces through the Project Connected Home Over IP protocol. The idea is to ensure that all your smart home devices work with one another. The three big tech companies mainly utilise their AI technology through smart speakers, and other companies across appliances, automotive and consumer electronics make their products compatible.

Diversity is a concept relevant to numerous domains of research varying from ecology, to information theory, and to economics, to cite a few. It is a notion that is steadily gaining attention in the information retrieval, network analysis, and artificial neural networks communities. While the use of diversity measures in network-structured data counts a growing number of applications, no clear and comprehensive description is available for the different ways in which diversities can be measured. In this article, we develop a formal framework for the application of a large family of diversity measures to heterogeneous information networks (HINs), a flexible, widely-used network data formalism. This extends the application of diversity measures, from systems of classifications and apportionments, to more complex relations that can be better modeled by networks. In doing so, we not only provide an effective organization of multiple practices from different domains, but also unearth new observables in systems modeled by heterogeneous information networks. We illustrate the pertinence of our approach by developing different applications related to various domains concerned by both diversity and networks. In particular, we illustrate the usefulness of these new proposed observables in the domains of recommender systems and social media studies, among other fields.

The future where people can delegate mundane tasks to a machine is not far from happening. From starting the laundry down to cooking dinner after a long day is about to be over. Artificial Intelligence has really helped shape our internet today. After all, we can already communicate with virtual assistants like Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa for small things around the house, like calling Uber or ordering a pizza. Things that we only see on sci-fi movies may be closer than you think.

Together with the rise of the Internet, access to large repositories of data has helped machine learning technology grow exponentially. The incredibly quick pace of growth was unprecedented. As a result, it is obvious that AI will make a significant impact on the world in the years to come. However, with the numerous established and emerging fields of AI around today, such a blanket statement doesn't provide much concrete meaning. What fields and applications of AI are receiving the most investment and development?

Google introduced new speech technology for the Assistant. The Google Assistant just picked up some new reading skills. Google on Tuesday announced new technology for its digital helper software that lets it read long-form text out loud. For now, the feature is meant mainly for listening to articles, blog posts and short stories on the web. Google said the technology is different from other screen-reading software because it's meant to read stuff in a natural-sounding voice and cadence, so people won't have trouble listening to the audio for longer periods of time.

The last decade saw a huge change in the way insurance industry functions. As we step into 2020 with AI-driven InsurTech initiatives, the next one promises to be even more of an adventure. Innovation and technology are going to be the forefront, but any predictions about future trends may have a tendency to be short-lived. At the beginning of the previous decade, it would have been impossible to imagine that the consumers would trust their hard-earned to anyone other than a qualified agent, who could deliver a personal touch and inspire confidence in their investment. Today, insurance customers are willing to buy insurance and take financial advice from AI virtual assistants.