Since your racist uncle is not a reliable source, many Americans have turned to Alexa for information about the presidential election. It's hard to say whether that's good or bad, but Amazon has taken notice and released new commands for its AI assistant ahead of the next debate. You can now ask questions about the time and channel of the debate, where it's happening, and afterwards, who won. Alexa is also getting a host of new commands on election day, November 8th, "to help keep you up to date on all things Election 2016 including who is leading the election, which states the candidates have won and more," Amazon says. Examples of questions you can pose include "Alexa, who is winning the presidential election," "who is leading in the presidential polls," "which percent of the popular vote does Hillary have" and "which states has Trump won."

Columnist Ed Baig reviews Pixel, which features the high-IQ Google Assistant and a competitive, high-end smartphone camera. Guests inspect the new Pixel phone by Google after it was introduced at a Google product event in San Francisco, Calif., Oct 4, 2016. SAN FRANCISCO -- When Google's new smartphone goes on sale this week, no one is expecting an iPhone-like hit -- at least not right away. Despite a splashy launch and a "Made by Google" marketing campaign, not to mention some positive reviews, the Pixel is still taking on the likes of the wildly popular iPhone. Samsung's recent spate of troubles may boost Pixel sales with defecting Note and Galaxy owners, but not enough to make a serious dent in the high-end smartphone market, analysts say.

AI-powered voice interfaces have given rise to a new class of devices competing to supplant our phones. There are friendly wireless speakers in our kitchens and helpful digital passengers in our cars. Among the most promising are in-ear computers--wireless earbuds that operate as always-on, voice-controlled Internet communication gateways. We humans already wear headphones everywhere, and in the long stretches when we're not barking at Siri, we're listening to music or podcasts. But if the idea of in-ear computers is going to take off, the companies that make them have to figure out what happens when you shut off Spotify.

We are on the cusp of an exciting -- and unchartered -- new era in technology, where decisions and problem-solving will be aided by smart machines that will sense, learn, infer and even think on behalf of humans. Although not yet mainstream, smart machines are increasingly making appearances in the form of autonomous cars, robots and other cognitive computing systems that are able to solve problems and make decisions without human intervention. Conversational user interfaces are also on the rise, relying on smart technologies and machine learning to facilitate dialogue between people and bots. The proliferation of data and intelligent platforms has become increasingly prevalent and is beginning to shape the way businesses must transform their own organizations to become more agile and adaptive in how they go to market and engage with their customers. Smart machines can help marketers filter out mountains of noise to pinpoint that single piece of insight needed to make a more informed decision.

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Advanced machine learning, artificial intelligence and data science will be among the top new technologies shaping business trends through 2017 and beyond, according to analyst firm Gartner Inc. The research firm presented its Top Ten Strategic Technology Trends for 2017 at the Gartner Symposium/Itxpo in Orlando, Fl., this week. It said it expects to see "intelligence everywhere" permeate through the enterprise IT landscape in the next three to five years, in the shape of new software-based systems that are programmed to learn and adapt. David Cearley, Gartner vice president and fellow, said these intelligent trends will intertwine to create a "digital mesh" that blurs the boundary between digital and physical workspaces. Gartner predicts AI will become "the next battleground through 2020", and we've already seen the battle lines being drawn with companies like Google, Microsoft and IBM all advancing their own machine learning algorithms via the open-source community, while Salesforce.com Inc. recently introduced its own Einstein platform to underpin its services.

Artificial intelligence, or AI as it's commonly known, is one of the most talked about, and exciting, areas of technological research happening today. Thanks to its use of computing algorithms and machine learning to solve complex problems, it's changing the way we live and work – be it through the form of humorous chat bots or wonderfully helpful smart assistants. Because the potential applications of AI are so varied, there's a plethora of startups working with the technology in strange and innovative ways. Snips just happens to be one of them, and its aim is to make your life simpler through the addition of a personal and private AI. Founded in 2013, Snips is an app that uses AI to organise the information stored within your phone. It remembers everything you tell it and makes the important things in your life easier to find.

Compared to Silicon Valley giants like Facebook and Google, Apple's AI research projects have been largely inscrutable. But now, that looks like it's about to change. Apple has hired esteemed Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Russ Salakhutdinov as its director of artificial intelligence research, with plans to build a team of researchers for the company in the coming months. Salakhutdinov will remain in his post as an associate professor at CMU, Apple confirmed to BuzzFeed News. Excited about joining Apple as a director of AI research in addition to my work at CMU. Apply to work with my team https://t.co/U2hQl2GdhA

Considering how much significance Gartner is placing the future influence of artificial intelligence and algorithms, it comes as little surprise that the group is saying that technology will be one of the most strategic and potentially disruptive for 2017. At its Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, David Cearley, vice president and Gartner Fellow detailed the key technology trends for 2017 as the group sees them including how data science technologies are evolving to include advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence is helping create intelligent physical and software-based systems that are programmed to learn and adapt. Other key trends include the impact of melding of the physical and digital environments and how digital technology platforms are influencing the enterprise. "Applied AI and advanced machine learning give rise to a spectrum of intelligent implementations, including physical devices (robots, autonomous vehicles, consumer electronics) as well as apps and services (virtual personal assistants [VPAs], smart advisors), said Cearley. "These implementations will be delivered as a new class of obviously intelligent apps and things as well as provide embedded intelligence for a wide range of mesh devices and existing software and service solutions." Backing up the growing machine intelligence idea, Daryl Plummer, managing vice president, chief of research and Gartner Fellow stated that by 2020, algorithms will positively alter the behavior of more than 1 billion global workers global workers. More on Network World: Gartner: Get onboard the algorithm train! "Contextualization algorithms have advanced exponentially to include a variety of behavioral interventions such as psychology, social neuroscience and cognitive science.

Back in September, Digital Trends exclusively reported that Google would open pop-up shops in New York City to showcase its latest and greatest hardware. Google will open the doors of its new 96 Spring Street pop-up shop on October 20 to the public. The space will be open throughout the holidays to tempt people into buying Google's Pixel phones, Daydream View VR headset, Google Home, and Chromecast Ultra. We strolled into 96 Spring Street to see Google's new hardware ecosystem in action and walked away with a better understanding of the search giant's future trajectory into the great unknown landscape of artificial intelligence. Google's AI Assistant is at the core of every experience we saw at the pop-up shop.