The minute you mention chatbot technology, someone will inevitably bring up the Turing test. Created by Alan Turing in 1950, the test judges a machine's capability to demonstrate intelligent behavior that's indistinguishable from speaking to a human. There's even an annual competition that started in 1990 called the Loebner Prize that judges chatbots on how humanlike they can be. In each round of the competition, a human judge concurrently holds a chat-based conversation with both a chatbot and human being via a desktop computer. Based upon the chat conversation, the judge must try to figure out which is the chatbot. While this competition is great to push the technology of chatbots and AI forward, it's kind of a trap.

Artificial intelligence (AI) might seem like the realm of science fiction, but you might be surprised to find out that you're already using it. AI has a huge effect on your life, whether you're aware of it or not, and its influence is likely to grow in the coming years. Here are 10 examples of artificial intelligence that you're already using every day. Siri, Google Now, and Cortana are all intelligent digital personal assistants on various platforms (iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile). In short, they help find useful information when you ask for it using your voice; you can say "Where's the nearest Chinese restaurant?", "What's on my schedule today?", "Remind me to call Jerry at eight o'clock," and the assistant will respond by finding information, relaying information from your phone, or sending commands to other apps.

Someone sent a Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte to my desk at work. Which was weird because I didn't ask for it. And even weirder because it came from some of the most sophisticated technology in the world: M, the artificial intelligence–driven virtual assistant Facebook is building into its Messenger app. AI, I thought, was supposed to outsmart and kill us, not send autumnal coffee beverages. So forgive me for being a little suspicious of the grande red cup at my desk. I've had M on my phone for about a month now. Before it becomes pervasive, I wanted to understand it, and ask questions of it. I've pushed it incredibly hard.

San Francisco start-up Forward is betting its hands-on--and very digital approach--to treating patients will help to carve out a niche for the new company in the emerging market for personalized and concierge-style healthcare. Founded by CEO Adrian Aoun, who previously worked as director of special projects for Google, Forward is attempting to shift the traditional healthcare model away from immediate and reactive care to proactive care through the use of technology and artificial intelligence. Google acquired Aoun's first start-up, Wavii.com, in 2014 in a $30 million deal. Wavii became the hub of Google's artificial intelligence business unit to develop more natural language and personal assistant technologies such as voice-activated search queries for the Google search engine. Now Aoun is turning his attention to digital healthcare.

Artificial Intelligence is undoubtedly the technology of the moment. The number of AI startups has rocketed, as has the enthusiasm of established businesses when it comes to adoption. AI has applications within marketing, retail, manufacturing, production, entertainment and the domestic space, gathering and dealing with mass data efficiently. By analysing and visualising data, AI can work out the most important metrics and compile them into useful charts and graphs using data visualisation techniques. But what if all of this precious data was made up?

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, let's consider a company that we can all learn a few customer service lessons from, 1-800-Flowers. The company is innovative and totally focused on the customer. It all started in 1976. Jim McCann was an entrepreneur who owned several flower shops in the New York City area. Ten years later, he acquired the 1-800-Flowers phone number from another company that was going out of business.

Steve Irvine is the founder and CEO of Toronto-based Integrate.AI I recently made the decision to leave my executive role at Facebook Inc. in Silicon Valley to start a company, Integrate.AI, focused on applied artificial intelligence. Normally, this news would not raise an eyebrow in the valley. In fact, people in positions like mine often leave the comfortable confines of large tech companies to build their own startups in hot new areas, such as AI. However, there was a notable difference in my case – I chose to start my company in Toronto. A lot of people immediately assumed I had made the move strictly for personal reasons, as my wife and I are both Canadian.

Ray Kurzweil explores how and when we might create human-level artificial intelligence at the January 2017 Asilomar conference organized by the Future of Life Institute. The Beneficial AI 2017 Conference: In our sequel to the 2015 Puerto Rico AI conference, we brought together an amazing group of AI researchers from academia and industry, and thought leaders in economics, law, ethics, and philosophy for five days dedicated to beneficial AI. We hosted a two-day workshop for our grant recipients and followed that with a 2.5-day conference, in which people from various AI-related fields hashed out opportunities and challenges related to the future of AI and steps we can take to ensure that the technology is beneficial.

To see into the future, even just by a few minutes, is a superhero-style gift none of us have. Except, in a twist of fate, we've been granted the power of foresight, and have used it to see into the future of smartphones. No, we didn't get bitten by a radioactive spider or suffer a risky experiment-gone-wrong. The phones in question aren't nailed together concepts that'll never be sold, either. They're genuine examples of next-generation phone tech that you can buy today.

You don't have to be a gambler to appreciate the complexities of the card game Texas Hold'Em. It involves a strategy that needs to evolve based on the players around the table, it takes a certain amount of intuition, and it doesn't require the player to win every hand. Just a few days ago, an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm named Libratus beat four professional poker players at a no-limit Texas Hold'Em tournament played out over 20 days. If you have even the slightest understanding of how to write code, you would realize that it is impossible to actually code a software program to do that with such "imperfect information". The AI algorithm did exceptionally well and was utilizing strategies that humans had never used before.