Viv was named after the Latin root meaning live. Its San Jose, California, offices are decorated with tchotchkes bearing the numbers six and five (VI and V in roman numerals). When Apple announced the iPhone 4S on October 4, 2011, the headlines were not about its speedy A5 chip or improved camera. Instead they focused on an unusual new feature: an intelligent assistant, dubbed Siri. At first Siri, endowed with a female voice, seemed almost human in the way she understood what you said to her and responded, an advance in artificial intelligence that seemed to place us on a fast track to the Singularity. She was brilliant at fulfilling certain requests, like "Can you set the alarm for 6:30?" or "Call Diane's mobile phone." And she had a personality: If you asked her if there was a God, she would demur with deft wisdom. "My policy is the separation of spirit and silicon," she'd say.

For many families, the tablet has become the central, shared computing device in the home. It's a hub for learning, for entertainment, and for staying connected. But what if your tablet was even more interactive? What if it woke up when you came home, recognized your face, and suggested a couple of things you might want for dinner? What if, when asked a spoken question, it could tailor its answer directly to you, instead of just offering a blanket response? A new device called Jibo can do these things, and it could mark the next step in group computer interaction in the home.

It all started at a small academic get-together in Whistler, British Columbia. The topic was speech recognition, and whether a new and unproven approach to machine intelligence--something called deep learning--could help computers more effectively identify the spoken word. Microsoft funded the mini-conference, held just before Christmas 2009, and two of its researchers invited the world's preeminent deep learning expert, the University of Toronto's Geoff Hinton, to give a speech. Hinton's idea was that machine learning models could work a lot like neurons in the human brain. He wanted to build "neural networks" that could gradually assemble an understanding of spoken words as more and more of them arrived.

But it may soon learn to speak our language. For all the advances in the way we interact with computers -- from the graphical user interface to voice control -- the command line still serves a very important role. For developers, system administrators, and other hardcore geeks, this bare-bones interface is still the best way to build and tweak the complex computer systems that underpin our world -- despite its dependence on arcane text commands. It means memorizing all sorts of cryptic commands, things like "rm," for removing a file, or "grep," which finds particular chunks of text buried in a collection of files. That's different from the "find" command, which searches through the names of files, not their contents.

Netflix has spent years building and improving its recommendation engine, and even sponsored a $1 million contest to improve its algorithm. But now anyone can download and tinker with this kind of software, thanks to a new open source project. "We wanted to build fast," says Shelby.tv CEO Reece Pacheco. "We were impressed with the product and the team [Mortar Data] had built." The company also wanted the freedom to build its own recommendation engine in the future.

'Hello, this is a Tinder robot. Would you like to meet for a romantic candlelit date?' Robots clean our floors, mow our lawns and (at least in Japan) check you into hotel rooms and carry your luggage. So why not turn over that pesky problem of setting up a date to a bot? Vancouver developer and Tinder user Justin Long did just that, creating software that puts the popular dating app Tinder on auto pilot. Tired of the time he spent swiping right and left to say yes or no on the popular app, Long combined facial recognition and artificial intelligence to let his bot – dubbed Tinderbox – prescreen potential dating partners.

Video game fans are familiar with the name Cortana. Now, Microsoft is hoping iOS and Android phone owners in search of a personal assistant app will get to know her, too. Microsoft's voice-enabled assistant Cortana -- named after the artificial intelligence featured in the Xbox franchise Halo -- launched for Apple and Android smartphones, giving users a way to quickly look up information or set reminders with simple voice commands. At times, Cortana is useful. But it appears clear it works best on its native home on a Windows device.

In the consumer universe, artificial intelligence is best known as a nice-to-have if stealthy feature that can suggest movies or book rides. But AI's greater worth could well be in the money-making enterprise arena, where sales, service and marketing initiatives stand to be streamlined by the data-crunching deductive power of machine learning. That's certainly the bet customer relationship management giant Salesforce is making by unveiling Einstein, the no-brainer name given to a suite of advanced AI capabilities. With Einstein, salespeople can focus on leads that statistically show the most promise of becoming clients, and customer service reps may be better prepared to answer a rainbow of consumer queries. "The strongest aspect of Einstein is that it is deeply embedded in the platform, it's just working automatically," says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, whose company officially rolled out the base product Sunday.

USA TODAY tech reporter Mike Snider looks into Microsoft's $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn and how it might help the company. A user demonstrates the look and feel of Windows 10 operating system for smartphones and at the Microsoft stall at the CeBIT technology fair in Hanover, Germany. SAN FRANCISCO -- Microsoft has made yet another acquisition designed to retool the former software king into an enterprise solutions leader. The Redmond, Wash-based company announced Monday that it was buying virtual-assistant start-up Genee for an undisclosed sum, according to blog posts by Microsoft and Genee executives. The move comes on the heels of Microsoft's $26 billion purchase of professional networking site LinkedIn, a bold chess move by CEO Satya Nadella as he aims to make his company's cloud-based Office 365 platform ubiquitous in the business environment.

LONDON, ENGLAND - AUGUST 03: The Apple logo is displayed on the back of an iPhone on August 3, 2016 in London, England. Apple is continuing to make inroads into artificial intelligence. The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech behemoth bought Turi, a machine learning platform, for $200 million, according to sources at GeekWire. Apple would not confirm the move to USA TODAY, but said the company buys smaller technology companies "from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans." The Cupertino-based tech behomouth appears to be coming to terms with slumping demand for the iPhone by expanding into other markets, including artificial intelligence.