Whether your interaction with artificial intelligence (AI) is limited to science-fiction or you spend more time in your day talking to Siri and Alexa than actual humans, you can't hide from the fact AI is changing the world. This week, the UK's new digital strategy was launched, which dedicated £17.3m to research and development of robotics and AI. Out of the industries welcoming this technology with open arms, finance and banking is one of the biggest. It's not hard to see why: when companies are dealing with large amounts of data, handing over control to a machine learning system that can analyse and understand information much faster than a human being is an obvious benefit. Where is this new technology having an impact in the finance sector?

Have a question about taxes, vehicle licensing or simply need the phone number for a state agency? If you live in Mississippi, just ask Alexa, Amazon's digital assistant that has been programmed to also work with state and local governments. In fact, Mississippi is one of several governments that uses so-called chatbots to handle a range of basic but frequently asked questions. In Utah, teenagers can solicit help reviewing questions that might be on a driver's test. In Los Angeles, residents can get detailed information about city-sponsored events.

Earlier this summer, Amazon launched the invitation-only Amazon Echo Look to help people feel confident about learning to dress themselves. Today, the device is connecting to Amazon Spark, so users can ask each other for fashion advice. Combining the two means you can use Amazon's Instagram-like social media platform to crowdsource votes on your outfits, getting opinions from real users instead of just Amazon-hired "fashion specialists." The Echo Look takes full-body selfies and already provides fashion advice through machine learning. Now, with the addition of Spark, human insight will be added into the mix.

"Star Wars: The Last Jedi" has been a box office success, racking up more than $220 million during its opening weekend, and is a hit with critics but its audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is barely floating above 50 percent as the result of what appears to be an organized review bombing campaign. Of the more than 116,000 audience reviews "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" has received so far, just 55 percent have been positive. Many of the negative reviews take issue for what the viewers perceive to be too political and pushing a "social justice warrior" agenda. It's not often that a film was well received by critics as "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" struggles to please fans. While the franchise has a giant and rabid fan base, it appears the audience review section has been invaded by the only group more dedicated than Star Wars diehards: trolls.

Artificial intelligence has been around for a while and it is definitely here to stay. Everyday experiences with Siri, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa are all powered by AI. In 2016, Deloitte Global estimated that 2.5 trillion pictures would be shared or stored online. If you want to search for a certain picture you took one night while eating pizza, AI or Google can help show a filtered result of all photos of you having pizza. In short, we have to accept the fact that AI is here to aid human intelligence and make our lives better. Now let's focus on marketing: AI influences analytics, social media communications, outbound marketing and even content marketing.

An Amazon Echo sits on a table in New York. An IHS survey estimates that there are 20 billion connected devices globally as of this year. Will 2018 be "The Year of IoT"? Not exactly, but the future looks promising and 2018 will show a promising trajectory. Despite the huge gains in connectivity, the truth is 2018 will be more of a steady (rather than explosive) growth period for the IoT, full of fits and spasms, and everything that goes along with them.

If you're tiring of the Echo Look's AI-powered style tips, we have good news. Now, you can submit your full-body selfies to the Amazon Spark hive for feedback from real-life humans. The e-retail giant launched the camera-equipped Echo Look in June as an invite-only purchase, following it up with its Instagram-style social shopping feed, Amazon Spark, in July. Here's how it works: You snap selfies in the outfits you're planning on wearing using the Echo Look and instead of just sharing them with Amazon's algorithms (or with friends and family), you can now upload them to Amazon Spark for advice from complete strangers. After all, what could be better for your self-esteem than a bunch of randoms judging and commenting on your clothes and body?

Smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home have proved useful -- but they tend not to sound very good. Sure, they're serviceable in a pinch, and are better than most cheap Bluetooth speakers, but they don't compare to options like the entire Sonos lineup, let alone a nice set of bookshelf speakers like the Audioengine A5 . That's slowly changing, though: The Alexa-powered Sonos One speaker performs well and is affordable, while Apple's forthcoming HomePod sounded excellent in a brief demo we saw earlier this year. Google's Home Max is the company's first attempt to join the HiFi audio space -- it does everything that the smaller Home speakers do, but with significantly larger and higher-caliber components. Of course, that higher quality comes at a significantly higher price. At $399, the Home Max is more comparable with dedicated, higher-quality speakers.

Ring founder and chief executive Jamie Siminoff holds a Ring Video Doorbell, left, that has a video camera so residents can see who's knocking with a smartphone app. Ring founder and chief executive Jamie Siminoff holds a Ring Video Doorbell, left, that has a video camera so residents can see who's knocking with a smartphone app. Before you buy any "smart" gadgets, make sure they're not dumb. This holiday season, a third of Americans plan to buy a smart home device, according to the Consumer Technology Assn. The trick is figuring out which ones are worth the cost, trouble and inevitable security risks.

Today's leading technology companies are weaving their ecosystems into our homes and our lives, placing their young AIs at the center of it all.