Amazon announced today that developers can now have Alexa respond to questions from U.S. users with a “happy/excited” or a “disappointed/empathetic” tone. The Verge reports: Amazon suggests the happy/excited tone could be used when you answer a trivia question correctly, for example, and that the disappointed/empathetic tone could be used when you ask for a sports score and your favorite team has lost. (One day, I’m sure she’ll express disappointment at some dumb question that I ask, and I’ll deserve it.) If you want to hear the different voices for yourself, Amazon shared six examples, three for each emotion at increasing levels of excitement or disappointment: Disappointed (Low Intensity), Disappointed (Medium Intensity), Disappointed (High Intensity), Excited (Low Intensity), Excited (Medium Intensity), and Excited (High Intensity).

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Source: Slashdot – Alexa’s Voice Can Now Express Disappointment and Excitement

mspohr quotes a report from The Guardian: Top Democrats on Tuesday proposed tough new privacy laws to rein in the U.S.’s tech companies after a series of scandals that have shaken confidence in the companies and exposed the personal data of millions of consumers. The effort, led by Senator Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Senate commerce, science and transportation committee, aims to “provide consumers with foundational data privacy rights, create strong oversight mechanisms, and establish meaningful enforcement.” The Consumer Online Privacy Rights Act (Copra) comes after a series of failed attempts to rein in the tech giants in the U.S.

The act resembles Europe’s sweeping General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation, passed in 2016. It would force tech companies to disclose the personal information they have collected, delete or correct inaccurate or incomplete information and allow consumers to block the sale of their information. The bill’s sponsors are all Democrats and include presidential candidate Senator Amy Klobuchar. “Companies continue to profit off of the personal data they collect from Americans, but they leave consumers completely in the dark about how their personal information is being used,” she said. “It’s time for Congress to pass comprehensive privacy legislation.”

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Source: Slashdot – Democrats Propose Sweeping Online Privacy Laws

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A master player of the Chinese strategy game Go has decided to retire, due to the rise of artificial intelligence that “cannot be defeated.” Lee Se-dol is the only human to ever beat the AlphaGo software developed by Google’s sister company Deepmind. In 2016, he took part in a five-match showdown against AlphaGo, losing four times but beating the computer once. The South Korean said he had decided to retire after realizing: “I’m not at the top even if I become the number one.” “There is an entity that cannot be defeated,” the 18-time world Go champion told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. Lee Se-dol is considered to be one of the greatest Go players of the modern era. “On behalf of the whole AlphaGo team at DeepMind, I’d like to congratulate Lee Se-dol for his legendary decade at the top of the game, and wish him the very best for the future,” said Demis Hassabis, chief executive and co-founder of Deepmind. “During the AlphaGo matches, he demonstrated true warrior spirit and kept us on the edges of our seats to the very end.”

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Source: Slashdot – Go Master Lee Se-Dol Quits Because AI ‘Cannot Be Defeated’