I do think there is a lot of potential if you have a compelling product and people are willing to pay a premium for that. I think that is what Apple has shown. You can buy a much cheaper cell phone or laptop, but Apple's product is so much better than the alternative, and people are willing to pay that premium.

Johnstown, PA – The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has awarded Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC) a competitively bid prime $498,000 contract to research artificial intelligence (AI) automation capabilities under the agency's Boosting Innovative GEOINT (BIG) program. Under this contract, CTC will further advance the state of knowledge in virtual assistants by evolving from a singular user- centric orientation to a viewpoint of the user within an interdependent network of humans and cognitive machines. The goal is to enable task automation and management to be cloud-wide rather than confined within a traditional desktop or server architecture; and augment and scale human analysts' cognition and intelligence via a capability refined for intelligence community needs. CTC will provide NGA an AI Analyst Virtual Assistant (AVA) capability, incorporating smart technology to address significant challenges in multi-tasking and processing large quantities of rapidly changing information. The AVA will provide recommendations and predictions based on analysts' needs and tasking and by socializing analysts' activities to one another.

When industry leaders launched a non-profit organization in September to create best practices for artificial intelligence, one company was notably missing. On Friday, the Partnership on AI announced that Apple had joined as a founding member. The organization, which will publish research on the ethics, transparency and reliability of AI, among other things, was initially made up of tech giants Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and IBM. Though Apple collaborated with the partnership since before it was announced last year, it wasn't officially a member until now. Tom Gruber, Apple's head of advance development of Siri, will represent the company. "We're glad to see the industry engaging on some of the larger opportunities and concerns created with the advance of machine learning and AI," Gruber said.

Advances in artificial intelligence are happening in big ways, but the progress is all from the most technical minds and companies on Earth. Those in the liberal arts and humanities, however, are now thinking they need to get in on AI before it drastically changes how we live. To do AI research for the public interest from an entirely new perspective, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, the Omidyar Network (a philanthropic investment firm) and the Knight Foundation (which invests in journalism and arts) have put together a $27 million fund for AI research. Called the "Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund," it applies the humanities, social sciences and other disciplines to the development of AI. "Artificial intelligence and complex algorithms in general, fueled by big data and deep-learning systems, are quickly changing how we live and work…" reads the announcement from the Knight Foundation. "Because of this pervasive but often concealed impact, it is imperative that AI research and development be shaped by a broad range of voices--not only by engineers and corporations, but also by social scientists, ethicists, philosophers, faith leaders, economists, lawyers and policymakers."

Amazon's Spotify-rival arrives in the UK: Music Unlimited runs through AI assistant Alexa and offers ...