Every month, Engadget features what our editors are currently into, whether it be video games, podcasts or gadgets. These are not official reviews; they're simply our first-hand experiences. This week, Senior Editor Nicole Lee gives her take on the Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy rice cooker. A long-standing joke among my family and friends over the past couple of decades is that I'm not a true Asian. Because I didn't have a rice cooker.

The ¥47,300 DeliSofter pot looks much like the rice cookers ubiquitous in Japanese households and it does prepare rice in 24 minutes. But this invention of two Panasonic Corp. engineers is designed to do more and help people with swallowing difficulties. The two women led the creation of a spin-off company, Gifmo Co., to sell the specialized steam cooker, which they say can turn fried chicken soft enough to be sliced with a potato chip. The machine works by first cutting into food with a series of blades and then subjecting it to extremely high pressure at a temperature of 120 degrees Celsius, rendering many familiar foods digestible without sacrificing the original shape or texture, Gifmo said. It promises to restore a sense of normalcy to elderly people's lives and diets, allowing them to mash food with their tongue alone.

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If you're as passionate about cooking rice as a maker of fine wines is about methods and equipment, this premium rice cooker is a dream invention. It uses induction heating and pressurization to gelatinize rice to your taste and employs AI "fuzzy logic" technology to make adjustments within the cooking cycle. The machine holds up to 10 cups of uncooked rice and allows you to select from three different consistencies for white rice alone--with a myriad of settings for other dishes including jasmine rice, gaba, and congee. The exterior includes stainless steel, and any materials that come into contact with food are BPA-free.

Analyst Gartner put out a 10-strong listicle this week identifying what it dubbed "high-impact" uses for AI-powered features on smartphones that it suggests will enable device vendors to provide "more value" to customers via the medium of "more advanced" user experiences. It's also predicting that, by 2022, a full 80 per cent of smartphones shipped will have on-device AI capabilities, up from just 10 per cent in 2017. More on-device AI could result in better data protection and improved battery performance, in its view -- as a consequence of data being processed and stored locally. Its full list of apparently enticing AI uses is presented (verbatim) below. But in the interests of presenting a more balanced narrative around automation-powered UXes we've included some alternative thoughts after each listed item which consider the nature of the value exchange being required for smartphone users to tap into these touted'AI smarts' -- and thus some potential drawbacks too.

Analyst Gartner put out a 10-strong listicle this week identifying what it dubbed "high-impact" uses for AI-powered features on smartphones that it suggests will enable device vendors to provide "more value" to customers via the medium of "more advanced" user experiences. It's also predicting that, by 2022, a full 80 per cent of smartphones shipped will have on-device AI capabilities, up from just 10 per cent in 2017. More on-device AI could result in better data protection and improved battery performance, in its view -- as a consequence of data being processed and stored locally. Its full list of apparently enticing AI uses is presented (verbatim) below. But in the interests of presenting a more balanced narrative around automation-powered UXes we've included some alternative thoughts after each listed item which consider the nature of the value exchange being required for smartphone users to tap into these touted'AI smarts' -- and thus some potential drawbacks too.