Spotify is about to begin publicly testing its first hardware: a voice-controlled smart assistant for cars, meant to help Spotify learn how people consume audio while they’re driving. As part of the test, some Premium users will receive the device for free.
The device, called Car Thing, plugs into a vehicle’s 12-volt outlet (aka a cigarette lighter) for power and connects to both a person’s car and phone over Bluetooth. The device can be activated by saying, “Hey, Spotify,” followed by a request for whatever the person wants to hear. It’ll be linked to a user’s Spotify account, so they can access their playlists.
The true prize of modern marketing is delivering experiences that are both world class to the consumer and deliver value to the business. Personalization is a crucial weapon in the marketer’s arsenal to achieve that goal. That’s how businesses can deliver tailored recommendations, content, offers, and experiences, across all channels and devices, along the entire customer journey. Personalization at scale has the potential to create $1.7 trillion to $3 trillion in new value (Exhibit 1). Capturing this value will require mastering the technologies and addressing the organizational disconnects—all while forging trust with customers and protecting their data. But implementing and integrating the right technologies create significant complexity and call for a lot of coordination. The companies that overcome the barriers to personalization at scale are those that tackle both technology and business challenges in tandem, starting with the CMO and CTO/CIO working together closely.
DARPA’s N^3) program has awarded funding to six groups attempting to build brain-machine interfaces that match the performance of implanted electrodes but with no surgery whatsoever.
By simply popping on a helmet or headset, soldiers could conceivably command control centers without touching a keyboard; fly drones intuitively with a thought; even feel intrusions into a secure network. While the tech sounds futuristic, DARPA wants to get it done in four years.
“It’s an aggressive timeline,” says Krishnan Thyagarajan, a research scientist at PARC and principal investigator of one of the N3-funded projects. “But I think the idea of any such program is to really challenge the community to push the limits and accelerate things which are already brewing. Yes, it’s challenging, but it’s not impossible.”
Seeing this ever-expanding variety and choice as advantageous to consumers is tempting. The economic theory that governs many Americans’ understanding of consumer choice posits that a free, competitive market should drive down prices on the best-quality stuff. But in the arms race to sell as many sandwich bags or beach towels as possible, a problem has become clear: Variety isn’t infinitely valuable.
Contemporary internet shopping conjures a perfect storm of choice anxiety.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX got a stratospheric number of headlines this week for lofting into orbit the first 60 operational satellites for its planned Starlink Internet service. But the startup will need to launch hundreds more satellites before offering even rudimentary Internet service from space—and almost 12,000 satellites to offer global, high-speed coverage.
Meanwhile, almost no one is writing about Viasat, one of the two major companies that already offer space-based Internet, albeit using a small number of traditional, massive satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Despite the lack of press, the company seems to be doing well.
Researchers at IBM Research U.K., the U.S. Military Academy and Cardiff University have recently proposed a technique they call Local Interpretable Model Agnostic Explanations (LIME) for attaining a better understanding of the conclusions reached by machine learning algorithms. Their paper, published on SPIE digital library, could inform the development of artificial intelligence (AI) tools that provide exhaustive explanations of how they reached a particular outcome or conclusion.
Amazon has been conducting research that involves digital 3D “scans” of people’s bodies in exchange for a $25 Amazon gift card.
The e-commerce giant is currently carrying out the image study at two different locations in New York City.
Mashable became aware of the research program after a staff member was targeted with an advertisement on Instagram. The ad led to an online form where would-be participants were able to sign up for a 3D body scan session.
The title of “professor” at UW-Madison has long been associated with the opportunity to gain tenure.
But the meaning of the coveted title will change, likely for the first time in the university’s history, with UW-Madison taking steps in recent weeks to create new job titles — “teaching professor” and “research professor” — that will not offer those assuming the positions the chance to earn an indefinite academic appointment.
The university’s Faculty Senate approved the use of the titles last month, though individual academic departments will decide whether to appoint academic staff to the roles. At a meeting earlier this month, the Faculty Senate considered a third title, professor of practice, but decided to refer that topic to a committee for more discussion.
People wearing hearing aids often struggle to differentiate between speakers in a crowded environment, but a small experiment suggests that brain-controlled assistive hearing devices would be able to detect which voice the user is paying attention to, and enhance it.
To do this, the devices would need to separate individual voices in the room, then decode a user’s brainwaves to identify the one the user is giving the most attention, the study authors write in the journal Science Advances.
Amazon Web Services has launched the general availability of AWS Ground Station, its service connecting the company’s cloud to satellites. … “Satellite data offers customers a profound way to build applications that help humans explore space and improve life on Earth, but the cost and difficulty of building and maintaining the infrastructure necessary to downlink and process the data has historically been prohibitive for all but the most well-funded organizations,” Shayn Hawthorne, general manager of AWS Ground Station, said.
What’s going on in the mind of a newborn child? That can be an extremely tough question to answer, but tracking things such as hearing loss and neurodevelopment from birth is critical to detect problems early on.
Brainchild, a startup that wants to make it easier and cheaper to track neurological progress in the minds of babies, won a startup competition hosted by Seattle-based healthcare innovation center Cambia Grove this week.
There is no dispute that the Facebook video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) viewed by millions is a fake, deliberately altered to make her appear drunk. YouTube acted fast and removed duplicates. Other social media outlets have not made the same call.
Facebook acknowledged the video is “false” but said the videos would remain on the platform.
Amid fierce calls across the public and government for Facebook to remove the video — which has been viewed 2.6 million times — and others like it, a Facebook official took to CNN on Friday to defend its decision.
Monika Bickert, a company vice president for product policy and counterterrorism, said the video was reviewed by fact-checking organizations, and after it deemed the video a hoax, the company “dramatically” reduced its distribution. But Facebook did not remove the video, Bickert said.
The demographic of podcast listeners is not your average American. Roughly half of podcast listeners make $75,000 or more in annual income; a majority have a post-secondary degree; and almost one-third have a graduate degree [source]. There’s also a gender gap with podcast listeners skewing mostly male, mirroring the gap among podcast creators as well. However, the gender gap has narrowed from a 25% gap in 2008 to 9% today.
Behavioural patterns of Londoners going about their daily business are being tracked and recorded an unprecedented scale, an internet expert warns in a new book.
The author, Harvard academic Ben Green, says camera and sensor-packed “smart cities” – connecting up buildings, public spaces and services for increased efficiency – allow firms and authorities to “expand their data collection beyond your browser and into physical space”.
Large-scale London data-collection projects include on-street free Wi-Fi beamed from special kiosks, smart bins, police facial recognition and soon 5G transmitters embedded in lamp posts.
Singapore September 30-October 4, satellite session at Conference on Complex Systems. “Come and present your work using Machine Learning and Data Analysis for understanding and modeling complex systems!” Deadline for submissions is June 30.
In an effort to increase transparency and understanding of the U.S. foreign intelligence legal framework, Georgetown Law Professor Laura Donohue has spearheaded the creation of Georgetown Law’s new Foreign Intelligence Law Collection. With the controversial Section 215 and other provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) due to sunset later this year, the new Collection offers a broad range of resources for journalists and others to better understand the law.
“The Artificial Intelligence (AI) podcast hosts accessible, big-picture conversations at MIT and beyond about the nature of intelligence with some of the most interesting people in the world thinking about AI from a variety of perspectives including machine learning, robotics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, economics, physics, mathematics, cognitive science, software engineering and more.”
