"Of all the questions you could have asked…" That's how Microsoft Cortana, the digital assistant and female voice inside the new $199 Invoke voice-activated speaker from Harman Kardon, responded when I asked what she thought of Amazon Echo, the rival speaker it will inevitably draw comparisons to. It was Echo and its own chatty artificial intelligence-infused assistant Alexa, after all, that started what is rapidly becoming an increasingly crowded market for such intelligent cloud-connected speakers. The speakers let you use your voice to set alarms and timers, turn on lights, list appointments, deliver the news and play music. More: Google Home, Amazon Echo, Apple HomePod -- or all 3? How to choose a smart speaker Google's been expanding its lineup of Google Home speakers with the Google Assistant. Apple is readying a HomePod speaker with Siri for a December release.

Smart speakers are everywhere this year. So far, we've seen new entries from Apple, Amazon, Google and Sonos. Now, Microsoft is finally ready to join the party. The Harman Kardon Invoke is the first speaker to feature Microsoft's Cortana virtual assistant. Since it's coming from a brand known for audio gear, it promises better sound than the competition.

Harman Kardon's Invoke speaker, debuting Thursday for $199.95, may end up following in the footsteps of notable Microsoft-powered devices like Nokia's Windows phones: lovely hardware that's slightly tripped up by Microsoft's software and services. The soul of Harman's elegant, cylindrical smart speaker is Cortana, the digital assistant that lives within Windows 10. Cortana deftly steps in during the business day to manage reminders, answer questions about your schedule, reply to general queries about the weather, nearby restaurants, and place calls via Skype. She also serves as the majordomo for your digital home. The inherent tension between a productivity-minded assistant and a consumer-oriented device gives the Invoke a bit of a split personality, and we've split our stories as well.

Harman Kardon's Invoke is a pretty good speaker, and Microsoft's Cortana is a pretty good digital assistant. Put them together and you have a smart speaker that costs as much, but doesn't sound as good--and isn't as smart--as the brand-new Sonos One, powered by Amazon's Alexa. The Invoke's cylindrical form factor looks slightly less like a peppermill than the original Echo, and its flared bottom make it less susceptible to falling over. You'll find all kinds of Echo accessories designed to keep the Echo upright, or to protect it from damage if it gets toppled. Like Amazon's Echo, the Invoke has a volume-control ring circling its top.

"We think this could be the third wave where you have programmable objects blanketing your home," said David Eun, president of Samsung NEXT, Samsung's investment group, during an interview at The Wall Street Journal's WSJ D. Live technology conference. Companies across tech have been rushing to launch products and software for the so-called smart home. Inc.'s Alexa and Alphabet Inc.'s Google Assistant have made it possible to embed artificial intelligence in everyday home devices, letting people unlock doors and dim lights with their voices. Those companies and Apple Inc. are launching smart speakers, as well. Samsung has an inherent hardware advantage in this arena because it sells an array of appliances.

I was rehearsing a speech for an AI conference recently when I happened to mention Amazon Alexa. At which point Alexa woke up and announced: "Playing Selena Gomez." I had to yell "Alexa, stop!" a few times before she even heard me. But Alexa was oblivious to my annoyance. We're now surrounded by hyper-connected smart devices that are autonomous, conversational, and relational, but they're completely devoid of any ability to tell how annoyed or happy or depressed we are.

In most real-world settings such as recommender systems, finance, and healthcare, collecting useful information is costly and requires an active choice on the part of the decision maker. The decision-maker needs to learn simultaneously what observations to make and what actions to take. This paper incorporates the information acquisition decision into an online learning framework. We propose two different algorithms for this dual learning problem: Sim-OOS and Seq-OOS where observations are made simultaneously and sequentially, respectively. We prove that both algorithms achieve a regret that is sublinear in time. The developed framework and algorithms can be used in many applications including medical informatics, recommender systems and actionable intelligence in transportation, finance, cyber-security etc., in which collecting information prior to making decisions is costly. We validate our algorithms in a breast cancer example setting in which we show substantial performance gains for our proposed algorithms.

The Sonos One wireless speaker, priced at $199, will be available Oct. 24. It will support multiple voice services, launching with Amazon Alexa, but will add Siri using AirPlay 2, and Google Assistant, in 2018. Sonos is upping the volume in the smart speaker race. Already well-known for its great sounding wireless home speakers, Sonos is bringing to market the first whole home speaker system with built-in voice control using Amazon's digital voice-commanded assistant Alexa. The new speaker, the $199 Sonos One, due out Tuesday, raises the bar for good-sounding smart speakers.

In brief: Toyota's Concept-i vehicles, equipped with its AI virtual assistant called Yui, are going to hit the roads for trial runs in 2020. The Japanese carmaker wants to make waves in the future of transportation. Toyota's Concept-i vehicles, equipped with its AI virtual assistant called Yui, are going to hit the roads for trial runs in 2020. The Japanese carmaker wants to make waves in the future of transportation. After unveiling a concept model for a new line of autonomous vehicles, Toyota expects to start testing these driverless cars in 2020.

"Google will fulfill its mission only when its search engine is AI-complete. You guys know what that means? Larry Page "Just as electricity transformed almost everything 100 years ago, today I actually have a hard time thinking of an industry that I don't think AI (Artificial Intelligence) will transform in the next several years." Andrew Ng "I am telling you, the world's first trillionaires are going to come from somebody who masters AI and all its derivatives,and applies it in ways we never thought of." Mark Cuban "We are entering a new world.