As voice assistants go, Siri isn't up to scratch. Apple knows it, you know it, and so too does Google. That's why it wants to get iOS folk using its Assistant instead. There's just one issue: Siri is throughly baked in to Apple's platform, relegating other digital helpers to the wayside. To get past that, Google is turning to Siri Shortcuts.

The best-selling gadget of 2018 will surely be the Apple iPhone, which historically has been the world's biggest-selling product, to the tune of over 200 million units yearly. But when we asked over 1,000 consumers to pick the top tech gadgets of 2018, the iPhone didn't even make the top 5. In an exclusive SurveyMonkey/Audience poll for USA TODAY, they picked the Samsung Galaxy S9 phone as their top pick for the year, at 13 percent. The S9, the successor to last year's S8, is notable for having a camera that can shoot in lower light than the iPhone, expandable memory for when all those photos and videos say "memory full" and the ability to shoot video in super slow motion. Tied for second place at 10 percent are the Amazon-branded Fire TV Edition televisions, which offer channel switching and other functionality via the Alexa personal assistant.

Interacting with search systems, such as Web search engines, is the primary means of information access for most people. Search providers have invested billions of dollars developing search technologies, which power search engines and feature in many of today's virtual assistants (including Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana, and others). For decades, search has offered a plentiful selection of research challenges for computer scientists and the advertising models that fund industry investments are highly lucrative. Given the phenomenal success, search is often considered a "solved problem." There is some truth to this for fact-finding and navigational searches, but the interaction model and the underlying algorithms are still brittle in the face of complex tasks and other challenges, for example, presenting results in non-visual settings such as smart speakers.15

Today, people increasingly rely on computer agents in their lives, from searching for information, to chatting with a bot, to performing everyday tasks. These agent-based systems are our first forays into a world in which machines will assist, teach, counsel, care for, and entertain us. While one could imagine purely rational agents in these roles, this prospect is not attractive for several reasons, which we will outline in this article. The field of affective computing concerns the design and development of computer systems that sense, interpret, adapt, and potentially respond appropriately to human emotions. Here, we specifically focus on the design of affective agents and assistants.

Alexa connectivity looks set to arrive on a new wave of Bluetooth headphones, smartwatches and other devices after Amazon opened up its Alexa Mobile Accessory Kit. The software development kit was announced in January, and companies including Bose, Jabra and iHome have already committed to using the SDK in their devices. The kit allows manufacturers to build products that hook directly into the Alexa app on iOS or Android, rather than having to create their own app or Alexa skill. It also makes sure devices are automatically updated with new features whenever they arrive in the app. Qualcomm created a $299 reference design for a smart Alexa headset, which may help developers get started on their own Alexa Bluetooth devices.

If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. However, our picks and opinions are independent from USA Today's newsroom and any business incentives. You're well-aware of the daily discounts you can get on groceries and home essentials at Costco, but did you know your favorite wholesale store also offers major Black Friday deals? From early-bird sales to Thanksgiving-only deals, Costco is providing us with some much-needed holiday spirit and savings on personal electronics, vacuums, and more. To help you make sense of what's worth buying and which products are discounted when, we've sorted through Costco's offerings, compared prices, and tested many of the products ourselves.

Audiology, the leading programmatic audio marketplace, announced that it has opened its New York City headquarters. With a reach of 140MM unique listeners, the company, which is headed by David Krulewich, SVP, and Head of Programmatic Sales, is operating at scale with multiple clients, agencies and partners to provide data-driven audio solutions that reach highly targeted audiences in an omni-channel media world. "When you talk about online radio, there have been just two gold nuggets -- Pandora and Spotify. Audiology allows us to break those barriers and lets us access all the mom-and-pop radio people are listening to," explained David Feman, Vice President, Publicis' Spark Foundry unit, to MediaPost – which covered Audiology's launch. "According to eMarketer, digital audio is now the number one form of mobile media consumption, having surpassed even social media. And the trend is growing," said Mr. Krulewich.

But, whether you're looking at Siri, Alexa, or just the autocorrect features found in your smartphone keyboard, we aren't creating general purpose artificial intelligence. We're creating programs that can perform specific, narrow tasks. Whenever a company says it's coming out with a new "AI" feature, it generally means that the company is using machine learning to build a neural network. "Machine learning" is a technique that lets a machine "learn" how to better perform on a specific task. Machine learning is a fantastic technology with a lot of powerful uses.

More than 50 million smart speakers have been installed in American households. For police, that means 50 million potential virtual witnesses to crimes that occur in the privacy of one's home. But the legal protections for this type of privacy-invading, Internet of Things–enabled evidence are still very unclear. The question matters because one of those smart speakers was just called to be a witness in a brutal double homicide in New Hampshire. Timothy Verrill stands accused of stabbing Christine Sullivan and Jenna Pellegrini to death over suspicion that one of them was a police informant.

This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commissions. Read Wirecutter's continuously updated list of Black Friday deals here. Only available in Heather Gray, this $60 refurbished sale on our pick in our Alexa guide is the best price we've seen on this model to date. The Amazon Echo (2nd Gen) is our pick of Amazon's Alexa-controlled speakers.