Phan Hoang Tu Linh feels she has gotten the hang of working in a Japanese convenience store now, but she admits she found it tough at first. "We have three cash registers in our store but only two lines to wait in," says the 23-year-old Vietnamese national, who came to Japan to study at a Japanese-language school in Tokyo in July 2017 and started working part-time at a convenience store two months later. "One of the customers went before another customer who was supposed to be first, but I didn't see it because I was too busy," Phan says. "The customer got really angry and started shouting at me that they were supposed to be first. I felt really bad after that. My co-workers all told me that there was no need for the customer to get so angry and that it wasn't my fault. Sometimes people bring their stress from the workplace and take it out on us."

Athena Security is on a mission is to prevent crime through artificial intelligence. Their smart security camera and alarm system uses human-computer vision to see and understand threats. When a mugger pulls out a knife, when a kidnapper tries to force a child into a car, when a gunman tries to take a life, Athena can see the threat before it becomes a crime, unlike standard security cameras that document crimes after they happen. For more information see the IDTechEx report on Ten Forecasts on Digital Transformation. ''Imagine walking down the street, keeping yourself safe by watching the traffic ahead and stopping at the curb.

Today, the virtual assistant landscape is exploding with innovation: New applications and new forms of interaction are constantly emerging. Although the idea of a virtual assistant is decades old, it went mainstream with Apple's introduction of Siri. Siri was created at SRI International based on years of AI research, spun off as an independent venture-backed company in 2007, and acquired by Apple in 2010. The Siri that the world knows enables users to quickly find information and execute important device functions in a fast and friendly way. But Siri was first developed as a "do engine," similar to the emerging crop of AI assistants.