Knocking up google. And shouting at amazon. Tell me, who is the murderer click theme song. Robot voice welcome home, spen. How was your day . Awful. Im stressed out. Thats a shame. I will run you a bath and play some relaxing music from your anger management playlist. Music plays. Rory, do i have any messages . You have 17,000 tweets, 16 e mails, and 105 fake news updates. Any of them urgent . Your boss sent an e mail asking if he can stop by for dinner tonight. Do we have anything to eat . There is a quinoa, samphire, and Ginger Scallop bake in the fridge which feeds four. Im setting the oven to come on now and ordered a bottle of his favourite wine to be delivered at 7 00. And order some Chocolate Double fudge cake. 0k, ive ordered it. Shall i apply for a Gym Membership for you . Rory, mute. Now, one day we really will have artificially intelligent personal assistants which we can really talk to and who know us better than we know ourselves, like pretend rory here. Thank you, rory. Youre welcome. Mr rory cellan jones, everybody. Now, were not there yet, but we are well on the way. What started in our phones with names like siri, cortana, and, uh, 0k, google, can now control our homes and our cars too. Amazons echo led the way. And this week, googles home is launched in the uk. Now, it is all very well having these intelligent personal assistants to which we can ask anything into their permanently open ears, but the more we use them, the more trust we are going to place in them. 0k, google, is obama planning a coup . According to secrets of the fed. For example, in his dayjob, the bbcs tech correspondent, rory cj, recently discovered that you cant always believe what they say. Obama may, infact, be planning a communist coup detat at the end of his term in 2018. That fake news storyjust happened to be the top Search Result for that question. Well, dan simmons has been looking at some of the other Unintended Consequences of living with these devices. As we transition from controlling things through screens to using our voice, for those providing services, things could start getting tricky. Im in the bbcs blue room, a space where the Broadcaster Tests out new technology. And with Voice Assistance, its not all going smoothly. Alexa, whens the next train to manchester . Sorry, i didnt understand the question i heard. If you have to find out when the next train to manchester is, right now you have to say, open the National Rail app, tell me when the next train to manchester is, and then you have to go through a number of steps to achieve that. Thats just not natural. You have to remember a number steps to find out content from somebody else. For the Default Service provider, its very simple. Play me a song, itll be provided by a certain provider. Tell me the news, itll be provided by a certain provider. And thats a great thing for those. For everything else, its very difficult. This is a critical disadvantage at this stage. A lot of work needs to be done to level the playing field. And that disadvantage applies to Search Results, too. Up to now, websites aimed to be on the first page of results. With Voice Assistance just one answer comes back. 0k, google, how fars the moon . Fine, if its a right wrong definitive answer youre after, the ones that companies constantly demo. The moon is 384,400 kilometres from earth. More controversial if you are seeking a product or service. For anyone else, how did it get to that position . Only one person can have the first spot. Everyone else will have to figure out what do they do, how do they work with the amazons and googles to make sure their content and their results appear first. Bell chimes. This is not the end of the world, it isjust the end of competition as we know it. Oxford university is home to one of the worlds most influential thinkers when it comes to competition. If we use our assistants to buy stuff, Ariel Ezrachi believes therell be consequences, and they wont be unintended ones. That shift from an online environment to the digital helper, what is it that you have . You have a helper that is voice activated, you are one step further from the ability to look for outside options. Your ability to check whether the price you received is truly the best price. You tell your helper, order me one, two, three, and you just assume that the helper will serve your needs. The likelihood is that, in a two side market, the helper is actually serving the platform. Today, your assumption, our default assumption, is that the price you receive is the competitive price. And youre suggesting that it wont be . Im telling you that its not. A walk down oxfords Cornmarket Street reveals something the professor believes wont be around much longer online. Can i ask you how much this is, for example . How much are we selling this for today . They are £5, sir. Now, this gentleman over here, hello, sir, hello, how much would you sell this to him, and how much would you sell this to me . You just met us in the street. One price for everyone. One price for everyone . Of course. That sign says so there. Absolutely. But do you think that i would maybe pay a bit more . No. Uh, no, to be honest with you, lately, tourists buy more from me. Tourists buy more . Yeah, than the locals. So, you think he may buy more than me . Yes, unfortunately. For the seller, its one price for everyone, but the professor says our Digital Assistants will get to know us so well, theyll recommend purchases with prices tailored to us too, effectively becoming a gatekeeper to the best deals. I went to see one of those gatekeepers, google, and asked them if sellers could purchase their way to the top result and get recommended by its digital assistant. We really want to make sure that the Consumer Experience is the main focus for what we do. Doing Something Like that will not help consumers find what they actually want. So we want to make sure we are focused on what the consumer wants. Amazon told us there is lots of potential and room for many participants. Ourjob is to innovate on behalf of the customer and then let customers decide. But perhaps what these Home Assistants are most useful for is what they are becoming most known for, and thats for controlling other things around the house. Alexa, turn on the bar lights. Ok. Alexa, bar lights off. Ok. Phone rings. Hi. Dan, are you there . Look, i know we have not seen each other, and you think i am crazy, but i wasjust passing by, and. Oh, wait, have you still got that stupid Voice Control thing, what was it . Alexa. Turn on the bar lights. Ok. Hmm. Alexa, turn on the microwave. Have i got your attention now . Alexa, unlock the front door. Ok. Its only me. We set that up. But the lights were real, even though the oven and the front door was faked a little bit by us, to just show you what the potential is of this technology if it cannot recognise your voice. In actual fact, amazon tell us the Unlock Feature for doors is not enabled on the echo, and that may be the biggest admission there is that theres still some work to be done with security on these devices. Welcome to the week in tech. It was the week that apple acknowledged its latest laptop, the macbook pro, was a bad design. A chinese man married the robot he built himself. And blizzard, the developer behind multi player overwatch successfully sued a cheatmaker 8. 6 million for [100,818 counts of copyright infringement. But graphene stole the show this week. A uk based Team Announced theyve created a Graphene Sieve that can remove salt form seawater. This could eventually provide millions of people clean drinking water. Amazon chief, jeff bezos, says hes been selling A Billion Dollars worth of shares a year to fund blue origin, his tourist space project. The Company Hopes to send travellers into space in the next two years. And in massachusetts, a robotic arm picks up random objects and puts them on a Conveyor Belt all day. It then shares its wisdom with other bots so they can learn the skills too. It could be how warehouses are run in the future. But work chat must be dull. And a man flew with a homemade suit developed in his garage over the last 10 months. It uses six miniature jet engines mounted on the arms and back, and can fly hundreds of miles per hour, apparently. Although richard is exercising restraint, he said, for now. Amazon echo, google home, maybe one day even rory. It certainly looks like the rise of the Digital Assistants is upon us. Now, all of these assistants are trying to be wide ranging, all purpose artificial intelligences. The technical term is horizontal ai. But thats really hard. In order to cover a lot of subjects and perform a lot of tasks, these things have to understand a whole lot of things. Take this example rory, tell stephen i will call him in the office after my train journey tomorrow. First, it works out what i said. Then it pulls out the important words. Then comes the reasoning and context. It needs to scan my calendar, myjourney times, and my Train Timetable and guess is that stephen is the stephen in the office, not stephen the friend, or stephen the other stephen. And finally, the right action needs to be performed, in this case, schedule the call with stephen at 10 20 and let him know. The question is, are these horizontal ais best placed to do that . Or should we maybe instead be talking to a number of specialist vertical ais that each do one job really, really well . Well, one company that thinks that is x. Ai, and we scheduled a call with its boss through his secretary, andrew. Now, we had several e mail exchanges with andrew, and it was only after about five messages that we worked out that andrew is actually an artificial intelligence, a Specialist Ai that only schedules meetings. And i have to say, it interpreted our written questions and requests to change the meeting times pretty well. And sure enough, on the line now is the man who invented andrew a couple of years ago. Dennis, congratulations, you fooled us with andrew. Do you think that will we need any general assistants in the future or will we be talking to many vertical ones . And well, we imagine this will play in the short term future where central ais, think siri, alexa, cortana and so on, they will answer simple questions, but they will also enable us to talk to a set of vertical ais which are specialised in doing one job really well. And i think whats going to happen here is you will have a whole plethora of vertical ais on your payroll, so that you will have siri or cortana being your best friend, and they will be aware of the fact that we will have 13 agents on payroll to dojobs you dont want to do. I think weve seen this before. There is a whole app store for this with differentjobs to mine because you have different needs. It will be the same with intelligent agents. You will have different needs. Ok, dennis. Thank you for your time. Send our love to andrew. Yes, of course. Meanwhile, in san francisco, dave has been living an incredibly smart life. Set the temperature to 72 degrees. Setting living Room Temperature to 72 degrees. Cubic. Ai bills itself as something of a digital butler, a faithful servant around your home. Its Voice Control comes from an android app, and theyre particularly proud of the way it understands the context of what youre saying. Turn the lights on in the living room. Turning light on in the living room. Make it red. Setting colour to red in the living room. Typically, when you have different devices from different brands and manufacturers, you will have a bunch of apps for every device, and its really inconvenient tojump around and switch from one app to another. The app integrates with popular smart home devices like the Nest Thermostat and cameras, as well as the philips hue lightbulbs. But like most smart Home Assistants, the commands are still pretty basic. In the future, we will add scenes, and when you wake up in the morning, you can sayjust good morning, the temperature will be comfortable for you and the lights will be on in certain areas. These Home Assistants are still quite temperamental, a little bit buggy and frustrating at times. But they are getting there, and starting to feel quite useful. The next challenge is to take those assistants outside of the home. Ford recently opened this Silicon Valley research centre, and one of its main projects is to integrate smart assistance into its latest cars. The company has been working with amazon to building the alexa assistant. From your home, or in our case, the lobby in fords building, you can find out Important Information about your car. Alexa, ask my ford mobile for my Tyre Pressure. Your vehicles Tyre Pressure is not currently showing any warnings. Thats handy, but where it gets really useful is when you can use it to control your car itself. If youve ever had to sit in a freezing vehicle as it warms up in the morning, you might appreciate this. Ask me ford to warm up my car. Ask my ford mobile to warm up my car. Ok, say your pin. Oh, whats my pin . Five, six, seven, eight. Sending start command to your car. So, the cars just outside, so hopefully. I mean, its not quite the roar of the engine, but its surely the coolest you can do with this technology right now. Out on the road, the assistant steps in to make typical in car functions a bit more hands free. So i tap here . Yeah, tap it there. Alexa, continue reading my audio book. Im here to show you how you can. Ok, so i can pick up where i was at home. Alexa, find the nearest coffee shop. Here are a few nearby popular ones patriot brew, vmware hilltop bistro, the. The integration is fun, but far from perfect. Alexa still suffers from the same problem that many assistants have. Rather than talking naturally to it, you find yourself having to think about what phrase will unlock the information you need. When youre trying to drive, that feels like it could quite distracting. So alexa is a really natural language detection system, so it does understand the way what you want to say, independent of how you say it. Ijust wonder if people will be thinking about alexas thinking, rather than whats straight ahead of them on the road. And so, of course, as a driver, we always want to make driving safer, so you should always keep your hands on the steering wheel, eyes on the road, and be safe while youre driving. And then for your infotainment and entertainment on the road, you can use your voice, which is really the safest way to interact with the car in general. Games looked a bit different in the early 80s. Forget dolby 5. 1 audio. Forget realistic lighting effects. Come to think about it, forget about 3d graphics in most cases. Attitudes to games werent exactly enthusiastic, either. Sports games. Well, sports games, to me, are perhaps the most appalling use of computers. Here it is, this is a decathlon. Well, doing a decathlon on a commodore by wagging a joystick like this is really no substitute for going out and getting a spot of fresh air. Ouch. There was one genre of games, though, where the graphics and audio didnt matter. Where it didnt matter that you would often be presented with a still, 8 bit image, or sometimes just a black screen with a flashing white cursor. That screen itself was the window into worlds of limitless imagination. Welcome to the experience of the Text Adventure. When Computing Power was limited, the Text Adventure that players when Computing Power was limited, the Text Adventure offered players head scratching puzzles and mysteries, all brought to life by typing instructions into the game. But the reason that ive taken us on this journey down 32 kilobyte memory lane is a game. Its a game that ive been playing on this, the amazon echo. And its a title that reminds me of those old Text Adventures quite a bit. Leading you through the abbey, the abbess approaches one of the sisters. Now, you might think playing a game on one of these is like trying to play a game on your microwave. Because the echo, of course, lacks a screen, or any other way of interacting with it other than barking commands at it. But that is exactly how the game im about to play works. Play runescape. The player must solve a murder in a fantasy realm. The game plays like an interactive version of an audio book. You get a bit of dialogue, and then it waits for a response. Surprisingly, it commands quite a bit of your attention, and its quite a relaxing way to play a game, although that relaxing mood is shattered when you hear this. Sorry, that is not a valid command. Which you hear quite a lot. Would you like to talk to the abbess now . Talk to the abbess. Sorry, that is not a valid command. Go to the abbess. Sorry, that is not a valid command. Talk to the abbess. Sorry. Tell me, who is the murderer . sorry, that is not a valid command. As the action progresses, it can shatter the illusion and becomes increasingly frustrating when it doesnt understand what you are saying, which is obviously bit of a problem for a game you play by talking to it. Sorry, that is not a valid command. When it does work, though, Runescape On Echo is a fun and immersive experience. It also points to the potential these devices have beyond reading out the weather to you or reciting rubbishjokes. Runescape is available by the Skill Section of the alexa app. Ive got a sick bay filled with headaches. When star trek introduced a tri corder that could scan a patient and come up with a diagnosis, it was in the realm of science fiction. But 50 years on, this dream is becoming a reality. And next week, we will find out the winner of a 10 million prize paying homage to star treks medical device. The challenge . To design and Build A Tri Corder that will register 13 conditions and capture real time vital signs. It could mean an end to unnecessary visits to the doctor. We figured out what the diagnostic process is, at least the way im doing it, and built the system with that in mind. So its not like a single device, Like The Star Trek series. You interact with it on our prototype with a tablet, and then you pull out little components. So we have a little device like this, where the user will be guided they are guided to listen to their breath sounds. So this type of device in your home is really a like medical centre, right in your house. So in the middle of the night, if your child is ill, if youre not feeling well, its your first stop. There is a revolution coming in healthcare. And this is the type of device that is going to help give people the power to take care of themselves. And as soon as we know who has won, well let you know on twitter. So follow us bbcclick. And thanks for all your interactions on twitter, too, which this week included choosing the name of our artificial intelligence. So, say thank you, rory. Thank you, rory. I am getting paid for this, arent i . See you soon. Good morning. It looks like it will be on the cool side for the easter weekend. More on that in a moment. Weve introduced cooler air at the moment behind this very weak Weather Front that moved down across the country. This north westerly airflow. Particularly chilly first thing in Eastern Scotland and eastern england, with the cloud more broken in the countryside, temperatures briefly not far from freezing. At least we have early sunshine through lincolnshire, east anglia and the south east. The tendency through the day is to increase the cloud from the west. Thats already happening in South West England, across wales and in the North West Cloud is thick enough for some light rain or drizzle, chiefly over the hills. Again, fine to the east of the pennines. As it will be in Eastern Scotland, with sunshine. Western scotland a bit dull and damp. Sunshine for Northern Ireland too. Through the day it clouds over across the eastern side of england and scotland. At the same time in the afternoon we open up a gap in the cloud across south wales, South West England and that should push into the south east. Here we have the best of the sunshine in the afternoon and the highest temperatures, but still only 13 111. Further north, a lot of places dry. Around the Western Hills primarily we get the damp weather. Over the Easter Weekend Temperatures disappointing for the time of year. A rather cool feel. Warm when the sun is out, but on the whole there will be a lot of cloud. Probably not much rain around. Just a bit a nuisance now and again. These Weather Systems coming into the uk for good friday are going to be very much on the weak side. But across england and wales we will see a lot of cloud. There will be some pockets of light rain or drizzle here and there. No great amounts. But a bit of a damp picture, especially for south wales and South West England. To the north of northern england, scotland and Northern Ireland, something a bit brighter, some sunshine, but also showers. A strong wind will make it feel chilly in scotland. Maybe sneaking a 16 in the south east if we are very lucky. Those Weather Systems pull away and we are back into the cooler north westerly airflow. So we fluctuate almost from one day to the next over the easter weekend. And saturday, easter saturday, much drier and brighter. Most places will have a fine day. A little sunshine at times, not doing an awful lot for temperatures. There could be a few showers in the north of scotland. Then we are back into the fluctuation again for easter day. More Weather Fronts arriving across the uk. Mainly across the north. Higher pressure in the south. Those Weather Fronts again are fairly weak. Most of the rain over the hills, across scotland, Northern Ireland and northern england. To the south, it should be dry and brighter. 15 perhaps in london, nine in glasgow. A very warm welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to our viewers in North America and around the globe. My names mike embley. Our top stories a public show of unity, but russia and america fail to resolve their differences over the syrian Chemical Attack and president assads future. After a 2k hour delay, Borussia Dortmund play their big european match. German police say a man with islamist links has been detained over the attack on the team bus. As the economic crisis deepens, the venezuelans who claim theyve been forced into a life of crime to feed themselves. We have a Special Report from caracas. Theyjust put obstacles and more obstacles, and more obstacles thats whey we have to do all this for and many people that are here are poor too and i wasnt poor but now im poor. It could be the biggest in 50 years. 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