AMAZON'S AWESOME GENIE ALEXA

AMAZON'S AWESOME GENIE ALEXA

NEWS:

• Alexa is Amazon’s Voice control system. Using nothing but the sound of your voice, you can search the web, shopping lists, shop online, get instant weather reports, control smart-home products all while your phone stays in your pocket and it’s capable of much more

• Now that there are four ways to interact with Alexa with the Tap, Echo and Dot devices, and with the Amazon Fire TV. You might find yourself talking to her more often. 

• Thanks to the Echo’s far-field microphones, Alexa can respond to voice commands from almost anywhere within earshot. And there’s no activation button to press. Simply say the trigger word (either “Alexa,” “Echo,” “Amazon,” or “Computer.”) followed by what you want to happen, and it will be done—as long as you’ve set up everything properly and are using the correct command.

• Some Example Commands:
• Ask for help: "Alexa, help."
• Play music: "Alexa, play some music."
• Create a shopping list: "Alexa, add eggs to my shopping list" or, "Alexa, I need to buy laundry detergent."
• Basic math: "Alexa, what's 5 plus 7?" or, "Alexa, what's 56 times 33?"
• Ask a general question: "Alexa, how many people live in America?"  And many varieties of commands you can use for controlling your smart home.

 VIEWS:

• "I truly believe that for AI to be useful in our daily lives, it has to be something you can connect with,” says Rohit Prasad, Amazon's head scientist for Alexa, who is playing a key role in the retailer's efforts in artificial intelligence for Alexa.

• He also says, the big goal for Alexa is a nice, long chat- an actual 20 min conversation.

• Alexa competes with other personal digital assistants like Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana and the Google Assistant and has emerged as one of the leaders in voice computing.

• “I ask my Echo for the news headlines every morning as I'm getting dressed. It saves me times popping onto the internet for the headlines and wasting precious time,” shared by a customer.

• Software developer James Rhodes—whose wife, DeLacy Rhodes, is a microbiologist—has created a skill for Alexa called Helix that lends a helping hand around the laboratory.

THE MUSE:

• Among the more than 35,000 reviews on Amazon, the general consensus is that unlike Apple’s Siri, whose error rate can be frustrating, the Echo responds as soon as it hears the word Alexa and it rarely mishears commands.

• “I think of Alexa as a nice library lady who lives in the black cylinder,” said April Hamilton, an engineer who runs the blog Love My Echo.

• Alexa, stop it! Amazon's personal assistant is causing havoc for people with a similar name.

• “I always liked my name, until Amazon gave it to a robot,” Alexa Sussman, told the newspaper.

• On Twitter, Oli Davis, from London, said he was watching wrestling, including a match featuring an athlete named Alexa Bliss, prompting his device to get 'very confused'.

• Human Alexas are finding gadgets bleeping into action or music stopping whenever their names are called in the house, the Wall Street Journal reported.

IOT and Industry 4.0 Big News or Big Noise?

IOT and Industry 4.0 Big News or Big Noise?

NEWS:

• The transformation of the industrial sector has begun. The big buzz at the World Economic Forum (WEF) is about the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ - “a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work and relate to one another”.

• The First Industrial revolution began by steam and water. The Second was the introduction of electricity to create the mass production. The Third is about the internet, communication technologies and digitization of everything. Now, a fourth is building on the Third, the digital revolution.

• The world is at the beginning of a revolution where there are huge advances in genomics, artificial intelligence, materials, and manufacturing technologies.

• We can see this happening in several areas already. Virtual reality that allows us to transport to new worlds and interact with information in new ways, robots, and software working side-by-side with humans. Machines are closing in on human ability with astonishing speed. Robots are replacing humans, not just on factory floors, but in homes too. 

  VIEWS:

• There are both opportunities and challenges. It can lift global incomes and improve lives worldwide, and the supply-side miracle due to technological innovation will lead to long-term gains in efficiency and productivity, says Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the WEF.

• Once the automation takes over activities that humans used to do, that should free up time for people to do a better job of reaching out to the elderly, having smaller class sizes, helping kids with special needs, says Gates.

• If robots are going to take over human jobs, that means fewer people will be working, which in turn means fewer people will be paying taxes. “But you can’t just give up that income tax because that’s part of how you’ve been funding that level of human workers,” Gates said.

• This fourth revolution is fundamentally different from the previous three, which were characterized mainly by advances in technology.

• In the next few years, I expect the digital transformation of life to bring the huge changes everything from science to health care to robotics, says Mitchell Baker, Mozilla founder. 

   

THE MUSE:

• In this fourth revolution, we are facing a range of new technologies that combine the physical, digital and biological worlds. These new technologies will impact all disciplines, economies, and industries, and even challenge our ideas about what it means to be human.

• Industry 4.0 is at an inflection point today- A recent Price Waterhouse Cooper's study of Industry 4.0 adoption found that 72% of manufacturing enterprises predict their use of data analytics will substantially improve customer relationships along the product life cycle.

• 35% of companies adopting Industry 4.0 predict revenue gains over 20% in the next five years.

• As automation increases, computers and machines will replace workers across a vast spectrum of industries, from drivers to accountants and estate agents to insurance agents. By one estimate, as many as 47 percent of U.S. jobs are at risk from automation.

• Fifty percent of jobs done by humans today are vulnerable to replacement by robots, according to McKinsey report. That could amount to a loss of about $15 trillion in wages worldwide and about $2.7 trillion in the United States. But the report further mentions that this might not happen until 2055, plus or minus 20 years.

Future of Retail: Big Data and Consumer Behavior.

FUTURE OF RETAIL:BIG DATA AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

NEWS:

• The technology, which uses face recognition software can identify customers in a store through their smart phones, connecting their Wi-Fi network in order to track their shopping behavior.

•  Retailers can able to see the customers coming into the store, what they do inside the store, they are going to purchase or not. That kind of Big Data is applied in a retail store environment.

• Traditional retailers are using analytical tools which are available to e-Commerce firms, to track their customers. The software can anonymously differentiate by gender, adults from children, could also interpret facial expressions and also recognize repeat customers that will help retailers understand why someone did or did not buy a certain product.

•  Some retail stores use the platform called Euclid Analytics, to track their potential customers, which helps them to have a better understanding the activities, operations and design of the store.

 VIEWS:

•  According to Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, that kind of tracking is unethical and contrary to shopper’s expectation of privacy. She says that, “Legally stores have the right to put up security cameras, but the consumer expectation of privacy is being circumvented here.” 

• When a consumer looks into that camera, they expect it’s being used for security, not marketing purposes.

• Some of the owners of retail stores, shared that customers seem to have no problem with cookies, profiles that let e-commerce sites know who they are and how they shop. So, the technology doesn’t bother them much. 

\        THE MUSE:

• Synqera, a start-up in St. Petersburg, Russia, is selling software for checkout devices or computers that tailors marketing messages to a customer’s gender, age and mood, measured by facial recognition.

• For retailers, the rise of e-commerce is giving consumers more information and choices than they’ve ever had before, making competition all the more fierce. So, the store managers have been fighting back by trying to re-create in physical stores the sort of analytics available to e-commerce firms.

• The idea that you’re being stalked in a store is, I think, a bit creepy said Robert Plant, a computer information systems professor.

• "If I ever find out a store is tracking me this way, I would never go in that store again,” shared by a customer in a survey.

• The wall street journal conducted a study of over 100 popular smartphone applications and found that applications were collecting information about, "Location, unique serial number like identifiers for the phone, and personal details such as age and sex" and sending that information to marketing companies.