ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The Secret Genius Of Modern Life, 8pm, BBC2

EVEN if you’re not quite as enthusiastic about modern technology as smiley presenter Hannah Fry (pictured), this series still offers fun facts and surprising details. Tonight’s episode tells the story of the virtual assistant — Alexa, Siri and others are now in more than half of UK homes. Two decades ago, it was hard to imagine talking to technology and having it talk back — it was the stuff of sci-fi dreams, or nightmares (think HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey). Here, Hannah shows us, in entertaining style, how computers were taught to speak, and to listen.