It won't shock you to hear that Siri is lagging behind rivals like Amazon's Alexa or Google Assistant -- the HomePod struggles to handle non-music tasks as well as competing smart speakers, for instance. And Apple appears to be aware of this shortfall. Thinknum has noticed that Apple has been on a Siri-related hiring spree in recent months, with 161 positions listed as of the end of March. There's been an uptick ever since summer 2016, but there was a distinct surge in February of this year. Nearly all of the new positions are for engineers, and it's notable that some of those spots are meant to tackle Siri's relative weakness in general questions.

Apple Inc. AAPL 0.78% launched its music-streaming service in 2015 a year after buying Beats Electronics LLC. Its debut stumbled over user interface and engineering problems, but the service was revamped within a year and quickly became the No. 2 on-demand service. Apple's iTunes, where customers pay to download individual songs or albums and own them permanently, is separate but accessible through the platform. Apple Music has benefited from its integration with Apple devices, from iPhones and MacBooks to Apple Watches and HomePod voice-activated speakers, which sync easily with Apple Music but less so with Spotify or other services. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has said streaming isn't a moneymaking business but has emphasized the importance of providing music and supporting artists.

Amazon today announced updates to Alexa's Video Skills API, which will soon allow users of TiVo, DirectTV, DISH, and Verizon television services to record their favorite shows using their voice on an Alexa-enabled device so a user will be able to say "Alexa, record the Warriors game" to start a DVR recording. The update announced today for the API that gives Alexa control of video content will also allow customers to navigate to often-used destinations, like a show guide, home screen, or DVR menu. It will also allow users to ask for TV apps like Prime Video by name or say "Alexa, pause" to stop play. Tech giants making AI assistants are vying for people's attention on many fronts. Amazon wants to enter your workplace and your car, but the main battlefront today still seems to be the home, and there the company has made pitches to enter virtually every room.

It's hard to believe that not even 75 years have passed since ENIAC, that room-sized, 30-ton calculating machine, was the number-crunching hero of World War II. Since then, technology has evolved and converged into myriad applications -- including the internet; internet of things (IoT); big data; mobile, virtual, and augmented reality; machine learning; and artificial intelligence. These applications operate infinitely more quickly, ubiquitously, and unobtrusively than ever before. This world of ambient computing, or ambient intelligence, will continue to unleash waves of innovation that will fundamentally change how we live and work. Ambient computing covers applications incorporating machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence and is characterized by human-like cognitive and behavioral capabilities and contextual awareness.

While this reality has become more tangible in recent years through consumer technology, such as Amazon's Alexa or Apple's Siri, the applications of AI software are already widespread, ranging from credit card fraud detection at VISA to payload scheduling operations at NASA to insider trading surveillance on the NASDAQ. Broadly defined as the imitation of human cognition by a machine, recent interest in AI has been driven by advances in machine learning, in which computer algorithms learn from data without human direction.1 Most sophisticated processes that involve some form of prediction generated from a large data set use this type of AI, including image recognition, web-search, speech-to-text language processing, and e-commerce product recommendations.2 AI is increasingly incorporated into devices that consumers keep with them at all times, such as smartphones, and powers consumer technologies on the horizon, such as self-driving cars. And there is anticipation that these advances will continue to accelerate: a recent survey of leading AI researchers predicted that, within the next 10 years, AI will outperform humans in transcribing speech, translating languages, and driving a truck.3 Despite a flurry of recent discussion about the role and meaning of AI in medicine, in 2017 nearly 100% of U.S. healthcare will be delivered with 0% AI involvement.

Artificial Intelligence is often overlooked as being a general-purpose application technology that already inhabits many aspects of our lives. We're bombarded with prophecies of the'future' of AI, Skynet-inspired stories and doomsday divinations. But what about the way in which AI is already integrated into our daily lives and has improved our current technologies? Whether we're wanting to find directions to the nearest cafe or settle a debate, Siri, Cortana and Alexa (among others), have our backs. Intelligent personal assistants are at our disposal.

To put it like it is, entrepreneurs now see artificial intelligence as the most effective competitive edge one can install in their business. However initially, not many establishments could afford its cost –but now, thank goodness that AI can be served from the clouds as a service. Yes, the cloud is making sharing of top technologies easier than ever, in fact, the platform has made available amazing computing powers and software possibilities to customers with low financial strength, worldwide. AI software being the most sought of all technologies. IDC puts it clear that going by the current demand in cognitive and AI systems which has raised to 50% according to Compound Annual Growth Rate, spending on these techs will shoot to 57 billion come 2021, from the current state of $12 amount.

From smart speakers like the Google Home and Amazon Echo to the Roomba autonomous vacuum cleaner, there are a growing number of smart A.I.s and robots we can call on to perform different tasks in our homes. A new collaboration between innovation studio Deeplocal and Google's Internet of Things (IoT) framework Android Things wants to add another robotic helping hand to the mix -- and we mean that quite literally. Called HandBot, it's a D.I.Y. robotic hand which can recognize your hand gestures and mimic them back to you, or compete against you in a classic game of rock-paper-scissors. To do this, it uses some smart machine learning-based image recognition, courtesy of an built-in camera that feeds it images of your movement. "We teamed up with Deeplocal to build a series of demos to help inspire and show what developers can build by harnessing the power and potential of Android through the ease of the Android Things platform," Melissa Daniels, a program manager at Android Things, told Digital Trends.

Clayton Christensen, the author of The Innovator's Dilemma, developed the "jobs to be done" theory. Companies work best when they build products and services that address the pre-existing jobs that urgently need to be done. This theory focuses on what jobs clients hire products and services to do when they buy. As we enter an age where computers can replace more and more of what humans have traditionally done, the question of which jobs can hire computerized agents, or chatbots and AI voice assistants, is central to every company's strategy. At Wizeline I've worked with dozens of major companies to build software that seeks not to automate what people are good at, but rather to automate things that humans aren't good at.

Artificial intelligence is already making our devices more personal -- from simplifying daily tasks to increasing productivity. Emotion AI (also called affective computing) will take this to new heights by helping our devices understand our moods. That means we can expect smart refrigerators that interpret how we feel (based on what we say, how we slam the door) and then suggest foods to match those feelings. Our cars could even know when we're angry, based on our driving habits. Humans use non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice, to communicate a range of feelings.