After more than a year out of sight, Alexa –the new Alexa with its AI-powered revamp–took center stage at a crowded coming-out party in New York City on Wednesday, and I got a first-hand look at what this turbocharged voice assistant can do. Following the big unveiling, we were all led to a demonstration hall with about a half-dozen break-out rooms, where we were able to see and hear--but not participate in--Alexa's new conversational tricks, from controlling smart home devices and researching sports tickets to suggesting recipes and dialing up tunes on Amazon Prime Video. If all that sounds like old hat, consider this: While the old Alexa requires falling back into what Amazon devices head Panos Panay rightfully described as "Alexa-speak," the new Alexa is a far more flexible and understanding companion, capable of sussing out your intentions from the vaguest of queries, and--at least, from what I saw on Wednesday--getting it right more than it failed. While the demonstrations we saw appeared carefully choreographed, we were frequently assured that what we were seeing and hearing was the "live" Alexa, rather than a canned demo--and from someone who's spent a fair amount of time with ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode, the exchanges sounded genuine. Here are my biggest takeaways after sitting through Amazon's Alexa show-and-tell, starting with… Naturally, everyone's waiting for the new AI-powered Alexa to bungle a command or start hallucinating, but the demos I saw on Wednesday went surprisingly smoothly.

Since its start in 1988 as a gathering of developers in a designer's living room, the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) has served as a nexus for the video game industry to trade notes and share ideas. Now held for a crowd in the tens of thousands at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco, award-winning game developers spent the last week providing talks and panel discussions about worked in their games and what didn't as part of the first in-person conference since the start of the pandemic. Over the last two years, the event went entirely virtual, offering up free tote bags to the first hundred people to buy an event T-shirt, with attendees huddling in online chat rooms to view pre-taped talks. In 2022, GDC reemerged as the main event at which developers and business analysts gather to discuss the industry's most pressing concerns.

We caught up with Darius to discuss a bit about his experience with the DeepMind scholarship and how it has supported both his educational and professional development. This interview was lightly edited for clarity. Tell us a bit about your experience as a DeepMind Scholar. I was very happy to be selected as a DeepMind Scholar. It created many opportunities for me by allowing me to live and work in New York, where it was very easy to network and learn from a diverse group of accomplished data scientists.

Three healthcare CIOs believe 2020 will come with exciting opportunities as well as challenges -- not unlike 2019. They are heading into the new year with the goal of building a more digitally-focused healthcare system. They're also focused on improving the patient experience through continuous patient monitoring and predictive analytics backed by artificial intelligence and machine learning programs, telehealth services and greater access to data. Arthur Harvey, Boston Medical Center CIO, said one challenge he foresees is integrating data across the continuum of care. Here are their biggest takeaways from 2019 and what's on their agendas for the new year.

The first day of the 2017 IA Summit overwhelmed me in the best way possible. I attended a variety of sessions, talks and discussions about how machines and humans are meant to work together, as a team, to solve the different challenges people face today. In keeping with the theme of "Designing for Humans," some talks expanded on the role of the information architect and how they can enhance their own skills and add value with the aid of artificial intelligence--and not the other way around. Here's a quick overview of what I saw, and how we can use AI to enhance our own abilities. As information architects from all over the world gathered at the Hyatt Regency in Vancouver, keynote speaker Alan Cooper, co-founder of Cooper, shared his "Ranch Stories" and described how software and interaction design should be built the same way a farmer takes care of its land.

Brands of all stripes have tried to capitalize on the rise of chatbots, coming up with everything from beauty advice and cocktail recipe bots to financial assistant bots. But given the sheer volume of inquiries brands get on their social channels, these automated interfaces have perhaps been most useful for brands' customer service initiatives. "Brands can use deep learning algorithms on top of their customer service logs through these chatbots to provide personalized responses in real-time," said Mikhail Naumov, president and co-founder at DigitalGenius. "Chatbots are very useful for customer service when done right." We asked four brands to share their biggest takeaways from using chatbots for customer service. Kia Motors Kia launched NiroBot in November 2016, tied to the introduction of its hybrid utility car, the 2017 Niro.