Amazon has a health-oriented wearable in the works that has the potential to use voice recognition technology to sense emotional states, according to a report from Bloomberg. The product (codenamed Dylan) is being developed by Amazon's hardware development team Lab126 and its Alexa division. Designed to be worn on the wrist, the device seemingly has a form factor similar to a smartwatch. According to documents and sources cited by Bloomberg, Amazon is currently beta-testing the technology which has built in speakers to pick up vocal inflections and commands. While these capabilities seems more like science fiction, the technology is grounded in research about vocal biomarkers that can pick up issues like depression or anxiety or function as a diagnostic aid.

While there are many examples of technology changing the way people work, the latest advancements in artificial intelligence and robotics have many people worried that their work will no longer be required at all. According to OECD estimates, more than 1 in 5 low-income jobs across its member countries are at high risk of automation. But it's no longer just manual routine tasks that are affected by automation. Artificial intelligence is increasingly capable of performing "cognitive routine" tasks that are typical of the service sector. For example, artificial intelligence has recently surpassed humans at speech and image recognition, indicating that automation could also have an impact on relatively high-skilled occupations in the future.

The promise of AI will be fulfilled only by establishing a clear, coherent link between AI and business value. This Gartner Special Report will help CIOs incorporate AI into their strategic planning and evaluation processes for business transformation. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and its affiliates. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without Gartner's prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of Gartner's research organization, which should not be construed as statements of fact.

There are those that think that data is the oil of AI and the focus should be clean data, data science and deep understanding of what the data means. There are those that say data is meaningless without context that can be with other data, models/algorithms or processes. Let's explore the arguments in a concise fashion to discover the advantage of each view. Data is the starting point as it is a very useful asset. True or not, it is assumed that data carries knowledge and that tapping that knowledge will give advantage to those that study data well.

"While such phrasings may be natural for a user, current speech processing systems are not configured to handle commands that are not preceded by a wakeword," wrote the patent application's authors, Kurt Wesley Piersol and Gabriel Beddingfield. "Offered is a system to correct this problem." In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson told BuzzFeed News, "The technology in this patent is not in use, and referring to the potential use of patents is highly speculative." The spokesperson added that Amazon files many patent applications that are not ultimately implemented into consumer-facing products, and that patents do not necessarily reflect "current or near-future states of products and services." According to the patent application, after a wake word is detected, Alexa may "look backwards" to determine if the command came before the wake word, and use pauses in speech to identify the beginning of the command.

In deploying artificial intelligence ("AI") or one of its sibling technologies – machine learning and deep learning – the first order of business is defining the business problem. Next, understand your enterprise data and third party data in terms of scope and quality. Once those elements are in place, you are ready to embark on your AI journey upon which your imagination will be the primary limiting factor. These are problems that can be answered by deploying some combination of AI, machine learning, deep learning/neural networks and/or natural language processing ("NLP"). Data quality is important – "garbage in, garbage out".

According to OECD's Director of the Science, Technology and Innovation Directorate Andrew Wyckoff, the released document, titled "Recommendations of the Council on Artificial Intelligence," will hopefully establish a regulatory environment to promote AI technology in an ethical manner. "AI is what we would call a'general purpose technology.' It's going to change the way we do things in nearly every single sector of the economy -- that's part of the reason we give so much importance to its development," he told reporters Wednesday, according to Defense One. "Some have termed it as'the invention of a method of inventions,' and in fact we can see it already affecting the process of scientific discovery and science itself." The principles outlined in the document have been signed by the OECD's 36 member countries, as well as by the US, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru and Romania.

ROCHESTER, Minn.-Mayo Clinic is one of the world leaders in healthcare. Now, the institution is looking for the next best way to provide efficient care to patients. Mayo held an artificial intelligence symposium, looking to bring together groups of developers from around the world. They're working on projects using technology to help patients. Just one of the ingenious ideas includes computing systems that can interpret medical information and offer preliminary recommendations for patients.

The world's strongest men must be shaking in their very large boots, because robots are here to steal their jobs. The HyQReal robot is a "hydraulically powered quadruped" developed by a team in Italy at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT). It is power-autonomous and wirelessly communicates with its overlords. And, oh yeah, it walks, and is pretty dang strong. SEE ALSO: This 90-pound'blind' robot dog definitely won't kill everything you hold dear The robot's IIT makers tested its strength recently by tasking the lil' guy with pulling a 3 ton passenger airplane.

Unmanned drones, powered by artificial intelligence, may soon accompany US Air Force Pilots on missions as autonomous wingmen. Both Boeing's F-15 and Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighter jets are being considered for the'Skyborg' drone support program. The scheme would cut down on the amount of people in the jets and could both reduce the risk to pilots and be more economical. Drones can be manufactured for a fortieth of the cost of a new fighter jet and may be guided by the sole pilot inside the nearby fighter plane. To safely manage any such drones, however, AI will need to be sufficiently developed to make it immune to attacks that could exploit its operating features.