Coming off its first quarterly revenue decline in 13 years, Apple Inc. kicks off its annual developers' conference Monday in San Francisco facing questions about whether the company's best days are behind it. The focus of the weeklong Worldwide Developers Conference is expected to be on Siri, Apple's digital assistant. When Apple introduced Siri as an iPhone feature in 2011, it heralded a future of people finding information or completing tasks on their devices by speaking rather than typing or tapping. That vision of Siri hasn't fully materialized, leaving the door open for other technology companies to push into Apple's turf. Google parent Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have all introduced voice-activated digital assistants that rely on artificial intelligence -- technology that allows computers to understand inferences and context so they can make decisions like a human brain instead of following programmed instructions.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has used virtual assistants in households ever since it rolled out with its Echo speaker, in 2014. Echo has been a great hit among customers. Many parents think that Amazon's digital assistant should incorporate a "family mode" to better help their kids learn manners and social ethics. Thanks to the device's ability to comprehend verbal commands, the advent of "Alexa", Amazon's digital assistant, has encouraged the trend of "smart homes." Users can simply activate their Alexa-powered devices by calling out "Alexa"--a fairly easy trick to switch on the Bluetooth speaker.

Many years ago (don't ask me how I know this!) the hamburger chain Burger King began branding themselves with this slogan: "Have it your way!" It was pure marketing genius! The idea that you could order something, in this case a hamburger, at a fast food dispensary that would be tailor-made to your specific personal tastes was revolutionary – it set them apart from their competitors. Something similar happened when Amazon.com, one of the first major online stores in the Internet era, began suggesting books (and other products) to their customers that were an amazingly good match to each individual's personal tastes. Of course, Amazon accommodated its customers with this value-added service by invoking a scientific procedure, data science applied to customer data, not by asking customers directly (as did Burger King).

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) has been talking about the commercial use of drones for quite some time now. However, in a recent interview, CEO Jeff Bezos assured artificial intelligence (AI) is the next big thing. Nonetheless, Chinese firm Ehang might disagree with this idea; in fact, the company is betting on drone taxis as the next attention-grabbing innovation in a move that could remind readers of Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG)'s autonomous car initiative or Zee.Aero's flying car. Back in January, Ehang, a cameras and drones maker, presented its electric passenger drone, the Ehang 184. Now, the Chinese corporation has partnered with the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems (NIAS) and the Governor's Office of Economic Development (Goed) to test the vehicle and, ultimately, get regulatory approval.

Where else but the Code Conference can you expect to hear from the Tech industry's biggest players like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Google CEO Sundar Pichai? Corrections & Clarifications: An earlier version gave the wrong year Amazon won Emmys for Transparent. Speaking to the Code conference here, Bezos, whose company has a hit on its hand with the Echo connected speaker, said, "it's hard to overstate how big of an impact this will have on society over the next 20 years. It doesn't mean phones are going to go away or that voice actions will replace screens. As long as people have eyes, they have screens."

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to lead a session at the SAS Global Forum, along with Intel VP Steve Brown and Lori Schafer, SAS Retail Executive Advisor, on how retailers can create better in-store context for today's connected customer. SAS Institute is a Cisco analytics partner and we had some exciting discussions during this event. Let's take a minute to define what we mean by the connected consumer. First, let's not get too focused on the idea of Millennials or Generation Y – users of all ages are very active on their mobile devices and social media. What we are talking about is not an age group, but a group of consumers that is always connected via their smart devices.

Jeff Bezos has become a household name in the retail and tech industries for his ability to anticipate trends and his willingness to take risks. Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, holds the Kindle Paperwhite at the introduction of the new Amazon Kindle Fire HD and Paperwhite devices. When the Amazon CEO spoke at Recode's Code Conference eight years ago, the online retail giant had just recently launched its Kindle e-reader, which has since proven to be a tremendous success. Bezos attended that same conference Tuesday evening in Los Angeles, but this time, his goals were even more extravagant and future-focused than ever: In his talk with Recode editor-at-large Walt Mossberg, he discussed artificial intelligence and his ideas for saving the planet. During their conversation, which was recorded and published by Recode, Bezos claimed that the way to protect the planet is "by going into outer space."

Following the event, Mossberg appeared on CNBC on Wednesday, to talk about this dialogue. Below is a look into five things the editor learned from Bezos -- also described in this ReCode article. One lesson learned from Bezos was about wandering down diverse ideas roads, encouraging brainstorming and taking risks. When working on a project, the CEO likes to be "stubborn on the vision, but flexible on the details," sticking with ideas until "the last high-judgment champion folds his or her cards." As suggested not only by Bezos, but also by Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG)'s CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB)'s COO Sheryl Sandberg, artificial intelligence will be the next big thing in the tech innovation arena.

Welcome to Mossberg, a weekly commentary and reviews column on The Verge and Recode by veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg, now an Executive Editor at The Verge and Editor at Large of Recode. Last week, I interviewed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on stage at our third annual Code Conference. It wasn't my first such public conversation with Bezos -- we had done an earlier interview in 2008 at the D conference, the predecessor to Code. Bezos joked that he appeared at our conferences "every eight years like clockwork." Back in May of 2008, the Kindle was still quite new, and we focused on that.

At the upscale Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, California, people are taking selfies with a roving robot that looks like a cross between Wall-E's girlfriend and R2D2. It's actually a K5 robot security guard--a 300-pound, sensor-filled droid made by a startup called Knightscope that patrols the area and detects suspicious behavior. K5 is part of a small but growing number of human-scale mobile robots that are finding employment outside the confines of industrial settings like factories. They're invading consumer spaces including retail stores, hotels, and sidewalks in a quest to deliver services alongside human staff members for a fraction of the price of employing people to do a variety of typically unexciting tasks. The machines come with navigation capabilities and safety features to allow them to perform simple jobs autonomously without putting people at risk.