Amazon's Echo and Dot connected speakers are sold out, and 35 new products will have Alexa built-in this year. Did Alexa win over Siri, Cortana and Hey Google? LOS ANGELES -- Alexa is much better at Siri at so many things. But now that Amazon's Alexa personal digital assistant has joined Siri on the iPhone, we come to a sudden and unexpected realization. Siri, which has been maligned and criticized over the last five years, is actually more useful than Alexa on the phone.

Tech giants are in a race to see who can build the most powerful voice-activated assistant, but there's a side effect that we haven't considered: Kids who grow up asking Amazon's Alexa questions or summoning Siri might lose some social skills. What if artificial intelligence changes the way we talk? Experts in robotics, machine learning, and AI descended on Austin for South by Southwest this week, and the biggest questions were lifted straight from the film Her. Is it changing the way we interact with each other? Will kids think they can order around their friends the same way they tell Alexa to tell them a joke?

Google is making a play for a bigger piece of the voice-based search market and it is looking to use its ability to drive online and offline sales to gain market share. Google today at Shoptalk announced that it using artificial intelligence to make it easier for users of its voice-activated Google Home smart speaker devices to buy online. Among the features it is rolling out are the ability to buy multiple items from multiple merchants in a single transaction through the Google Assistant via Google Express, the search giant's delivery service that's available in an app and online. A consumer also has the ability to add items to her shopping list that's accessible across multiple surfaces such as her Home device and smartphone. Today's announcement comes a little more than four months after Google launched Google Home on Nov. 4 and a little more than a month after it initially enabled consumers to shop with the Google Assistant on Google Home.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is seemingly everywhere today. Whether it's using a virtual assistant like Siri or Alexa, improving sales insights through analytics, or hiring the best talent with AI-based recruiting software, many businesses have already started incorporating this technology into their everyday processes. While you may not necessarily need to make artificial intelligence the core of your operations right now, most experts agree that AI's role and importance in business will only continue to grow. Nine members from Forbes Technology Council each shared a way that companies can begin preparing for AI right now. I think for smaller companies, it is too early to create a plan, but I do think it is important to stay updated on AI and how it is being implemented in an applicable industry.

There is no doubt the search industry has evolved. Just one look at how search engine results pages are currently laid out shows how things have changed. We have come a long way from 10 blue links. But have we gone far enough? At SXSW earlier this month, information access was a hot topic.

In a popularity battle that isn't unlike a high school prom court, Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google's, uh, Assistant, are the four front-runners to be queen. With Samsung about to add a fifth candidate -- Bixby -- soon, it seems the A.I. voice assistant catfight is reaching its apex. This is good for us, the consumers, because when billion collar companies compete -- we win. But it's also stressful and annoying having to deal with so many different platforms right now. One Hong Kong-based company -- Vicartek -- is looking to streamline the process with a bluetooth headset that is natively compatible with Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, and Cortana, all accessible via a tap or two on the device's touch panel, without the need for the user to pull out their phone.

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Tomorrow's most effective individuals will combine their personal capabilities with customized digital boosters. Technology now touches and transforms every aspect of personal productivity in the workplace. Mobile devices, bots, and digital assistants are ubiquitous, while managers increasingly use key performance indicator (KPI) dashboards to monitor and measure employee performance. In industry after global industry, effectively collaborating with technology is as important as effectively collaborating with people. Continually boosting the value of employees in this environment -- especially knowledge workers -- poses a difficult design challenge.

Picture shows IBM Watson robot on the third day of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2016. There is no way to spell "retail" without AI. The power of artificial intelligence (AI) to transform the consumer journey dominated the conversation at Shoptalk this week. In its second year, Shoptalk brought together 5,000-plus players across the full ecosystem to better understand the continuous evolution of how consumers discover, browse and buy in the digital era. AI, which refers to technologies capable of performing tasks normally requiring human intelligence, goes back centuries.

These days, job hunting looks a lot like online dating: Seemingly infinite scrolling, a few messages that lead to nowhere, and even fewer human interactions that--more often than not--don't turn out the way you thought they would. Recruiting startup WayUp hopes to convince job searchers that it doesn't have to be such "a miserable process," says co-founder and CEO Liz Wessel. WayUp offers a "smart" platform that uses data to match seekers with potential employers. Wessel says that the site collects about 40 data points per applicant and, armed with that information, is able to suggest "the right jobs to the right people" better than job sites like Indeed and Monster, or professional social network LinkedIn. On Thursday, the company announced that it has raised a $18.5 million series B funding round, led by Trinity Ventures, with participation from WayUp's existing investors, including General Catalyst, BoxGroup, Lerer-Hippeau Ventures, Index Ventures, SV Angel, and Female Founders Fund.