It’s finally happened – HAL 9000 from the 1968 Mr Stanley Kubrick film 2001, A Space Odyssey has arrived, albeit 16 years late. And not as a cold-eyed psychopathic killer, but as a conversational buddy you can ask to time you a boiled egg, do arithmetic for you, summarise the news or tell you a joke. We are increasingly talking to machinery. The device to go for is the Google Home. Unlike rival devices, it has access to Google’s massive brain and artificial intelligence – plus the changeable base comes in seven colours to match your own home. It’s $130 in the US and is likely to cost about £130 when it launches in the UK.

Google home