The futuristic restaurant concept is the latest initiative in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's push to modernise service and retail in a country where robotics and artificial intelligence are increasingly being integrated into commerce. Raising efficiency and lowering labour costs are the objectives at Alibaba's "Robot.He" diners, where waiters have been replaced by robots about the size of microwave ovens, which roll around the dining room on table-high runways. And two shifts of people are needed," said Cao Haitao, the Alibaba product manager who developed the concept. "But we don't need two shifts for robots and they are on duty every day." The diners are attached to Alibaba's new Hema chain of semi-automated supermarkets, where grocery shoppers fill their "carts" on a mobile app and have the merchandise brought to them at checkout via conveyor tracks on the ceiling, or delivered straight to their homes. Alibaba now has 57 Hema markets in 13 Chinese cities, all of which will eventually feature the robotic restaurants. Industry experts say they serve more as showcases of Alibaba's tech prowess than a serious business model in a country where labour costs are relatively low. But the restaurants also typify the rapid adoption of new technologies in a country where the government is increasingly using facial-recognition technology to police streets and identify law-breakers. With digital payments via mobile phone already now rivalling cash for many purchases, growing numbers of pharmacies, bookstores and other retailers have dispensed with cashiers, allowing customers to order and pay for their desired merchandise, which is often handed over by a robot. Alibaba's e-commerce rival JD.com has announced plans to open 1,000 restaurants by 2020 in which food will be prepared and served by robots. JD.com and others are also working to incorporate airborne drones into their delivery networks. The movement could help companies reduce costs as growth rates in China's e-commerce boom begin to plateau. "Before, everyone was all going for rapid expansion.

Voice is being predicted as the next big thing in the computer interaction and perhaps why both Amazon and Google are fighting to take control over our lives with their AI-driven virtual assistants -- Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. These voice-based assistants can do a lot of things with just one command: play music, crack jokes; give the weather forecasts; send text messages; set up alarms and reminders; read out the latest news; and control "smart" devices in the home such as thermostats, door locks and bulbs. Interestingly, these virtual assistants become better over time and get to know your habits as you use them more often. I decided to ask Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant 12 questions on the Echo Dot and Home Mini, to determine their intelligence level. What are the best Hindi songs of 2018?

The next wave of digital technologies is on the way, and it promises to change our lives as dramatically as the smartphone did. We're seeing technologies such as chatbots, augmented reality and video that has transformed the way we use our mobile devices. Here are a few of the mobile and digital trends that are likely to unfold during 2018. Artificial intelligence and chatbots will continue to mature next year, making it easier than ever for people to interact with technology and to carry out complex tasks. Powered by machine learning (computer systems that learn from experience without being programmed) and Artificial Intelligence, natural language processing allows us to speak or type to computers in our usual sentences, simplifying our interface with devices and apps.

For years, Apple's Siri digital assistant has skulked in the corner of iOS, usually assisting only when asked. Like the wallflower who gets a summer makeover, however, the new Siri that steps out with iOS 9 this fall will be outgoing and eager, bounding forward to help. Siri's upgrade (revealed at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday) emphasizes proactivity and has achieved parity with the primary features of Google Now and Microsoft's Cortana: time- and location-based reminders, hunting down videos that can be played within an app, identifying contacts via their phone number, or launching particular songs. But several of Siri's promised features actually push the platform ahead of the competition: pulling useful data from your apps, controlling your smart home, and kicking off specialized tasks based on your habits or current needs. Now that the power balance is shifting, here's how Siri stacks up to her competition.

You get into your car and ask it to get you home in time for the start of the big game, stopping off at your favorite Chinese restaurant on the way to grab some takeout. But the car informs you that the road past the Chinese restaurant is closed for repairs, so you will not make it home in 30 minutes unless you choose a different food outlet. You select a nearby Korean restaurant from the options the car suggests, and set off on the chosen route. Vehicles, robots and other autonomous devices could soon collaborate with humans in this way, thanks to researchers at MIT who are developing systems capable of negotiating with people to determine the best way to achieve their goals. "In general, everything around us is getting smarter," says Brian Williams, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and leader of the Model-Based Embedded and Robotic Systems group within MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

I had tried every dating site and app out there with varying degrees of success, and I was totally over them. I was tired of the "first date" and even more tired of never going on a second date. Then a friend told me about yet another app -- Bumble. This one sounded different: The girl has to message the guy first, and she only has 24 hours to do it after you match, or the connection disappears forever. It doesn't hurt to try, right?

When Grace Hui moved to Los Angeles from China in 2014 and Googled the Chinese characters for "Los Angeles immigrant," the first result was Chineseinla.com. The Chino Hills-based website, a disorganized Yelp-meets-Craigslist hybrid, was a throwback, and Hui, 29, thought some of the posts were phishing scams. But with more than 680,000 listings, more than 350,000 registered users, 2 million monthly visits and sister sites in 15 cities, Chineseinla.com It's one of the only ways that Hui could connect to a country she couldn't understand. "American Internet is useless to me," said Hui, who used Chineseinla.com

According to observations from many of the human workers still employed by one such restaurant, the robots simply lacked the intelligence, artificial or otherwise, to effectively wait on guests. Of the three restaurants in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou that attempted the practice, only one remains open, and that eatery is now currently only using one of the robots it initially employed. One of the establishments employed as many as 10 robots at one time. The gimmick reportedly had some short-term benefit of driving customers through the door. However, those guests reportedly were just as quickly turned away by food that was generally considered "unpalatable" for guests, according to reports.