Kai-Fu Lee is a Taiwanese computer scientist based in Beijing. After earning his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon, he worked at Apple and Microsoft before becoming president of Google China, a position he held from 2005 to 2009. Chen Qiufan is a renowned Chinese science fiction writer and the author of the novel The Waste Tide. Listen to the audio version--read by Lee himself--in the Next Big Idea App. As AI and other technologies disrupt the world, we all must familiarize ourselves with the opportunities they pose and the challenges they may create.

In this week's blog, I review the fascinating work titled AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan--a combination of fiction and non-fiction about a future brought about by artificial intelligence (AI) 20 years from now. In the fall of 2018, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee's book AI Superpowers brought broad awareness to the AI advances being made in China. He has now teamed up with science fiction writer Chen Qiufan to bring a combination of science fiction and non-fiction in AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future. The book asks the question "what will the world look like 20 years from now?" There are 10 short stories and an analysis section explaining the role of AI in each story and why that scenario is plausible 20 years from now.

The BBC, Apple News and The Washington Post have in the past month rolled out new ways to listen to their written articles, hoping to give busy subscribers a flexible way to explore stories and to attract new subscriptions, executives said. "We conducted user research and learned that users want to stay informed but are busy, so they appreciate an option to get up to speed on the latest news developments while cooking dinner, running errands or exercising," said Emily Chow, director of site product at The Washington Post. The Post said it began producing audio articles as an experiment "several years ago," but text-to-audio or click-to-listen story formats have been available for over a decade. The Economist Newspaper Ltd. began producing an audio edition of its weekly magazine in 2007 and little has changed since then, said Tom Standage, the company's deputy editor and head of digital strategy. The Economist sees audio articles as a way to retain subscribers and find new ones by publishing select content for free as podcasts, said Mr. Standage, who noted the offer "is not about advertiser revenue."

Audio is transforming the way we consume information online. The explosive growth of audiobooks and podcasts in recent years clearly demonstrates the appetite and benefits of offering audio content. Advancements in Machine Learning on the other hand have led to significant improvements in voice technology, making modern AI voices sound unbelievably realistic. And with benefits such as instant text-to-audio conversion, multiple languages, and scalability, they offer a perfect solution for the eLearning industry. Using AI voices one can convert text-based educational content into a more convenient audio format, making it possible for students to learn by listening while they are multitasking, on the go, or when they are just tired of staring at screens.

At the beginning of last year we announced an Amazon Polly plugin for WordPress. This plugin allows blog and website creators who are using WordPress to quickly and easily create audio versions of their posts, articles and websites. A few months later, we updated the plugin with the ability to quickly translate the content of websites to other languages using the Amazon Translate service. This functionality, together with the ability to create audio versions, allows you to voice the content of sites in translated languages. We want to allow creators and authors to reach more readers/listeners around the world using the latest AI services offered by AWS.

Four new features that make Google Home a better connected speaker than it was--but it still has growing pains, reports USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham on Talking Tech. SAN FRANCISCO -- In another era, young tech geeks saved their money for a state-of-the-art stereo system: a great turntable, powerful amplifier and an absolute killer set of stereo hi-fi speakers. That went away with the advent of digital and listening to music on computers, then phones and earbuds or tiny, portable speakers. Cut to 2017, and it's the odd return to the loud-speaker wars. Google's Rishi Chandra speaks about the Google Home Max speaker.

Minimalist blogging platform Medium is expanding into audio. Readers who have a $5 per month subscription can now listen to stories published by fellow members, as well as those hand-picked by Medium staff. As TechCrunch notes, more than 50 stories have an audio version at launch, and more will be added over time. It's a small number, however each one has been recorded by a professional voice artist, rather than a robotic text-to-speech service. You'll find them at the top of articles, both on the web and in Medium's mobile apps, with some basic playback controls.