The company's ethos -- as explained by CEO Tim Cook time and again -- is that Apple cares more about being the best than being first. The $349 HomePod is proof that's not always true. Apple put considerable time and effort into making its first smart speaker sound better than its rivals, and I'd argue they succeeded. After a few solid days of testing, I can honestly say the HomePod is the best smart speaker I've ever heard -- it's just not very smart in the ways I was hoping. It's no secret that the HomePod was designed to be a speaker first and an assistant second.

This article contains mild spoilers for the first season of'Star Trek Discovery'. At its best, science fiction does more than just entertain, or ensure its cliffhanger is strong enough that you come back next week. The cool spaceships and robots are just the framework through which we explore the anxieties and morals of our society at large. And we're at such a febrile point in history that we need sci-fi to ground us in what's coming in the not-too-distant future. I've been preaching patience for a while now, but I don't think that I can defend Star Trek Discovery any further.

Big data is more than just a buzzword. In fact, the huge amounts of data that we're gathering could well change all areas of our life, from improving healthcare outcomes to helping to manage traffic levels in metropolitan areas and, of course, making our marketing campaigns far more powerful. That's because marketers are increasingly using artificial intelligence and machine learning to parse huge amounts of data and to draw conclusions. They can even use predictive analytics to figure out what customers and prospects are likely to do in the future and to adapt their communication materials as a result of it. In the same way that Netflix is able to use its huge amount of user data to create more personalized recommendations to its users, marketers will be able to gain a greater understanding of what people are actually doing on their websites.

We hear much about artificial intelligence these days and the threats it might hold for our future. However, like the most pernicious threats facing the world; global warming, resource depletion, the destruction of natural habitats it's all a few decades off so why, some short-sighted observers might say, …

LG Electronics is betting on artificial intelligence as the key feature of its upgraded premium V30 smartphone to be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress, the world's largest mobile exhibition, in Barcelona at the end of this month.

Now it plans to add the hardware that will let them run artificial–intelligence algorithms, too. ARM announced today that it has created its first dedicated machine-learning chips, which are meant for use in mobile and smart-home devices. The company says it's sharing the plans with its hardware partners, …

Let me preface this by saying it has been my experience, that barring the obvious bad apples, most people are basically good and want to do the right thing.

Artificial intelligence could be "billions of times smarter" than humans and people may need to merge with computers to survive, a futurist told CNBC on Tuesday. Ian Pearson, a futurist at Futurizon, said there will need to be a link between AI and a human brain.

Apple's technically impressive HomePod has literally been hacked into pieces, we get a taste of Qualcomm's potent smartphone chip (coming soon) and strap an editor into an Iron Man toy mask in the interests of Journalism with a capital'J'. You may not like the thought of paying Apple a pretty penny to fix the HomePod, but you might have to -- it definitely isn't meant for DIY repairs. An iFixit teardown has revealed a clever design that makes good use of a tiny space, but also nigh-on inaccessible. It appears you can pull the fabric mesh off with a drawstring, but almost everything else requires tearing things apart. Many elements are glued on (including the top and bottom), and there's one seam so thoroughly sealed that iFixit needed a hacksaw and ultrasonic cutter to get in.