Google Assistant is now capable of firing a handgun. The artificial intelligent (AI) assistant has been filmed pulling the trigger for the first time as part of a new video project from artist Alexander Reben. 'Ok Google, activate gun,' Reben can be heard off-screen telling the Google Home. The 30-second'disturbing' video shows the smart speaker process his command, and then pull the air pistol trigger -- firing a round into an apple and knocking it from its perch next to the gun. Google Assistant also responds, saying: 'Sure, turning on the gun.' Artist and roboticist Alexander Reben said creating the Google Home-activated weapon was'easy'.

Apple's annual developer conference, WWDC, kicks off on Monday in San Jose, California. We'll get a first look at the newest updates in store for the iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac, and other Apple products. We're not expecting much in terms of whizz-bang feature announcements this year; the company has reportedly decided to take a step back and hone its existing software offerings. However, we'll still see improvements to Apple's operating systems. Apple would be smart to give Siri priority among its consumer-facing updates.

With so many connected devices making their way into our living rooms and bedrooms and onto our persons, it was no surprise when gadgets started making their way into our kitchens. You can buy so many WiFi- or Bluetooth-enabled widgets to help out with your cooking now, from smart Crock-Pots to app-controlled cooktops. Some are pretty dumb -- who really needs a toaster that pings your phone to say it's done even though it literally only takes three minutes? A smart thermometer that tells you when your pork roast is at optimal temperature after hours and hours of slow cooking makes a little more sense. However, you only have so much counter space, so you better choose wisely when it comes to adding new tech to your kitchen.

In the AI arms race, Google's I/O conference is akin to Russia's Victory Day parade -- an annual, carefully-orchestrated pullback of the curtains hiding otherwise-secret projects, designed to showcase technical prowess and achievements. This years I/O highlight was Duplex, Google Assistant feature that-- using recurrent neural-network-based AI (and a telephone) -- will schedule appointments for you. To demonstrate, Duplex called two businesses: a hair-salon and a restaurant. With lifelike voices and natural conversation flow -- including appropriate disfluencies (the technical term for "hmms," "uh's", etc.) --Duplex appeared to fool both humans into thinking a living, breathing, potential customer was on the line. By displaying behavior indistinguishable from that of a human, some think Duplex could pass the Turing test.

At its F8 developer conference, Facebook announced Facebook Dating, an in-app feature that will spice up the social media platform with some romance, meaningful romance--or so Facebook hopes. The feature bears striking similarity to the dating app Hinge, which allows users to scroll through detailed profiles and start conversations not by merely saying hello but by commenting on a specific profile item. For example, you can click on a picture of a crush's trip to Morocco and mention that you've been there, too. You can also simply "like" an image, video, or question response to signify your interest. So far, Hinge's creators have played off the similarities as a compliment, and there's not much else they can do about it anyway.

We consider a particular instance of a common problem in recommender systems: using a database of book reviews to inform user-targeted recommendations. In our dataset, books are categorized into genres and sub-genres. To exploit this nested taxonomy, we use a hierarchical model that enables information pooling across across similar items at many levels within the genre hierarchy. The main challenge in deploying this model is computational: the data sizes are large, and fitting the model at scale using off-the-shelf maximum likelihood procedures is prohibitive. To get around this computational bottleneck, we extend a moment-based fitting procedure proposed for fitting single-level hierarchical models to the general case of arbitrarily deep hierarchies. This extension is an order of magnetite faster than standard maximum likelihood procedures. The fitting method can be deployed beyond recommender systems to general contexts with deeply-nested hierarchical generalized linear mixed models.

Microsoft has just earned the title of the third most valuable company in the world. The software giant saw its market cap skyrocket to just over $760 billion on Wednesday, making it that much closer to being the world's most valuable company -- a title held by Apple and closely followed by Amazon. But that doesn't mean Microsoft has lost out on any bragging rights, however, as its new market capitalization means that it has surged ahead of Google parent company Alphabet, in terms of valuation. Microsoft is now worth close to $20 billion more than Alphabet, which has a market cap of roughly $744 billion. It's the first time that such occurrence has happened in three years Microsoft is now worth close to $20 billion more than Alphabet, which has a market cap of roughly $744 billion.

For better or worse, Google Assistant can do it all. From mundane tasks like turning on your lights and setting reminders to convincingly mimicking human speech patterns, the AI helper is so capable it's scary. Its latest (unofficial) ability, though, is a bit more sinister. Artist Alexander Reben recently taught Assistant to fire a gun. Fortunately, the victim was an apple, not a living being.

Moscow-based search giant Yandex has revealed a Russian speaking smart speaker to take on Amazon. The $160 device will work with its digital assistant'Alice', becoming the latest challenger to take on the leading voice-activated home helpers from Silicon Valley. Yandex is targeting the Russian-speaking market with its Yandex.Station speaker, as well as a platform on which third-party developers can programme Alice to order pizza, check mobile phone bills or buy plane tickets. The $160 device will work with its digital assistant'Alice', becoming the latest challenger to take on the leading voice-activated home helpers from Silicon Valley. The Yandex Station has Bluetooth capabilities and an HDMI port for streaming television on connected displays, and has including two 10W audio drivers and a 30W woofer.

A new 40,000-person study of smart speakers and their connection to retail purchases shows that Amazon Echo buyers increase their spending at Amazon significantly after purchasing a smart speaker. "We surveyed over 40,000 Amazon customers," says Adam Marchick, CEO of Alpine.AI, which help companies build integrations with Amazon Echo and Google Home. "For people who have Echos, in the past 12 months they've significantly increased spending on pet food and treats, baking and cooking, grooming, and health and beauty products." Not only have people increased spending at Amazon, Marchick says, they've actually decreased spending elsewhere. "[Echo] is causing people to get more reliant on Amazon," he told me last week.