If Google I/O 2017 had a tagline, it might be something like "Rise of the Machine Learning." The biggest thread throughout the keynote was an aggressive push to fully move from a mobile-first world to an AI-first world, changing the way we use Google and our devices to look at everything around us. It used to be about algorithms, but now it's about artificial intelligence. Google doesn't simply want to be the tool we use in our browsers to find something, it wants to be within reach whenever we have a question, whether or not we're even looking at a screen. We already see it with Google Assistant on Google Home, but now Google is starting to pull search out of our phones and apps in order to make it accessible everywhere.

It's the ultimate dating dream: a place filled with top-notch single people who don't behave like assholes. One app thinks they've cracked the code by insisting on good manners, but is it really that easy? Inner Circle wants to be your go-to place for finding decent human beings who you actually want to date. The app, which started in Amsterdam in 2012, promises a selective group of "smart, hot, ambitious professionals." After spreading throughout Europe, they debuted in New York at the end of last year.

Google is set to let users pay off their debts without lifting a finger. The tech giant has announced a new feature that will allow users to transfer funds to friends or family via Google Assistant. Those living in the US will just say'Ok Google, send $10 to Jane for pizza', and the AI will pull money from a linked debit card and forward it to the recipient. Google announced a new feature that will allow users to transfer funds to friends or family via Google Assistant. Those living in the US will just say'Ok Google, send $25 to Manuel Martinez', and the AI will pull money from a linked debit card and forward it to the recipient Google is rolling out a feature that lets users add a credit or debit card to their Google Account, enabling them to easily purchase goods online without.

Spotify's editorial selection and music discovery process are hard to beat (ahem, Google Play Music) and it might get a little better with the company's latest acquisition. The music streaming service has just picked up Niland, a Paris-based machine learning startup that focuses on music search and recommendations. "The team from Niland will join our New York office and help Spotify continue innovating and improving our recommendation and personalization technologies resulting in more music discovery, which benefits both fans and artists," a press release says. "The best part of our journey was hearing from our clients how they were using Niland API to create innovative products that help musicians cut through the noise," Niland writes. Spotify has absorbed AI-minded companies in the past, and its Discover Weekly playlists have proven pretty popular with listeners.

On Wednesday, the showcase started with a keynote from CEO Sundar Pichai who reiterated the company's latest approach for all that it does: artificial intelligence (AI). Google does a lot, from its original search engine function, to email, video services, and mobile software -- and the company wants to see AI will be at the helm of it all. Pichar highlighted this "AI-first" focus, something he mentioned at the I/O last year. Now, Google has given the rest of the world a glimpse of how machine learning will work behind every platform it has. Of course, there's no amount of AI and machine learning-based tech that can work without a specialized processor to run them.

Amazon's voice technology has made its way into Major League Baseball. Earlier this month, the Seattle Mariners became the first professional sports franchise to place Amazon Echo devices inside stadium suites. At Safeco Field, fans at each of the 59 suites can now use their voice to order food, change TV channels, play music, and even have Alexa -- the AI powered voice assistant built into the Echo -- sing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame." GeekWire had a chance to test out the new technology this week before the Mariners took on the Oakland Athletics. Fans can use Alexa for its normal capabilities -- asking about the weather, playing music, providing news updates, etc.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been around for decades as a computer-science discipline. More recently, it's become part of our daily lives in the form of voice-powered digital assistants, recommendation engines, image-tagging services, etc. We've also seen a crescendo of vendor marketing around "intelligent systems" and how you'll be left behind if you don't buy now. Watch this webinar replay to see what steps CIOs and tech leadership should be taking to ensure that their organization uses AI to best effect while minimizing the downsides.

Trust me, I never thought it would come to this. If you had asked me a week ago what I was expecting from Google's I/O developer conference, "boring" is not the word that would've come to mind. Yet, looking at this year's announcements, I'm struck most by how completely expected and, well, safe it all is. Sure, Google Lens was far and away the best thing Google previewed here, and a standalone VR headset is particularly enticing if you're a VR enthusiast (so far a pretty small, self-selecting group). SEE ALSO: Google's Assistant app for iOS is a clunky mess But none of that is exciting or especially innovative.

Consumer and business users alike are abuzz about the potential of natural language processing (NLP) and how it enables voice assistants as front ends for routine and even specialized tasks. NLP is a set of technologies that enables machines to interact with humans in a natural language to deliver information and insights as if speaking to another person. It's a great equalizer as a front end because there's no need for users to memorize keystrokes or commands. The core components of natural language processing include syntax analysis for parsing sentences and identifying parts of speech; entity recognition for identifying persons, products, events, media and locations; and sentiment analysis for determining the sentiment expressed in the text. Each of these elements helps the program understand the sentence structure, facts posed and emotion conveyed, respectively.

As expected, the opening keynote of Google's I/O 2017 developer conference was a doozy. For two and a half hours, CEO Sundar Pichai and a handful of execs rattled off a staggering list of futuristic features and products: A camera that understands what it sees! AI tools a high-schooler can use to help detect cancer! To watch the address was to feel like the future had just arrived, all at once, right before you eyes. Then you go down the list of actual new things, the stuff you can try right now.