Scientists at Google have created an artificial intelligence program that can compute problems requiring strategic reasoning, The Guardian reports. The algorithm, part of an emerging field called deep learning, is able to master tasks independently using external memory, similar to the way humans work through a new recipe, according to the study published in Nature. In this case, it was able to figure out on its own the quickest route between stops on the London Underground and reassess if the destination was overshot. This could pave the way to more efficient virtual assistant applications, which might be bad news for Apple's sassy sidekick.

Google took to the stage on 4 October with a large roster of new hardware. A pair of Pixel Android smartphones were the stars of the show, but you'll note that Google has dropped the Nexus brand and there's no new tablet on offer. Is the tablet market really dying? However, since the world is full of smartphones, of more interest at the event was Google's additional hardware; Google Home, Google WiFi and Chromecast Ultra. Google Home is the company's answer to Amazon Echo with a smart, stylish flexible design that is styled to fit in any living room without looking like a Death Star or technology obelisk.

The Cooper Hewitt Design Museum houses an impressive collection of designed objects that chronicle the history and significance of design in our evolving world. These objects range from unrealized works of architecture to handwoven textiles from Africa to graphic designed posters that reflect the culture and pulse of humanity of their time. The museum is housed in the former mansion of Andrew Carnegie. Upon its completion in 1901, the sixty-four room mansion was the first private residence in the United States to have a structural steel frame that allowed for more expansive spaces and a feeling of lightness. The Carnegie Mansion was also the first private residence to have a residential elevator, central heating, and a precursor to central AC.

Just about every service industry--from retailers to restaurants to hotels--has developed some kind of robot to attend to your needs on the cheap. The latest effort in the banking world (there are already robotic bank receptionists in China and Japan) is to take the rote responses of bots to the next level, by adding a touch of human empathy. The Royal Bank of Scotland (paywall) plans to unveil its new artificial intelligence system, known as "Luvo," by the end of the year. The AI service, designed by IBM, will attend to customer banking needs through its mobile or online as a chatbot. It will function similarly to Siri, the iPhone virtual assistant that answers questions with a distinct voice and "personality."

The S.A.R.A. project consists of three elements never before used, says Cassell: conversational strategy classifiers, a rapport estimator, and a social reasoner. "The conversational strategy classifiers are five separate recognizers that can classify any one of five conversational strategies with over 80 percent accuracy." Simultaneously, S.A.R.A.'s rapport estimator gives the virtual assistant a readout of how well you and her are getting along. "That one uses a kind of A.I. algorithm that's brand new called a temporal association rule." The algorithm works in real time, calculating in the moment.

It may be Tesla's Elon Musk who most often invites comparison to Marvel's superhero Iron Man – the alter ego of billionaire inventor Tony Stark – but it is Mark Zuckerberg who might be the first to bring Stark's technology to life. Memorably, the Facebook CEO sets himself annual goals such as learning Mandarin in 2010, eating only meat from animals he killed himself in 2011, or reading two books a month in 2015. In January, the Facebook founder said that his 2016 challenge would be to build an artificial intelligence-based personal assistant for his home. In his Facebook post announcing his aim, Zuckerberg said that "You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man." In a Facebook conversation on Thursday, Zuckerberg invited suggestions for who should voice his real-life Jarvis (which, in the Iron Man and Avengers movies, stands for Just A Rather Very Intelligent System). Suggestions included actors Morgan Freeman, Benedict Cumberbatch and Paul Bettany – who voices Jarvis in the movies – as well as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

The one product to watch from Google's hardware event is Google Assistant. At Google's hardware event on Tuesday, several products were released, including two phones, a smart home device, a wireless router, a VR Headset and a new Chromecast (Ultra). Each product is worthy of its own article, but they are mere fragments of the bigger picture, which is Google Assistant. As Sundar Pichai (CEO of Google) stated, there has been a big shift in computing approximately every decade since the PC was launched in the mid '80s. In the '90s, we got the Web and in the 2000s, the world got the smartphone.

As one of our mobility analysts at Blue Hill, I get (perhaps unduly) excited over any shiny new gadget, even though I've recently been disappointed by what seems like a lack of innovation in the mobile market (cue the "I miss the old Apple" rant). That's why I was excited, but skeptical, to cover Google's October 4th product announcement of its long anticipated "first" smartphone. But it's really not the hardware Google is focusing on with its most recent product launch, though it could certainly seem that way from its unveiling of the Pixel (the first Google branded smartphone), the Daydream View virtual reality (VR) headset, and the Google Home smart hub. No, it hasn't been about hardware for the past few years for mobile device manufacturers it certainly seems, with only small incremental changes being made to hardware (or, in the case of Apple's removal of the headphone jack, gigantic leaps and bounds of courage … but that's another story). Most of the focus of smartphone innovation instead has been coming from within: with the software, and most recently, artificial intelligence.

Google is just getting started when it comes to selling its own hardware. Another rumor from the usually accurate Evan Blass points to a pair of Google-built watches that will come early next year. Google's two smartwatches will be released with Android Wear 2.0 in Q1 2017 [image courtesy of: https://t.co/so8uJyEZCy] We've heard this before, but we have a lot more context now after attending the "Made by Google" hardware event, where the company showed off the Pixel, DayDream View headset, Chromecast Ultra, Google WiFi, and Google Home. The tenor of the gathering and the new shift by Google told us this wasn't a one-off event.

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