The possibilities clog our news feeds, create interesting conversations, and give tech leaders inspiration to explore solutions. What will this mean for us as humans? Could this impact all of society? With all the questions being asked, only one thing is absolutely clear. We're about to enter one of the biggest transformations our society has witnessed in the last century - if not millennium.

Apple has released the first major update for its HomePod smart speaker - and has its sights firmly set on Amazon and Google. The new iOS 11.4 update released today adds multi room capabilities to the Siri smart speaker, allowing users to play music in other rooms, in in every room at once. It comes as Apple is believed to be putting the finishing update to a major update to its Siri AI software. The free update also adds new features such as the ability to store iMessages in the cloud. The new iOS 11.4 update released today adds multi room capabilities to the Siri smart speaker, allowing users to play music in other rooms, in in every room at once.

The little league team you coach just won the big game, and you ask them if they want to go out for pizza or for burgers. Each kid starts screaming their preference, and you go with whatever was the loudest. This is basically how a neural net works but on multiple levels. The top-level nodes get some input, each detects a certain property and screams when it sees it...the more intense the property, the louder they scream. Now you have a bunch of nodes screaming "it's dark!", "it's has red!", "it's roundish!" as various volumes.

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. Last weekend saw the release of "Solo: A Star Wars Story," a movie that at least one critic maintains is salvaged by the introduction of a brilliant new droid. On that note, what -- or who? -- is the greatest of all movie robots? The only reasonable answer is Robby the Robot from "Forbidden Planet." A trailblazer for android-kind, he was the first instance of a bag of bolts that actually had personality, charm, a sense of fully-formed character.

The new Apple HomePod is displayed at an Apple Store on Feb. 9, 2018 in San Francisco. NEW YORK -- "Hey Siri, play jazz in the living room, hip-hop in the kitchen." Apple's HomePod speaker is getting a little bit smarter today, through a software update that arrives via iOS 11. Smarter, that is, when it comes to playing music. For starters, you now have the ability to "pair" two HomePods for a full stereo effect, with the left and right speakers playing the left and right audio channels accordingly, and independently adjusting to where you place them.

The most interesting character in Solo is a robot. L3-37, voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag), is a free-thinking, loud-mouthed Droid who introduces an entirely new concept into the Star Wars universe: robot rights. From the beginning, Droids like R2-D2 and C-3PO were presented as beings with thoughts and personalities of their own. But they also served masters and faced blatant anti-Droid sentiment, like the barkeep who refused to serve their kind in Episode IV. And they were forced to obey humans through restraining bolts, which limited their cognitive functions.

Machine learning (ML) is profoundly significant and alongside it, is the user interface (UI), which denotes wearable parts of a gadget, display screens, texts, graphics, physical look, or appearance. However, as developers begin to take on more complex design tasks to match postmodern technologies such as artificial intelligence, the bone of contention is whether people will unquestionably accept output signals from machines as true reflections of human reasoning. It is to say, machine learning remains a rather complex and opaque process for the layman who doesn't understand how UX superimposes UI. In this post, discover why UX design matters and how it is changing ML in end product designs and products. How are app developers, programmers, webmasters, decision makers, and businesspersons adapting to the need for UX designers?

When Apple launched the HomePod in February of this year, early users squawked in equal measures about its unbelievable audio capabilities and the fact that it was a WiFi-connected smart speaker that didn't "talk" to other speakers. Its limits, not just around stereo pairing and multi-room audio but also around some basic voice commands, established it early on as a $349 product that only true Apple fans or audiophiles should consider. But Apple promised then that key updates were in the works for HomePod, that super impressive sound machine built into a body like a soft roll of toilet paper. Now, a week ahead of its giant annual software conference, those key updates have come. HomePod is still one of the more expensive smart speakers in its class, and Apple doesn't plan to offer any kind of bundle deal on the hardware.

Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton) has ventured into ShogunWorld this Season 2 of HBO's "Westworld," and being in the Japanese theme park is quite an eye-opener for the host. "There's a parallel experience between what she went through and what's been going on with these other AIs," Newton told The Hollywood Reporter about Maeve's journey. "There's a betrayal, that not only is her story her story, but countless others in the park." However, her being there is helping other hosts gain more independence. "We're seeing how these characters are also breaking free from their loops," Newton continued.

A number of recent articles discuss Hollywood's concern over the recent wave of multi-million dollar Netflix deals with stars like Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy or the Obamas to produce content for the platform. In contrast to the dynamism of Netflix, the traditional movie industry is hamstrung by a business model that depends heavily on sequels, prequels and remakes of popular movies from several decades ago and where success seemingly depends on random or unknown factors. The simple truth is that right now, thanks to several global hits and a steady revenue stream from its 125 million subscribers, Netflix can afford to take risks and produce any project it wants and hire the talent required to make it a success. The company's valuation, at $164 billion, has grown more than 70% since January, overtaking Disney as the world's most valuable media company, which is worth $152 billion, and with some key differences: Netflix employs fewer than 5,000 people, compared to Disney's almost 200,000, and also seems to have found the secret of permanent success for the vast majority of its productions. In October 2015, just days before Netflix entered the Spanish market, I wrote a position paper (in Spanish) predicting "a first year of moderate position taking, followed by intense expansion and progressive growth as it increases its product offering thanks to the recovery of the contracts of its best-known series and the development of its own productions." It now appears my initial optimism has been surpassed, due fundamentally to having introduced into the analysis a fundamental factor: the supremacy of models based on data analytics.