Conversational agents that mimic people have raised questions about the ethics of anthropomorphizing machines with human social identity cues. Critics have also questioned assumptions of identity neutrality in humanlike agents. Recent work has revealed that intersectional Japanese pronouns can elicit complex and sometimes evasive impressions of agent identity. Yet, the role of other "neutral" non-pronominal self-referents (NPSR) and voice as a socially expressive medium remains unexplored. In a crowdsourcing study, Japanese participants (N = 204) evaluated three ChatGPT voices (Juniper, Breeze, and Ember) using seven self-referents. We found strong evidence of voice gendering alongside the potential of intersectional self-referents to evade gendering, i.e., ambiguity through neutrality and elusiveness. Notably, perceptions of age and formality intersected with gendering as per sociolinguistic theories, especially boku and watakushi. This work provides a nuanced take on agent identity perceptions and champions intersectional and culturally-sensitive work on voice agents.

With the public release of ChatGPT and Microsoft's $10-billion investment into OpenAI, artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly gaining mainstream acceptance. For enterprise networking professionals, this means there is a very real possibility that AI traffic will affect their networks in major ways, both positive and negative. As AI becomes a core feature in mission-critical software, how should network teams and networking professionals adjust to stay ahead of the trend? Andrew Coward, GM of Software Defined Networking at IBM, argues that the enterprise has already lost control of its networks. The shift to the cloud has left the traditional enterprise network stranded, and AI and automation are required if enterprises hope to regain control.

New research from Juniper Networks has found a growing appetite from both enterprises and consumers to use AI technologies. Juniper surveyed 700 global IT decision-makers for its research and found that most (67%) executives have AI as a top strategic priority for 2021. However, integrating AI remains a challenge. "As a CIO, when I see so much interest in an emerging technology, I always need to remind people there are pitfalls if it's not managed correctly. For artificial intelligence, there is no doubt that there is light at the end of the challenge-filled tunnel, and significant potential to generate even more meaningful and incredible outcomes than we've seen so far."

Juniper Networks executives say the company's artificial-intelligence (AI) focused enterprise strategy is what is behind much of the positive momentum the company is experiencing. Speaking at the JP Morgan 49th Annual Global Technology, Media and Communications conference today, CEO Rami Rahim said that the company's enterprise business has never been as strong as it is today and he attributes much of that strength to the company's AI-driven enterprise strategy. "AI-driven enterprise is not just a marketing slogan," Rahim said. We have an AI engine that drives the solutions that we are offering customers today." Much of the company's AI-driven enterprise strategy is a result of its 2019 acquisition of Mist Systems, which had an AI-powered wireless platform that Juniper then used to enhance its own networking solutions.

Executives worldwide placed artificial intelligence as a top strategic priority for 2021, yet plans have slowed or been curtailed. Juniper Networks recently released the report, "AI is set to accelerate...is your organization ready?" which addresses this very curious dilemma: Developers, organizations (95%) and consumers know the benefits, welcome and are excited about the potential. But how can companies accelerate their adoption? Today, AI's slow rollout includes the automation of daily tasks, such as chatbots for customer service, bank reconciliations and smart workflows for IT trouble ticket management. The aforementioned 95% of organizations believe their companies would benefit from embedding AI into daily operations, products and services. Curiously though, only 6% of C-level leaders reported adoption of AI-powered solutions across their organizations today.

In a new survey of over 700 C-suite executives and IT decision-makers examining AI adoption in the enterprise, Juniper Networks found that 95% of respondents believe their organization would benefit from embedding AI into their daily operations. However, only 6% of those respondents reported adoption of AI-powered solutions across their business. The findings agree with other surveys showing that, despite enthusiasm around AI, companies struggle to deploy AI-powered services in production. Enterprise use of AI grew a whopping 270% over the past several years, Gartner recently reported, while Deloitte says 62% of respondents to its corporate October 2018 study adopted some form of AI, up from 53% in 2019. But adoption doesn't always meet with success, as the roughly 25% of businesses that have seen half their AI projects fail will tell you.

The use of voice assistants is set to triple over the next few years, according to a new forecast from the U.K.-based analysts at Juniper Research. The firm estimates there will be 8 billion digital voice assistants in use by 2023, up from the 2.5 billion assistants in use at the end of 2018. The majority of those assistants will live on smartphones, where Google Assistant and Siri offer voice assistants to Android and iOS users, respectively. In fact, Google already announced its voice assistant would be enabled on a billion devices as of last month, thanks to its integration with Android. Meanwhile, Amazon's Alexa -- which still primarily lives on smart speakers like Echo -- has reached more than 100 million devices. Juniper, however, predicts that the fastest-growing category for voice over the next several years will not be smart speakers.

Today Juniper Networks announced it was acquiring smart wide area networking startup 128 Technology for $450 million. This marks the second AI-fueled networking company Juniper has acquired in the last year and a half after purchasing Mist Systems in March 2019 for $405 million. With 128 Technology, the company gets more AI SD-WAN technology. SD-WAN is short for software-defined wide area networks, which means networks that cover a wide geographical area such as satellite offices, rather than a network in a defined space. Today, instead of having simply software-defined networking, the newer systems use artificial intelligence to help automate session and policy details as needed, rather than dealing with static policies, which might not fit every situation perfectly.

StackPath, a leading edge-computing platform provider, has appointed Ashok Ganesan as chief product officer (CPO). Ganesan will be the strategic leader and visionary over StackPath's products as the company further expands its globally-distributed edge platform. "We have an amazing product team in place who has been on a roll and, to be honest, didn't feel we needed a CPO until we met Ashok," said Kip Turco, StackPath CEO. "Ashok brings so much experience in product management and development, not to mention engineering and networking, that we knew he could help us create and advance our edge computing offerings even faster." Ganesan brings more than 30 years building and leading strong product and engineering teams and managing billion-dollar product lines.

Perhaps now more than ever, cloud-first, AI-driven networking is critical as network administrators have their hands full helping their entire companies work remotely, according to Juniper Networks executives. Juniper in 2019 acquired AI-powered networking startup Mist Systems for $405 million for its cloud-native wireless LAN and AI technology. Juniper, now with Mist Systems' technology, is injecting AI into enterprise networks across both the wired and wireless LANs through Mist's AI engine, Marvis. Current conditions are creating "the perfect cocktail" for AI to take off today, said Juniper CEO Rami Rahim during his keynote at the company's firm's virtual AI event on Thursday. "The goal now is a self-driving network," Rahim said.