Governments have been really good at looking in the rear view mirror, be it reporting on results and evaluating what has already happened. However, Rick Howard, research vice president at Gartner, believes the way forward for governments is to instead be able to predict what is about to happen. According to Howard, automating more decision-making tasks will see government workforces freed up to focus on higher value work and achieving their respective policy or legislative objectives. "Analytics becomes the single greatest opportunity to take the wealth of information that is locked up in all of its transactional systems," Howard said. Speaking at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo on the Gold Coast, Howard said that with a few jurisdictions already experimenting with the likes of IBM's Watson and Microsoft's Sam and Cortana, virtual personal assistants will become the frontline interface between government and citizens.

Microsoft's press event in New York City is almost here, and that means there are plenty of rumors to be excited about. The company announced the event earlier this month, only giving details like the place, date and time. Microsoft is working on a brand new Surface PC, but this time, it's getting rid of the kickstand and keyboard case. The new Surface PC will be an all-in-one desktop rather than a touchscreen laptop. The new Surface PC is expected to include a large display that will lay flat on a desk.

Within five years, the virtual assistants on smartphones -- such as Siri or Cortana -- should be able to talk to a refrigerator, a car or anything else that can be connected to the internet. A virtual assistant could ask a car to check its own oil and tell the owner if it's time for an oil change. It could figure out how to fix a broken dishwasher by contacting the virtual assistant for that dishwasher's manufacturer. It could tell the coffee pot to brew a morning cup of joe. That's the vision Andrea Sahli, senior implementation manager at noHold, presented Thursday during the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

Google has taken itself down a very promising road with its new Pixel phone line, offering a level of polish and power that makes it very competitive with the market's top phones. I admit that I was a bit underwhelmed by the Pixel's first appearance, which came at a Google launch event earlier this month. Google's Nexus line of phones had always appealed well to the niche Android superfan audience, and on paper it did not seem that the 750 Pixel would really offer that much more. Yet my mind changed after the company sent me a Pixel XL to review. The Pixel XL proved to be an elegant, capable and -- best of all -- useful phone.

Wealth Management is the highest growth businesses for any medium to large financial institution. It also is the highest customer touch segment of banking and is fostered on long term (read extremely lucrative advisory) relationships. This three part series explores the automated "Robo-advisor" movement in the first post. We will cover the business background and some definitions . The second post will focus on the overall business model & main functions of a Robo-advisor.

Apple says their voice recognition app Siri is improved. USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham puts Siri through a few tests to find out. The Tap is similar to Echo, but requires you to press a button to speak to Alexa. AI is now mentioned and discussed at nearly every major tech company event these days, and it's incorporated into a rapidly growing percentage of the news these companies are generating. More importantly, the kind of "contextual intelligence" AI can enable is finally starting to become real for people.

Professor Christopher Bartneck never believed his research paper, written by Apple's iOS autocomplete, would be accepted for a nuclear physics conference An academic who jokingly wrote a research paper written entirely by Apple's iOS autocomplete - and was subsequently filled with nonsense - has been accepted to present his findings at a nuclear physics conference. Christopher Bartneck, an associate professor at the University of Canterbury's Human Interface Technology laboratory in New Zealand, was stunned to discover he had been successful in securing a place at the conference, which takes place in America next month. 'I started a sentence with'Atomic' or'Nuclear' and then randomly hit the autocomplete suggestions,' wrote Bartneck in a blog post on Thursday. 'The text really does not make any sense.' Bartneck's mischievous side was fired up after receiving an invitation from the International Conference on Atomic and Nuclear Physics, which will be held in Atlanta in November.

Moore's law has driven silicon chip circuitry to the point where we are surrounded by devices equipped with microprocessors. The devices are frequently wonderful; communicating with them – not so much. Pressing buttons on smart devices or keyboards is often clumsy and never the method of choice when effective voice communication is possible. The keyword in the previous sentence is "effective". Technology has advanced to the point where we are in the early stages of being able to communicate with our devices using voice recognition.

"Too big to fail" strategy did not save banks from failing in financial crush in 2008. Recent news about content meets pipe by merging AT&T and Time warner or previous news Comcast was buying Timer warner that was not successful. Delta airlines almost bought southwest airlines that was blocked. It was not blocked when Delta bought northwest. JP Morgan Chase bought several Banks during financial crush and became one of the biggest financial institution ever. Continuous effort to grow bigger and making their stock price higher.

We like to drink here at Geek.com. It's not quantity that matters, but quality, and as such, we've held several fine whisky tastings in the lab over the years. And the world-renowned scotch distillery tried to get artificial intelligence in on the sophisticated fun by putting out a whisky tasting skill for Amazon Alexa. Yes, if you really want to enjoy your scotch with the power of technology, you can simply install the skill on your Amazon Echo and say, "Alexa, open Johnnie Walker." And the voice app will open and walk you through a primer to savoring fine whisky.