More than 900 Google workers have signed a letter objecting to the tech giant's treatment of temporary contractors, in what organizers are calling "an historical coalition" between Google's full-time employees [FTEs] and temps, vendors and contractors [TVCs]. In March, Google abruptly shortened the contracts of 34 temp workers on the "personality" team for Google Assistant – the Alexa-like digital assistant that reads you the weather, manages your calendar, sends a text message, or calls you an Uber through your phone or smart speaker. The cuts, which affected contractors around the globe, reinvigorated the debate over Googles's extensive use of TVCs, amid a growing labor movement within the company. In recent months, Google FTEs and TVCs have been increasingly vocal in protesting both their working conditions and the ethics of their employer. "For years, Google has boasted of its ability to scale up and down very quickly, and [sic] vocal in its ability to'navigate changes with agility,'" the letter reads.

Jefferson Graham takes a look at two products that bring Alexa and voice-activated controls to the auto, Garmin Speak and Roav Viv. LOS ANGELES -- "Alexa, what music should I listen to?" It's an interesting question that follows up with Amazon's Alexa asking follow-ups, one of the few times the personal assistant gets really conversational and makes suggestions. Alexa, via Amazon Music, gave me options: the late, legendary gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt or singers Adele or James Taylor. I went for Django, and with that, my personal DJ robot had followed through successfully, finding three artists I love. Such it is with music commands for personal assistants.

We describe experiments towards building a conversational digital assistant that considers the preferred conversational style of the user. In particular, these experiments are designed to measure whether users prefer and trust an assistant whose conversational style matches their own. To this end we conducted a user study where subjects interacted with a digital assistant that responded in a way that either matched their conversational style, or did not. Using self-reported personality attributes and subjects' feedback on the interactions, we built models that can reliably predict a user's preferred conversational style.

The Amazon Echo, Dot and other Alexa-enabled devices don't often play well together in the same house – particularly if they're within earshot of each other. That wasn't a problem because most of us had only one smart speaker – if we had any at all. Amazon says the number of households with more than one smart assistant-enabled device doubled last year. That lends credence to an independent survey taken late last year declaring that nearly 1 in 4 US households had a voice-enabled device inside – and about 40 percent of those have more than one. Which can only mean that more of us are experiencing the headaches of these early days in the Alexa multi-device experience.

We recently ended our week-long investigation into How We Reproduce--or, as it turns out, how we don't. In addition to covering a few forms of contraception in our fertility and pregnancy gear roundup, we also took a look at advances in male contraception and gleefully childfree forums. The good news is that if you're not spending money on baby bottles and strollers, then you have plenty left in your pocket for Dell's March Madness sale. If you've been looking for an affordable smart speaker, Amazon's Echo and Fire Tablet sale ends today. We also have a few other great bargains on some of our favorite action camera, smart TVs, and more.

Tablets often go unused, and when you do want to play with it, it's probably dead because you forgot to charge it. At least, that's what happens to me. Lenovo, however, has come up with a potential solution to the neglected tablet dilemma: the Smart Tab. It was a finalist for Best of CES this year in the smart home category, and here's why: You can place it inside a companion Bluetooth speaker dock, at which point it becomes an Alexa-powered smart display similar to Amazon's Echo Show. This way, when the Smart Tab is not being used as a tablet, it still has a purpose as a smart display.

The slow death of Wunderlist continues. Beginning April 15, Microsoft will disconnect Cortana and Wunderlist, so that you won't be able to issue oral reminders via Cortana any more. As of January, Cortana integrates with Microsoft To-Do, though you'll need to be running a Windows Insider version of the Windows 10 April 2019 Update and follow some convoluted setup instructions to enable it. In the meantime, though, Microsoft is obliquely notifying customers that Wunderlist is being de-prioritized. That's because you'll have to click on the Cortana/search field, navigate to the Notebook, then to Connected Services, and finally to the Wunderlist button.

Amazon's Alexa needs its own robotic body to reach its full potential, creators of the smart assistant say. It may mean future versions of the popular gadget are able to follow their owners around the house and listen to conversations with greater ease. Rohit Prasad, head scientist at Amazon's Alexa division, claims the only way to rid the AI-assistant of its shackles is to'give it eyes and let it explore the world'. He said this would be the only way for the devices to better understand the ambiguity and complexity of human language. Rohit Prasad, head scientists at Amazon's Alexa division, claims the only way to rid the AI-assistant of its shackles is to give it'eyes to explore the world'.

"Alexa, what's the weather going to be like today." It's taken decades for scientists to understand natural human speech to the point where voice-activated interfaces such as Alexa, the natural language processing system by Amazon, are sufficiently enabled to be successfully accepted by consumers. Alexa is who talks to users of Amazon's Echo products including the Echo, Dot and Tap, as well as Amazon Fire TV and other third-party products. Even since 2012, when the patent was filed for what would ultimately become Amazon's artificial intelligence system Alexa, there has been tremendous growth in capabilities and the credit for that growth goes to machine learning. For something that we do every day without giving it any thought, conversation between machines and humans is complex.

You're cool chatting up Amazon Alexa, the Google Assistant and Siri and having each come alive when you utter the "Alexa," "Hey, Google" or "Hey, Siri" wake words. But your kids are also engaging with the popular digital voices inside the smart speakers in your home and your big concern has mostly to do with privacy. Amazon and Google really cornered the smart speaker market. That's the chief takeaway from a new study, exclusive to USA TODAY and conducted in February, by Common Sense Media and SurveyMonkey Audience. Robocall crackdown: FTC continues robocall crackdown, stops groups responsible for'billions' of calls More than 4 in 10 of the 1,127 parents of children ages 2 to 8 who participated in the survey say their family uses a smart speaker such as the Amazon Echo or Google Home.