Google brings video to the talking speaker category with the new Google Home Hub. USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham explains why the device has potential. When it comes to cutting the cord, the satellite companies are really being hit the hardest. That shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's looked at their pricing. Which I did for all of you this week.

"Everything is true…everything anybody has ever thought," Philip K. Dick – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It is impossible to escape from the fact that technology, and increasingly artificial intelligence (AI), has transformed everyday life. It all started with how we play our music, but Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa (along with other similar "virtual assistants") now have a daily interface with many of us. We are also, increasingly, now daily users of the Internet of Things (IoT) – connecting up smart fridges, boilers and alarm systems, each controllable from a smartphone. The "everyday" form of AI is almost unavoidable in the modern home, but, while not necessarily as obvious to you and me, there is also an ongoing, yet unseen growth in AI in the manufacturing sector. What is still lacking, however, is concrete regulation in place for the use and development of AI in the industry.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping our day-to-day lives, changing the way we see the world, pushing us out of our comfort zone, and bringing reality to the unimaginable. With the promise of personalization and eliminating mundane tasks, we have allowed AI to become intimately involved in our lives from listening devices in our homes to driverless cars on the road. AI has delivered personalized content in useful ways, but also some invasive ways. Google's Smart Reply provides sample responses when answering emails. These replies are tailored to how users like to respond and use the context of prior emails to determine what you would most likely say.

Virtual assistants like Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana, Google Assistant, and Apple Siri employ conversational experiences and language-understanding technologies to help users accomplish a range of tasks, from reminder creation to home automation. Voice is the primary means of engagement, and voice-activated assistants are growing in popularity; estimates as of June 2017 put the number of monthly active users of voice-based assistant devices in the U.S. at 36 million.a Many are "headless" devices that lack displays. Smart speakers (such as Amazon Echo and Google Home) are among the most popular devices in this category. Speakers are tethered to one location, but there are other settings where voice-activated assistants can be helpful, including automobiles (such as for suggesting convenient locations to help with pending tasks5) and personal audio (such as for providing private notifications and suggestions18).

Kaltheuner, F. and Bietti, E. Data is power: Towards additional guidance on profiling and automated decision-making in the GDPR.

Speech recognition is the newest technology fad empowered to recognize spoken words, which can further be converted into text. Speech Recognition encapsulates voice recognition, a technology deployed to identify a person based on their voice. AI-powered Speech Recognition has been the toast of offerings among major tech giants. The top-performing tech stocks, FAAMG or Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google are already offering the speech recognition feature on their devices through cutting-edge assistants like Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Siri. The pinnacle of Voice technology has happened at a quick pace.

From my Northern Irish vantage point, I coordinate and facilitate a collaborative network around AI. Our 30 members range from micro SMEs through to multinational organisations, such as Liberty IT and Allstate. As such, I am privy to an incredible range of AI based applications and solutions that are coming down the line, and I am always surprised at the pace of change in the industry. With every change, we need to take a few steps back and rethink how to frame the state of the art at that given time – so it's worth keeping in mind that what is state of the art at any given time may well be seen as mundane in just a few short months. For example, when the age of the AI personal assistant arrived with Google Assistant, Siri and Cortana, my framing focussed on trying to communicate that AI was no longer an abstract concept, but part of our everyday lives; albeit in a relatively limited manner. But it was only with the arrival of Amazon Alexa that many people were spending real money to own what is ultimately an AI product. Well… today things feel different again.

I called the second-generation Echo Dot "the Echo most people should buy." If you already have one, the only reason to upgrade to the new model is for its superior sound. The third-generation Dot is also prettier. It still looks like a hockey puck, but it now has softer edges and it's wrapped in your choice of charcoal, sandstone, or gray fabric. But if you're buying a smart speaker for all the things it can do besides playing music, the second-gen Dot is still around (though who knows for how long), and it costs $10 less.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Deep Learning etc. are not new terms. AI has been around for a decade now and Gartner predicts it will be a top five investment priority by 2020. AI's primary way of personalizing each stage of consumer journey has overwhelmed the world and has opened new doors for marketing and advertising. Siri, Alexa, Google assistant are making it easy for people to search anything with just a voice command or with the press of a button. Recommender systems is now things of the past and a primary platform for online shopping sites to earn more revenue.

Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and robotics are changing the world of work. However, to unlock the full potential AI it's integral for organizations to have the right mix of people, culture, and mindset? Is HR ready to lead this transformation? Robots and artificial intelligence (AI) seem to be penetrating every aspect of our life, at a startling pace. Machines and programs can self-learn, problem solve and think which means that, when combined with algorithms, technology, and big data, AI is now mainstream.