Humanoid robots are still relatively primitive here in the 21st century. Sure, we have Roombas that can vacuum our floors and Boston Dynamics robots that are doing backflips. But when it comes to the dream of our own personal robot servant, we're still in the Dark Ages. You can't go down to Costco and pick up a fully functional robot butler just yet. But robots were going to do so much more than just give us the opportunity to have our own Rosey from The Jetsons.

The biggest threat to jobs might not be physical robots, but intelligent software agents that can understand our questions and speak to us, integrating seamlessly with all the other programs we use at home and at work. And call centres are particularly at risk. Last week we learned that British retail giant Marks & Spencer is moving 100 switchboard staff to other roles because chatbots are taking over their duties. "All calls to 640 M&S stores and contact centres now handled via Twilio-powered technology," boasted the California-based tech company operating the new system. M&S is now using Twilio's speech recognition software and Google's Dialogflow artificial intelligence (AI) tool to transcribe customers' verbal requests and understand their intent.

When I was 15 I discovered The Smiths, a band whose name had by then long been synonymous with misery. But it was Morrissey's unique style of being miserable – coquettish and laced with Northern English humour, flipping between self-pity and irony – that appealed to my teenage self. I'd always cry at the same points in each song: the end of Hand in Glove, the chord changes before the chorus of Girl Afraid, the line in The Queen is Dead where he sings "we can go for a walk where it's quiet and dry". I'm still not sure why the last one had such an effect. Two decades later, Spotify has built an algorithm that aims to quantify the amount of sadness in a music track.

Do you get down to Jackson Five, or is Stravinsky more your style? Artificial intelligence (AI) that predicts taste in music might seem stranger than fiction, but researchers at Jönköping University in Sweden and Maastricht University in the Netherlands believe they've cracked the code. In a paper published on the preprint server Arxiv.org, the team described a system that considers a person's listening behaviors and, using machine learning algorithms and psychological models, infers their "musical sophistication." "Psychological models are increasingly being used to explain … behavioral traces," the team wrote. "The use of domain dependent psychological models allows for more fine-grained identification of behaviors [like music listening] and provide a deeper understanding behind the occurrence of those behaviors."

Apple, a secretive organization staffed by technological visionaries able to predict the future of technology, has ordered a television series based on Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels, an epic saga about … a secretive organization staffed by technological visionaries able to predict the future of technology. There is one major difference between the two: Apple is located on the edge of the continent, while Asimov's tale takes place on the edge of the galaxy. Foundation is considered one of Asimov's masterpieces, right up there with the Robot series, which merged with the Foundation series later in Asimov's career. Unlike some other classic sci-fi, Asimov's work has mostly resisted major studio film adaptation, with only the underwhelming Bicentennial Man in 1999 and I, Robot in 2004 to his name. Asimov's works are quiet and philosophical compared with those of his contemporaries, and Foundation is probably the most challenging one to choose to adapt. Whatever Apple and showrunners David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman decide, the finished product likely won't stick to the structure of the first novel, which consists of five short stories taking place over hundreds of years with no major recurring characters except a dead man whose holographic recordings show up every once in a while in a time capsule.

If, like most Game of Thrones fans, you're still looking for ways to fill the entertainment void until Thrones returns for its final season in 2019, then boy do we have some good news for you. Thanks to developer Nerial and game publisher Devolver Digital, fans will soon be able to sit the Iron Throne in the Tinder-inspired strategy game Reigns: Game of Thrones. In this spinoff of the original Reigns, players can rule Westeros as popular characters like Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, and Cersei Lannister as they swipe left or right to make decisions that will determine their fate as the king or queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Just as is true in the show, all rulers must die. But the game allows for a variety of outcomes that could only take place in alternate Thrones timelines, such as Sansa Stark marrying Jaime Lannister.

Chinese drone leader DJI unveiled two new drone models at a press conference in New York City that bring higher quality cameras and the ability to zoom in while flying. They are updates to the Mavic line; the Mavic 2 Pro has a camera made by legendary imaging company Hasselblad, and the Mavic 2 Zoom lets users get closer to the action with the zoom. This is important because drones use wide-angle lenses to show the expanse of the area you're flying over. And now, with the zoom, users will be able to zero in on other things on the ground. Flight time from a battery, which has lasted around 20 minutes with the original Mavic Pro, is increased to 31 minutes on the new 2 Pro.

Dronemaker DJI announced Thursday two new models aimed squarely at the prosumer-to-professional crowd: The Mavic 2 Pro and the Mavic 2 Zoom. Both of DJI's new Mavic 2 drones are built around the same basic design. The key difference is in the camera payload: The Mavic 2 Pro packs a 20-megapixel camera with 1-inch CMOS sensor from Hasselblad, the high-end camera maker in which DJI invested in 2015. The Mavic 2 Zoom, meanwhile, offers a 24-48mm lens that lets photographers and videographers reach farther-away subjects or add telephoto compression effects to their work. The lens on the Mavic 2 Zoom also allows for the drone's new "Dolly Zoom" effect, which works by zooming in on a subject while simultaneously flying away from it.

HBO has announced a new Game of Thrones game for smartphones and PC, developed by Nerial, the award-winning studio behind the Reigns series. Reigns: Game of Thrones casts the player as a king or queen trying to avoid rebellions, disastrous wars, assassination or supernatural interference to stay on the throne as long as possible. It's presented as a kind of card game meets Tinder, where underlings ask players to make judgement calls ranging from whom to invite to the ball to whether to suck up to the clergy, or what to do about the enormous dragon descending upon your stronghold. Decisions are taken by swiping left or right. The game explores scenarios for the futures of key characters from the Game of Thrones books and TV show, as prophesied by red priestess Melisandre.

Comcast's vice president of AI product, Jeanine Heck, speaks with TechRepublic's Tonya Hall about the success of an AI voice remote product, integrated with deep learning. The following is an edited transcript of the interview. Tonya Hall: It's push to talk, and not always listening. Jeanine Heck: Thank you, Tonya. Hall: So, what is your role entail, exactly? Heck: My role is really to be a product manager, and that entails working with the engineering team to ensure that we're building products that are valuable to our customers, and so it's important for me in my role to understand the customers needs, how they use our products today, how they may want to use our products tomorrow, and also making sure that the products are very competitive in the marketplace.