The United States Environmental Protection Agency blocked its employees from accessing ChatGPT while the US State Department staff in Guinea used it to draft speeches and social media posts. Maine banned its executive branch employees from using generative artificial intelligence for the rest of the year out of concern for the state's cybersecurity. In nearby Vermont, government workers are using it to learn new programming languages and write internal-facing code, according to Josiah Raiche, the state's director of artificial intelligence. The city of San Jose, California, wrote 23 pages of guidelines on generative AI and requires municipal employees to fill out a form every time they use a tool like ChatGPT, Bard, or Midjourney. Less than an hour's drive north, Alameda County's government has held sessions to educate employees about generative AI's risks--such as its propensity for spitting out convincing but inaccurate information--but doesn't see the need yet for a formal policy.

Almost every day I make a pot of tea. Strong, black tea, the kind you have to steep properly in a ritual that involves a kettle, a tea tin, tea lights, a tea cozy. It's a four-minute brew, so I set a timer. I used to do it on the microwave, but some time ago I just started asking Alexa, via the Amazon Echo on my kitchen counter. "Alexa, set a timer for four minutes."

Do you use it at all to help you do your work? I reviewed the new Pixel phone. But I get along fine with my older Android phone. The irony is that I am a techno-skeptic. At least in my own head, this makes good sense. I don't cover a consumer technology company.

Legendary computer scientist Mark Weiser famously said, "the purpose of a computer is to help you do something else." It's a beautiful sentiment, but it hasn't come true. We live in constant contact with machines. And that contact is growing. As Ian Bogost points out in the Atlantic, we can't get enough computers in our lives.

Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. Alexa, can you order me some room service? Marriott is currently testing Amazon's assistant as well as Apple's Siri to see who works best for its customers. Amazon has already had success in the hospitality market with Wynn hotels installing 5,000 Echos last December. Big brands are taking virtual assistants seriously and building apps to improve customer service.

Machine learning, a method of data analysis that automates analytical model building, is at the top of the "hype curve" for emerging technologies and is one of the top 10 strategic technology trends for 2016, according to Gartner. It's safe to say that most of us are already interacting with machine learning applications on a daily basis whether it's Apple's Siri, Facebook's face detection, Netflix personalized recommendations, or iOS's autocorrect. And from a business perspective, basically any organization that gathers data with the intention of acting on it can benefit from machine learning. But what can we learn from this growing trend? What can we do with such a widely applicable technology and how can we maximize its potential?