How can we tackle gender imbalance in the personalities of AI learning tools? The expected growth in use of artificial intelligence (AI) in learning applications is raising concerns about both the potential gendering of these tools and the risk that they will display the inherent biases of their developers. Well, to make it easier for us to integrate AI tools and chatbots into our lives, designers often give them human attributes. For example, applications and robots are often given a personality and gender. Unfortunately, in many cases, gender stereotypes are being perpetuated.

"Q: How worried do you think we humans should be that machines will take our jobs? A: It depends what role machine intelligence will play. Machine intelligence in some cases will be useful for solving problems, such as translation. But in other cases, such as in finance or medicine, it will replace people." This Q&A is taken from Tom Standage's description of how he interviewed AI (language model GPT-2) for The Economist The World in 2020. As readers of this column's annual roundup of AI predictions know, this year's first installment of 120 AI predictions for 2020 featured my interview of Amazon AI in which Alexa performed slightly better than the previous year. For the new list of 99 additional predictions, I repeated Standage's question to Alexa, and got the response "Hmm, I'm not sure." The following AI movers and shakers are a lot more confident in what the near future of machine intelligence will look like, from robotic process automation (RPA) to human intelligence augmentation (HIA) to natural language processing (NLP).

CIMON (The Crew Interactive Mobile Companion 2) has been busy working with astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The robotic assistant is now using a tone analyzer, detecting emotions during the current voyage. CIMON made its debut on the ISS in November of this year, with Space.com's "During the experiment, CIMON successfully found and recognized Gerst's face, took photos and video, positioned itself autonomously within the Columbus module using its ultrasonic sensors, and issued instructions for Gerst to perform a student-designed experiment with crystals. Weighing about 5 kilograms (11 lbs. on Earth), the 3D-printed robot designed jointly by the German space agency DLR, Airbus, and IBM works similarly to Apple's virtual assistant Siri or Amazon's Alexa. "If CIMON is asked a question or addressed, the Watson AI firstly converts this audio signal into text, which is understood, or interpreted, by the AI," explained IBM project lead Matthias Biniok in the statement. "IBM Watson not only understands content in context, [but] it can also understand the intention behind it." There is a great video here, of Gerst conversing with CIMON, and it shows the complexity of this fantastic technology. Especially regarding the amount of relevant information that it can store and relay to astronauts, making their jobs easier. The Watson team at IBM computing only added the tone analyzer to the standard set of Watson capabilities this week. However, CIMON 2 was added as a seventh crew member on SpaceX Dragon during a resupply mission last week. In addition to updated software, the robot also got a hardware upgrade, with enhanced sensitivity on its microphones, and a more advanced sense of orientation. The German Aerospace Center and Airbus are the other crew members for this CIMON project. "IBM is using its tone analyzer technology to analyze how CIMON converses with the astronauts.

Advances in artificial intelligence have renewed interest in conversational agents. Additionally to software developers, today all kinds of employees show interest in new technologies and their possible applications for customers. German insurance companies generally are interested in improving their customer service and digitizing their business processes. In this work we investigate the potential use of conversational agents in insurance companies theoretically by determining which classes of agents exist which are of interest to insurance companies, finding relevant use cases and requirements. We add two practical parts: First we develop a showcase prototype for an exemplary insurance scenario in claim management. Additionally in a second step, we create a prototype focusing on customer service in a chatbot hackathon, fostering innovation in interdisciplinary teams. In this work, we describe the results of both prototypes in detail. We evaluate both chatbots defining criteria for both settings in detail and compare the results and draw conclusions for the maturity of chatbot technology for practical use, describing the opportunities and challenges companies, especially small and medium enterprises, face.

With everything you know about Artificial intelligence now, the image of sentient machines taking over the world and ruling humanity is probably not what comes to mind whenever the subject of AI comes up. You also probably know that its applications are quite simple, and in the things around us such as: entertainment (Netflix), or internet searches (google assistant, Siri), shopping (Amazon, Alibaba), etcetera. Such b2c companies use AI to simplify their operations and make more accurate product recommendations. Others like IBM, are pushing AI's limits further with initiatives like project debater, an AI system that debates humans on topics. But a more practical application for AI in b2b is in marketing.

Amazon's Alexa voice assistant now has some celebrity competition. Starting last week, the company began letting users purchase the voice of actor Samuel L. Jackson as a fill-in for the company's popular voice assistant, Alexa. This means users who buy the voice for $0.99 are able to receive audio responses from their Echo device in the actor's iconic voice. Actor Samuel L. Jackson (pictured above) is the first-ever celebrity voice option to make its way onto the Echo speaker To use the new feature, users who purchase the Alexa alternate must prompt their Echo device to respond in Jackson's voice by specifically phrasing their queries. For instance, anyone who purchases the feature can activate Jackson's voice by uttering something like'Hey Alexa, ask Sam Jackson if...' The new feature stops short of fully replacing Alexa and currently only allows users to query Jackson for the weather, jokes, and for details about their calendar or the time or the news. While the functionality is currently limited in scope, adult users will still be able to enjoy Jackson's more adult vocal repertoire, including an explicit mode that sprinkles responses with curse words.

The world's first voice activated travel buddy; made smarter by the people, for the people.

When you hear news about artificial intelligence (AI), it might be easy to assume it has nothing to do with you. You might imagine that artificial intelligence is only something the big tech giants are focused on, and that AI doesn't impact your everyday life. In reality, artificial intelligence is encountered by most people from morning until night. Here are 10 of the best examples of how AI is already used in our everyday lives. One of the first things many people do each morning is to reach for their smartphones.

There is certainly no shortage of statistics or speculation on the subject. But perhaps someone should ask Alexa. Smart Speakers and intelligent Virtual Assistants have already had a significant impact on consumer culture, driving a preference for screenless, more natural interactions with brands. The latest research shows that Voice-driven self-service is emerging as a preferred medium of interaction in many parts of the customer journey. At the same time, Google and other API providers have moved Speech and Natural Language Processing into the Cloud, increasing the quality of these technologies while reducing the cost of entry.

Artificial intelligence stocks are rarer than you might think. Many companies tout AI technology initiatives. But there really are few -- if any -- public, pure-play artificial intelligence stocks. And the AI competition landscape isn't an easy picture to paint. Instead, look for companies using AI technology to improve products or gain a strategic edge.