Challenging Thinking is a series of Think Pieces--essays, videos, and other content--that ask and answer bold questions about leadership. While the leadership-related topics vary widely, each piece will inspire novel thinking. What if you had a resource--a personal advisor shared with no one else--one with great listening skills and that is available 24/7? One that knows you extremely well because of the personal information you have shared. One that can be completely trusted with no hidden agendas, that literally remembers every word you say and how you say it, and that has immediate access to a vast array of information, knowledge, and best practices on leadership and management from the cyber universe.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution has arrived. The first was the steam engine-driven Industrial Revolution; the second involved the innovations from Henry Ford's assembly line. Third, microelectronics and computer power appeared on factory floors. Now, manufacturing businesses are beginning to integrate robotics, automation and other data-driven technologies into their workflows. Robots have taken over difficult, dangerous and repetitive physical tasks, improving factory safety, worker comfort and product quality.

Mobvoi, the Chinese artificial intelligence startup backed by Google and Volkswagen, launched a chatbot on Tuesday that can connect with voice-activated smart home devices, as the company ramps up its efforts to turn from a niche player to being the future Amazon Alexa or Google Home in China. The Beijing-based startup founded in 2012 by a group of former Google engineers sees smart homes as one of the top priorities to leverage its voice recognition and natural language processing technology after receiving a US$180 million investment from German auto maker Volkswagen earlier this month. Smart homes are seen by technology giants around the world as one of the key directions for the application of artificial intelligence in people's everyday life. In the United States, Alexa, the robotic voice assistant behind Amazon's Echo has already allowed people to dim bedroom lights and play song lists through speech. In China, online search giant Baidu recently acquired a Chinese start-up that developed an artificial intelligence-based voice assistant to push further into smart home devices.

I am sure by now, you have heard the phrase that has been thrown around quite a lot by mostly, venture capitalists: "Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the new mobile." The reason why this phrase has been echoed in the tech industry is to emphasize that AI is not a short-lived fad, rather a revolution like mobile. More importantly, they seem to be right as in the last five years, giant tech companies have been pouring money into this technology. In fact, over 200 private companies using AI algorithms across different verticals have been acquired since 2012, with over 30 acquisitions taking place in Q1'17 alone. The acquisitions of AI startups are getting feisty, too.

With smartphone features like Apple's Siri and Google Assistant gaining popularity, it's safe to assume that artificial intelligence (AI) is a technology trend that isn't going away any time soon. But can it help your small business? There are plenty of ways AI can help streamline your operations. Consider the ways you are already using AI in your everyday life. Siri, Apple's virtual assistant, has been in the mainstream for a while, and many major tech companies have created their own versions. Google has Assistant (formerly Google Now), Microsoft has Cortana, Amazon has Alexa, and Samsung recently made a serious attempt to enter the space with Bixby.

With millions of Echo and Echo Dot devices sold last holiday season, and a projected 10 million units in homes by the end of 2017, it's clear that Amazon's voice-activated personal assistant, Alexa, is rapidly gaining widespread consumer adoption. Alexa is an illustration of Amazon's ability to meet consumer demand for speed, convenience and ease, while pioneering a new way to shop. Alexa can play music, make appointments, change TV channels and more, but the most valuable feature for Amazon is that the software enables consumers to shop directly by voice. This is great news for Amazon, but it will also inevitably change the way retailers market and sell their products. Most retailers and brands will have to act fast to prepare for ecommerce via digital assistant, and their biggest hurdle will be providing a voice-controlled shopping experience that is both intuitive and valuable for consumers.

Beyond all that, primary significance of course sits with the AI engine that underpins the interaction. Roughly half of the considerations listed above will not be resolved wholly satisfactorily until the AI can do the heavy lifting necessary to, for example, autonomously resolve an ambiguity in the stated input. This is starting to happen, for example, using Google Home (unlike with the Echo), it is possible (subject to the usual tally of hit'n' miss attempts) to ask for something, then ask a contextual follow-up, in what can legitimately be labelled a (basic) conversational interaction. See also: Voice recognition: has AI just beaten a human? The interesting thing for anyone observing the emergence of voice user interfaces in mass-market products, is the relationship between that form of interaction and the more conventional screen-based interactions. Screen-based interfaces are an abstraction in a way that voice interaction arguably is not. Yet the nascent nature of voice interaction still necessitates a screen for effective'long-form" interaction – by which we mean detailed immersion in complex content. For now, voice augments, rather than displaces the screen-based outcome: witness the regularity with which the Echo will resolve a query by sending some links to the Alexa app, a mode of behaviour also more than familiar to anyone persisting with Siri.

For anyone who's ever seen an early episode of Star Trek, recall Captain Kirk speaking to the "computer," even using that keyword to summon the computing power of the Starship Enterprise to answer a complex question requiring an expeditious answer. Ever since Gene Roddenberry introduced his sci-fi interpretation of the future, we've been chasing that dream, for as early as 1952, Bell Labs scientists introduced "Audrey," a system that recognized spoken numeric digits. Fast-forward from the days of Star Trek and Audrey, and researchers have turned the science fiction of a seamless voice interface into reality. Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana and Google's voice assistant are all manifestations of decades worth of research. Thanks to this tech confluence, today's voice systems can understand the context of an entire conversation, even the personality of whom they are conversing with.

USA Today's Ed Baig tries out Samsung's new smartphone before it hits store shelves. NEW YORK-- Will the Note 7 battery fiasco choke sales of Samsung's latest smartphone? On redemption Friday, the day when consumers could start getting the company's first major phones since the twice recalled and ultimately discontinued Note 7 phablet, analysts expected heavy demand for the new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S devices. Newly released research from SurveyMonkey and Creative Strategies found the Note 7 recalls had no impact on the interest in the Galaxy S8 and S for 53.7% of those surveyed. Among current Samsung smartphone users, 65.2% were unbothered by the Note 7 recall.

Today, Google is shipping a major update for Google Home: multi-user support. Up to six people will be able to connect their account to Google's voice appliance, which will then be able to identify each person just by listening to them speak. The Google Home app jumped the gun on this launch earlier in the month, but now the feature is actually rolling out. After connecting their accounts, each user will have to go through the usual hotword training, reciting "OK Google" to the device three times. For future commands, Google Home will then call out the name of the person it detects before it gives a response. So if you ask "What's my day like?"