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How advances in AI will transform online but won't translate in-store

#artificialintelligence

Even now, all you have to do is Google search'AI 2017' to find headlines like these: '2017 laid the foundation for faster, smarter AI in 2018' 'All the creepy, crazy and amazing things that happened in AI in 2017' AI took the tech industry by storm. Swarm AI correctly predicted TIME's Person of the Year to be Donald Trump, AI moved into the household through the Amazon Echo and Google Home, and Google's DeepMind AlphaGo Zero conquered the 2,000-year-old board game'Go' through machine learning. If you didn't already know: AlphaGo literally recreated itself without the help of humans, using reinforcement learning to surpass the abilities of world champion Le Sedol and become the best Go player in the world. In 2018, poker bot Libratus was the first to beat 15 top human players, and American technology company Nvidia created AI that could mimic your facial features, handwriting, and voice. They created'celebrities' that don't even exist. Though it didn't impress everyone, with comments like: The iceberg that would later reveal the all-conquering and all-powerful force reckoned to control our entire lives โ€“ otherwise known as artificial intelligence.


7 Trends in Conversational AI and their Impact on Business

#artificialintelligence

The deployment of increasingly smarter chatbots, AI-powered virtual assistants and conversational AI technology has enabled organizations to increase customer engagement, save resources by efficiently scaling their customer-facing operations, and ultimately make their customers and end users more satisfied. But now, with ever-smarter and more context-aware chatbots, advancements in fields such as predictive analytics and speech recognition, and the integration of these technologies into end-users' devices, we witness how data scientists, engineers, and AI entrepreneurs are taking things to the next level. The trends considered in this article are based on the insights provided by the conversational AI leaders and innovators who have thus far participated in our conversational AI interviews. For each trend, we discuss the impact and opportunities for businesses to leverage the next generation of conversational AI. We invite NLP and Conversational AI innovators to participate in the survey to be featured in our upcoming article "Inspiring People in Conversational AI to Follow in 2020".


Why Tech WON'T Fix Your Business

#artificialintelligence

A friend asked me what I thought about him taking a job offer at MIX. They want me to improve their recommendation engine, to keep the users they have with'better recommendations,' and to get new users by recommending them'better' content." Hmm... "This is yet another startup looking for you to save them with tech," I told him. He'd been down this road many times. As a seasoned data scientist, failing businesses reach out to his ML, NLP, and AI programming background, looking for him to come in and fix them--code collaborative filters and recommendation algorithms that will attract and retain users.


Best Google Smart Speaker Deals (April 2020): Nest Mini, Hub Max, and More

WIRED

Google has several different Google Assistant-powered smart speakers and smart displays in its smart home lineup, and right now they're all on sale. The discounts vary with the model you choose, but they're some of the best deals we've seen in a while. You can use them to play music, check the weather, set timers and alarms, and find answers to questions when you're feeling too lazy to look them up on your phone. Like many connected devices, they come with some privacy concerns, though Google addressed many of them last year. Still, it's worth checking out our guide on how to make your smart speaker as private as possible.


Ring Stick Up Cam Battery review: Inexpensive and reliable wireless video surveillance, indoors and out

PCWorld

The Ring Stick Up Cam, now in its third generation, can be deployed indoors or out. It operates on battery power, which means you can deploy it just about anywhere your Wi-Fi network can reach, and it can be connected to an optional but inexpensive solar panel. It's virtually identical to the Ring Indoor Cam I reviewed a little more than a week ago, both in form factor and specs, but the Stick Up Cam's battery and weatherized enclosure adds $40 to the price. There are higher-quality indoor/outdoor, battery-powered, Wi-Fi security cameras on the market, but the Ring Stick Up Cam costs half as much as the Arlo Pro 3 that tops our list, and you'll need to buy that camera in a $500 two-pack that includes a smart hub (add-on Arlo cameras cost $200 each). There are major upsides to Arlo's product for sure, but they don't matter if you can't afford the product in the first place.


Collaborative Filtering with Machine Learning and Python

#artificialintelligence

We can see that the top feature for both users is Comedy, which means they like simmilar stuff. What have we done here? Well, we not only described items in terms of the mentioned genres, but we have done the same for each user with the same terms. The meaning for a User1, for example, is that she likes Comedy 0.5 but he likes Action 0.1. Note that if we multiply users embeding matrix with the transpose item embeding matrix we will recreate the user-item interaction matrix. Now, this works well for simple examples with few users and items.


Apple's HomePod is on sale for $205

Engadget

Home audio is a higher priority than ever with many people staying at home during the pandemic. You might be glad to hear that Apple's HomePod is on sale, then. OWC has discounted the Siri smart speaker to $205, well under the $299 official price and very close to previous deals. The best bargain is curiously only for the white model (you'll pay $208 for the black version), but it still represents significant savings whichever color suits your tastes. The HomePod is one of the better-sounding smart speakers we've tested, with balanced output that automatically adjusts to the device's placement in the room.


Google Pixel Buds review (2020): Truly smart earbuds

Engadget

But Google has never had a true competitor. Google's 2017 Pixels Buds were Bluetooth, but not completely wireless -- and for the most part they felt incomplete. Back in October, Google announced an updated version of the Pixel Buds ($179) that aren't only true wireless, they pack in even more smart features. Now it's time to find out just how much the company learned from its shortcomings. To get started with a phone that's running Android 6.0 and up, all you have to do is flip open the Pixel Buds case.


Virtual Assistant for Citizens

#artificialintelligence

Sign in to report inappropriate content. Today citizens need to receive factual information and avoid fake news and stigmatization in the context of COVID-19. Today governments and citizens can leverage the opportunity of AI technologies for establishing bidirectional and trust communication. The ONE UI concept, together with ML&AI technologies, can empower both sides for more efficient collaboration and support.


Apple Snatches AI Startup to Smarten Siri

#artificialintelligence

Voysis uses artificial intelligence to improve a digital assistant's ability to understand a person's natural language while shopping. Apple reportedly wants it to help give Siri a boost. Apple has acquired another artificial intelligence startup, according to Bloomberg. Voysis, a Dublin-based startup, will join Apple and aim to improve Siri's ability to understand a person's natural language. It focused on shopping-related voice commands, but Voysis' technology should grow under Apple's guidance to support general inquiries as Siri integrates with other apps.