March is in like a lion, out like a lamb. But there's nothing like great prices on desktops, smart locks, and Segways to help you keep dreaming of sunnier times. With the help of our friends at TechBargains, we've pulled together some of the best deals from around the web to chase off the very last dregs of the winter doldrums. Dell's Inspiron 3650 desktops are a popular pick, and for good reason. With code INS599, you can pay $599, over $600 off the original list price of $1212. You get a fast, versatile desktop with 16 GB RAM and a 2 TB hard drive--plenty of space for your music, movies, and photos.

Xiaomi already offers laptops (the Mi Notebook Pro and Mi Notebook Air), but it's now getting into PC gaming with a new model for the Chinese market. The literally-named Mi Gaming Laptop offers decent performance for the price, with a 15.6-inch wide-gamut color screen, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 GPU, 7th-gen Intel Core i7 CPU and gaming keyboard, all for RMB 8,999 (around $1,440). Xiaomi didn't specify the size, but given the narrow screen bezels and brushed aluminum chassis, it should be compact and light for a 15.6-inch laptop. Other specs include 16GB of RAM, a 256GB NVMe SSD, and a 1TB hard disk. If the price is too steep for the high-end model, Xiaomi is also offering a variant with NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti graphics, 8GB of RAM and a 128GB/1TB SSD/HDD.

Anyone who has been frustrated asking questions of Siri or Alexa--and then annoyed at the digital assistant's tone-deaf responses--knows how dumb these supposedly intelligent assistants are, at least when it comes to emotional intelligence. "Even your dog knows when you're getting frustrated with it," says Rosalind Picard, director of Affective Computing Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. "Siri doesn't yet have the intelligence of a dog," she says. Yet developing that kind of intelligence--in particular, the ability to recognize human emotions and then respond appropriately--is essential to the true success of digital assistants and the many other artificial intelligences (AIs) we interact with every day. Whether we're giving voice commands to a GPS navigator, trying to get help from an automated phone support line, or working with a robot or chatbot, we need them to really understand us if we're to take these AIs seriously.

In this article we are going to go over the key differences between these topics and clear up a few misconceptions surrounding them. We have heard a lot of talk about these subjects and as can be expected of buzzwords they can be a little confusing or even misleading at times. Otherwise referred to as AI, the original term was invented by John McCarthy circa 1956. This term is used to describe any machine or computer that can perform human like tasks. Chatting, recognizing objects, etc. Common examples include chat-bots and virtual assistants such as Amazons Alexa, Siri from Apple or Google Assistant on Android.

This column describes work being done at Nuance Communication in developing virtual personal assistants (VPAs) that can engage in extended task center dialogues and the involve the coordination of many complex modules, along with conversational and collaborative support to such VPAs.

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. Smart assistants are all the rage right now. Whether you like having Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri answer your many questions and perform various tasks, having a hands-free smart assistant adds ease (and fun) to your everyday life. Smart speakers come in a range of shapes and sizes at a variety of price points, and the Echo Show sits at the high end of that range.

Q. Can I have a conversation with Google Assistant, or will there be an update in the future that will let me have one? A. Google Assistant, the company's voice-based helper software that is similar to Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana software, can already hold basic two-way conversations based on spoken or typed questions and commands. However, more intricate interaction with all these virtual assistant apps is coming as companies expand their research into the scientific areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing. The Google Assistant software is available as an app for Android and iOS devices, built into Google Home and other speakers, Android-based wearables, cars, televisions, smart-home appliances and other gear. If you are not sure how to talk to the program, the Google Assistant site has a lengthy list of the questions, commands and topics that you can use with the software, complete with suggestions on how to phrase your requests.

Even the most complex topics can be segregated in easy to consume buckets. Let me try to explain them and let's start with the evolution: Sometimes it's easy to understand, when you ask Siri, Cortana or OK Google to get you directions. Sometimes it's less obvious, like when you make an abnormal purchase on your credit card and don't get a fraud alert from your bank. AI, ML and DL are everywhere and Data Science is the interdisciplinary field of methonds to extract the knowledge needed. All these technologies are making a huge difference in our lives every day and evoloving fast by a magnitude of people working to improve them consistently.

Whether you realize it or not, artificial intelligence (AI) is already shaping our world. Whenever you use Siri or Alexa, you are already communicating with digital assistance – a form of AI that is pegged as an "intelligent digital assistant." These AI assistants are designed to make your life easier. Now, it is clear they are headed to the classroom as well. According to Artificial Intelligence Market in the US Education Sector 2017-2021, experts expect AI in education to grow by "47.50% during the period 2017-2021."

Siri and Alexa are clearly far from perfect, but there is hope that steady progress in machine learning will turn them into articulate helpers before long. A new test, however, may help show that a fundamentally different approach is required for AI systems to actually master language. Developed by researchers at the Allen Institute for AI (AI2), a nonprofit based in Seattle, the AI2 Reasoning Challenge (ARC) will pose elementary-school-level multiple-choice science questions. Each question will require some understanding of how the world works. The project is described in a related research paper (pdf).