If your family is anything like mine, smart displays like the Nest Hub tend to get a lot of use by both adults and kids. The conversational capabilities of Google Assistant make that almost a certainty. So it makes sense that for one of its last major updates of 2020, Google is focusing on families with a suite of new features for Assistant-enabled smart displays and speakers. To start, Google is adding a new Family Notes feature that will let your clan append digital sticky notes to the Nest Hub and other smart displays. You can use them to leave messages and keep track of shared to-dos.

The Terminator series has long warned us of the perils of artificial intelligence. Fortunately, before the machines decimate humanity, they'll at least provide some levity. Just see the catastrophic failure of Microsoft's recent "Tay" experiment, which was spectacularly summarized with this headline from The Telegraph: "Microsoft deletes'teen girl' AI after it became a Hitler-loving sex robot within 24 hours." Our civilization had a pretty good run. Here's what else happened this week: Hit the links to get the full story.