Google made the announcement at its annual developer conference, where leaders of the company touted their latest advancements in artificial intelligence and new hardware offerings, including a $1,799 (£1,425) phone that opens and closes like a book.

Google this week started rolling out a revamped version of a mobile learning app, called Socratic, that the tech giant acquired last year. The updated app, with new machine learning-powered features, coincides with the start of the school year, as well as other Google for Education initiatives. Socratic aims to help both high school and university students in their studies outside of the classroom. If students need help answering a study question, they can now use the Socratic app to ask a question with their voice, or to take a picture of a question in their study materials. The app will then find relevant material from across the web.

The introduction of Google's do-it-yourself kit has a gentle introduction to learning about artificial intelligence and Google has already come out with two separate projects to support this idea. The first one, known as the AIY Voice Kit is a voice recognition kit for Raspberry Pi. It includes the following: same VoiceHAT (Hardware Accessory on Top), mic board, speaker, components, connectors and cardboard form. To add depth to the technology, the Google Assistant SDK is configured to bring hot word detection, voice control, natural language learning, Google smarts and many more to the kit. It's not restricted to just that, however as the user is able to extend the voice kit by implementing additional vocabularies using TensorFlow.

Dear colleagues: Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology have opened up new markets and new opportunities for progress in critical areas such as health, education, energy, and the environment. In recent years, machines have surpassed humans in the performance of certain specific tasks, such as some aspects of image recognition. Experts forecast that rapid progress in the field of specialized artificial intelligence will continue. Although it is very unlikely that machines will exhibit broadly-applicable intelligence comparable to or exceeding that of humans in the next 20 years, it is to be expected that machines will reach and exceed human performance on more and more tasks. As a contribution toward preparing the United States for a future in which AI plays a growing role, this report surveys the current state of AI, its existing and potential applications, and the questions that are raised for society and public policy by progress in AI. The report also makes recommendations for specific further actions by Federal agencies and other actors. A companion document lays out a strategic plan for Federally-funded research and development in AI. Additionally, in the coming months, the Administration will release a follow-on report exploring in greater depth the effect of AI-driven automation on jobs and the economy.

Google is planning to bring artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to the Raspberry Pi. The low-cost credit-card sized computer is widely used by schools and the maker community for programming devices. Google has asked makers to complete a survey about what smart tools would be "most helpful". And it suggests tools to aid face and emotion recognition, speech-to-text translation, natural language processing and sentiment analysis. Google has previously developed a range of tools for machine learning, internet of things devices, wearables, robotics and home automation.