Natural language programming is a promising approach to enable end users to instruct new tasks for intelligent agents. However, our formative study found that end users would often use unclear, ambiguous or vague concepts when naturally instructing tasks in natural language, especially when specifying conditionals. Existing systems have limited support for letting the user teach agents new concepts or explaining unclear concepts. In this paper, we describe a new multi-modal domain-independent approach that combines natural language programming and programming-by-demonstration to allow users to first naturally describe tasks and associated conditions at a high level, and then collaborate with the agent to recursively resolve any ambiguities or vagueness through conversations and demonstrations. Users can also define new procedures and concepts by demonstrating and referring to contents within GUIs of existing mobile apps. We demonstrate this approach in PUMICE, an end-user programmable agent that implements this approach. A lab study with 10 users showed its usability.

Microsoft made bold moves this year to position its voice assistant Cortana for enterprise customers, analyst Raul Castanon-Martinez said, and is uniquely poised to overtake competitors Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant in the workplace. Castanon-Martinez's firm 451 Research estimates voice user interfaces and digital assistants are among the top technologies organizations will adopt in the next two years – and Microsoft is in the best position to gain their business, he said. "Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant dominate the market on the consumer side, but Microsoft has a leg up in the enterprise, given its dominant position with its productivity and collaboration product portfolios," Castanon-Martinez said. Competition in the workplace is the latest development in the relationship between Alexa and Cortana. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella earlier this year said the company no longer sees Cortana as a competitor to Amazon's Alexa.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to have a more profound impact on humanity than electricity or fire, according to Google's CEO Sundar Pichai. In the manufacturing business heavy investments are being made in AI. It is predicted to affect every step within the supply chain process in future, enabling more efficient procurement activities than ever before. Numerous vendors already claim to operate with this intelligent technology. But the reigning buzzword is not always understood, used and promoted correctly, which leads to confusion both by buyers and sellers.

You can't keep the big tech companies out of the news, can you? Smart home devices is one of the niches where they have been battling to gain supremacy -- Amazon's Echo, Google Home or Apple HomePod are all popular smart home devices. Despite the involvement of these tech giants among other major players, Smart home tech adoption has been slow so far. In my opinion, one of the biggest hindrances in this regard has been the privacy concerns emanating from the use of such smart home technology, like smart speakers. Amazon, Google & Apple -- all three have been previously embroiled in controversies where they were involved in privacy breach of the customers using their devices.

While voice-based digital assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri and Google Assistant are becoming increasingly common at home – and smartphones and wearables can be used handsfree via speech – the use of voice in the workplace is just getting started. That's likely to change in 2020 and beyond. More efficient employees, "smarter" voice-based assistants, easier ways of completing routine tasks and a digital experience in the office that matches what's used at home. A survey by 451 Research in 2019 indicated that voice UIs and digital assistants are among the most disruptive technologies for enterprises (IoT and AI are the top two), with four in 10 respondents planning to adopt voice technology within 24 months. "I expect 2020 will be the year when voice user interfaces will become prevalent in the workplace," said Raúl Castañón-Martínez, a senior analyst at 451 Research.

In this modern era where everything is moving towards digitization, edge computing has left no stone unturned in making its way into businesses and industries. Its popularity is growing due to the huge computing demands of cloud users and massive data explosion through IoT. Business associates are finding it the best way to streamline IoT traffic and facilitate real-time, local data analysis. IIoT has paved way to move data processing closer to its source, which involves actual industrial machines. A survey says that edge computing will reach peak productivity in the very near future. The growing innovations in AI and IoT indicate that edge computing is likely to gain maturity as well.

About the author: Anish Sebastian co-founded Babyscripts in 2013, which has partnered with dozens of health systems for its data-centric model in prenatal care. As the CEO of the startup, Anish has focused his efforts on product and software development, as well as evidence-based validation of their product. Prior to this, he founded a research analytics startup and served as a senior tech consultant at Deloitte. Last month saw the rollout of the latest upgrades to Amazon's Echo speaker line: earbuds, glasses and a ring that connect to Amazon's personal assistant Alexa. These new products are just three examples of a growing trend to incorporate technology seamlessly into our human experience, representing the ever-expanding frontiers for technology that have moved far past the smartphone. These trends and others are going to make a big impact in the healthcare space, especially as providers, payers and consumers alike slowly but surely recognize the need to incorporate tech into their workflows to meet the growing consumer demand for digital health tools.

Save big on products that will make your life easier in the new year. Purchases you make through our links may earn us a commission. So we made it to the first weekend of the new year. I think that calls for a celebration--like some online shopping. Thankfully, there's a ton of incredible products on sale at Amazon, so you can get something great without spending too much.

Every person who brings a new Echo speaker from Amazon into their home gets automatically recorded every time they utter the "Alexa" wake word. That is, unless they mute the microphone on the device itself. Or diligently go to the Alexa smartphone app, to manually delete the recordings. Amazon could offer the option of not recording us, but it doesn't. And it will tell you every way but Tuesday how important the recordings are to "improve" the Alexa experience.

Chinese technology company Xiaomi announced plans to invest more than 50 billion yuan ($7.2 billion) over a five-year period in an "All in AIoT" strategy, according to Reuters. This ups the original $1.5-billion, five-year investment plan announced in January 2019, which focused on expanding in-house and third-party products compatible with the Xiaomi digital assistant, Xiao AI. Xiaomi also hoped to develop the capabilities of its AI such that it could better serve as the intelligent focal point of the growing ecosystem of compatible devices. By investing in this space, Xiaomi hopes to supplement and shift away from its declining core business of smartphones. Since introducing a bevy of Xiao AI-enabled products -- including TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, wearables, and even rice cookers -- Xiaomi managed to offset the decline in its core smartphone segment with a 44% year-over-year (YoY) growth in the IoT and lifestyle products segment, according to the earnings report for the quarter ending September 30, 2019.