"Alexa, what time is my next train to work?" "There is a 20-minute delay. The next train departs from Berlin Central Station at 9:42 and will arrive at Westkreuz at 9:54." "Alexa, please email Janet and Tim to say: Sorry, my train is delayed. I'll be 10 minutes late for our meeting, can we start at 10:10 a.m.?" Conversational interactions like this one will undoubtedly be part of our future. Tech giants like Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft are heavily investing in the race to become the leader in voice technology. Voice interactions have been catapulted into the limelight in the past year, but why is this decade-old technology only now becoming a big deal?

When will AI actually exceed human performance in marketing and sales? To be more direct--when will virtual assistants take over human marketers and sales reps? According to a survey by the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, AI will take over human jobs in phases, depending on specializations and degrees of precision required. For example, intelligent assistants will take over translational tasks by 2024, while it may take as many as forty-five years for AI to replace humans in tasks that require surgical precision based on intuitions. In short, marketers and sales reps will either be assisted by or compete against intelligent AI-driven assistants for the major part of the century.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not an alien term; it's been around for years! There have also been many predictions of AI's capabilities and future scope, but only recently has it seen a massive boom. The year 2016 is said to have been the biggest for AI. At the center of this claim is Google's program which defeated 18-time World Champion Lee Sedol in a five-game match of the strategy board game GO . This breakthrough allowed AI to make its foray to the forefront of technology and innovation.

In the future, Facebook wants to replace clicking buttons and tapping on screens with natural conversations. The idea, according to Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's chief technology officer, is users could ask Facebook for an update on a family member, the news or even to suggest a friend they haven't seen in while they might want to catch up with. "I think of it as a full-time, 24/7 personal assistant that helps me stay connected with all the things I care about in the world," Schroepfer said. "That is beyond the reach of current technology." Now, a Montreal-based team will be working to help make the technology a reality.

The first genuinely impressive AI assistant may well have a Canadian accent. Facebook announced today that it is tapping into Canada's impressive supply of artificial-intelligence talent and expertise by creating a major AI research center in Montreal. Several big recent advances in AI can be traced back to Canadian research labs, and Facebook is hoping that the new lab may help it take advantage of whatever comes next. The new center will focus, in particular, on an area of AI known as reinforcement learning (see "10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017: Reinforcement Learning"). The center will seek to apply this and other novel approaches to language, with the aim of producing more coherent and useful virtual assistants, says Yann LeCun, director of AI research at Facebook.

Christoffer O. Hernæs is chief digital officer of Skandiabanken, Norway's first pure internet bank and leading challenger bank. Artificial intelligence is one of the hottest subjects these days, and recent advances in technology make AI even closer to reality than most of us can imagine. The subject really got traction when Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and more than 1,000 AI and robotics researchers signed an open letter issuing a warning regarding the use of AI in weapons development last year. The following month, BAE Systems unveiled Taranis, the most advanced autonomous UAV ever created; there are currently 40 countries working on the deployment of AI in weapons development. Those in the defense industry are not the only ones engaging in an arms race to create advanced AI. Tech giants Facebook, Google, Microsoft and IBM are all engaging in various AI-initiatives, as well as competing on developing digital personal assistants like Facebook's M, Cortana from Microsoft and Apple' Siri.

Preface: Lately we hear too many news about Artificial Intelligence (AI). Google, IBM, Apple, Microsoft etc. years ago announced "mobile" support. Today, mobile is obvious, and to differentiate, they claim to use "AI". The word "AI" for most people can be only the sci-fi movies AI, since we get too many AI movies too: Her, Ex Machina, … and even "Alien: Covenant" is about a rogue AI, the aliens are secondary. Companies went mobile for real: their services run in cell phones. But, we don't see sci-fi "AI" in any service like Alexa, Cortana, Siri etc.

Google Home is one of the better smart home speakers you can buy. But, even at $130, Google Home is out of reach of many who might want to try it out. Now, the electronics retailer Micro Center is selling Google's officially-sanctioned AIY Voice kit, a $35 kit that includes all the parts you need to build your own smart-talkin' speaker on the cheap. While this bundle of wires and cardboard won't magically become a squawk box on its own, all you have to provide are your hands, a microSD card, and a screwdriver. Thankfully, unlike so many of these hobbyist kits, there's no soldering required.

Forrester recently held their 2017 Digital Transformation conference in Chicago and Liferay was there to hear from companies around the world who are embracing digital transformation, as well as to provide some insight of our own. Businesses everywhere are in the process of embracing digital transformation. However, many are looking to the future and the continuing changes it may bring to their industries. Forrester analysts and business representatives from all manner of industries provided insight into continuing digital business developments and what they may mean for every company in the years to come. The following three predictions for the future of business are rooted in advancements happening today and will be essential in how businesses are run in the future.

Every time you ask Siri for directions, a complex chain of cutting-edge code is activated. It allows "her" to understand your question, find the information you're looking for, and respond to you in a language that you understand. This has only become possible in the last few years. Until now, we have been interacting with computers in a way that they understand, rather than us. We have learned their language.