Kids are particularly terrible for robots. At least, that's what researchers in Japan discovered when they let a robot roam around a shopping center in Osaka in 2015. A group of kids antagonized the robot, forcing the researchers to program an algorithm that would give the bot the agency to evade abuse. That's just one example of challenging social interactions between humans and robots, and one that technologists have almost certainly considered when building and designing delivery bots. Including the folks at Amazon: This week, the e-commerce behemoth dropped a web page for Scout, its new delivery robot.

We touched a lot of gadgets. This week was the annual CES, one of the world's largest consumer electronics show, and WIRED's team was on the ground covering all of the top tech trends to emerge from the show. In this week's episode of the Gadget Lab podcast, Mike, Arielle, and Lauren talk about CES's big security #fail, what all of these connected gadgets mean for the future of healthcare, and robots. Later in the episode, Arielle talks to Jen Wong, the chief operating officer of Reddit, about the company's "growing up" moment and how it plans to monetize its users. Show notes: Check out our best of CES list when you've finished listening to the pod.

Most people, at this point, believe that climate change is a real thing that will harm future generations of humans. And yet, a cognitive dissonance exists around that knowledge and our sense of responsibility: A much smaller percentage of people believe that climate change is impacting them personally, according to Yale's climate survey program. It is indeed impacting humans right now, with clear and compelling evidence that the global average temperature is much higher than anything modern society has experienced. And that has lead us to a whole host of issues, some of which WIRED writer Adam Rogers discusses with the Gadget Lab team on this week's podcast. So what can we humans do to fix things – and how much of it can actually be fixed by personal actions, versus widespread policy?

One of the greatest ironies in this still-nascent era of self-driving cars is that humans are the backup safety drivers for these autonomous systems, while the systems themselves are supposed to replace human drivers and all our follies. Earlier this week, a preliminary report from the NTSB indicated that the Uber self-driving car that killed a woman in Arizona earlier this year, did in fact "see" the woman in the seconds before the crash occurred. Transportation writer Aarian Marshall and editor Alex Davies join the Gadget Lab podcast this week to discuss the issues that surround "software that's not yet ready to replace humans, and humans that are ill-equipped to keep their would-be replacements from doing harm." And of course, we couldn't have a conversation about the future of transportation without talking about Elon Musk. Also, Alex writes about the follies of humans act as backup safety drivers, while Aarian lays out California's heavy-handed plans to regulate autonomous vehicles.

This week, a self-driving Volvo owned by Uber struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. We won't know the exact details of what happened until much later once Uber, the local police, and the federal government have completed their investigations. But the tragedy has opened up many questions about how self-driving car technology works, and particularly how well these robotic cars can see what's happening around them. Alex Davies and Aarian Marshall from WIRED's transportation desk join us this week to talk about autonomous vehicle safety, Lidar, street design, and the human component. The crash comes at a time when pedestrian deaths are spiking.

Google's new Clips camera takes short looping videos of your kids and your pets, and it does it all using AI. Sure, that sounds like some weird technophobic nightmare--Google, one of the most data-thirsty companies on the planet, pointing a camera at your kids? But the way the company designed the Clips keeps all of your visual memories private until you decide to share them, if you decide to share them at all. Mike and Arielle talk about how Google's innovative approach to computer vision in consumer products could lead to other types of digital cameras that are as private as a Polaroid. Send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds.

The way you control Apple's smart speaker, the HomePod, is pretty cool. You just talk to it. But Siri, Apple's voice assistant, can't make the speaker do much beyond the basics and can only summon music from Apple-owned cloud services. That sets it behind the other products in the voice-activated speaker race--most notably those from Amazon or Google--which are capable, flexible, and largely platform-neutral when it comes to streaming. It's too bad Siri can't play internet radio or the deep cuts from your local MP3 library, because the speaker itself sounds absolutely amazing.

Sure, you can use them to listen to music, as always. But they've got touch controls now. They're embedded with custom wireless chips to ease pairing. They also open a direct line to the voice assistant on your phone. Soon however, it's likely you won't even need the phone to talk to your AI-powered assistant in your headphones.

It was a big deal last year when Google came out with its own smartphone, the Pixel. Also one year ago, the tech giant released a smart home speaker and debuted the AI-powered Assistant that lives inside these new gadgets. Now it's twelve months later, and Google is stepping on the gas. This week, we saw a new Android flagship phone, the Pixel 2. Also, two new Google Home speakers, a new Chromebook with a button to call the Assistant, some wireless earbuds called Pixel Buds with tap-to-talk functionality for Assistant, an AI-powered camera called Clips. Google is now truly a hardware player, but it has a powerful software engine running across all of its products.

Apple is hosting a big iPhone launch event in Cupertino on September 12. David, Arielle, and Michael open up their iPhones and ask Siri to predict what's coming on Tuesday. All the hosts have so far are rumors, leaks, and guesses, but that's more than enough to get them excited. Some notes: David tells us what to expect on Tuesday. Also from David, a sit-down with the Apple engineers trying to make Siri feel more human. Liz talks to an artist who's marrying sounds and visuals in AR kit with groovy results.