AI could make the smartphone passe. What comes next?

To consumers, this week will feel familiar: Apple is expected to unveil new iPhones with modest improvements, including a slightly thinner one. Yet many of the world’s biggest tech companies believe that a radical shift is underway, and that it could one day make the smartphone, as we know it, passe.

Modern artificially intelligent assistants, which are far more capable and flexible than clunky voice helpers like Siri, are poised to become the central operating system of all our personal computing devices, superseding smartphone software in importance, experts say.