We're all familiar with the standard search engines such as Google and Yahoo, but there is a new technology on the scene that does more than just search the web – it discovers it. Trapit, which is a personalized discovery engine for the web that's powered by the same artificial intelligence technology behind Apple's Siri, launched its public beta last week. Just like Siri, Trapit is a product of the $200 million CALO Project (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes), which was the largest artificial intelligence project in U.S. history, according to Mashable. This million-dollar project was funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the Department of Defense's research arm. Trapit, which was first unveiled in June, is a system that personalizes content for its users based on keywords, URLs and reading habits.

Hey, Siri, what does Apple have in store for us this week? Along with new iPhones, the iconic tech company is expected to show off a new Apple TV system and a bigger role in the home for Siri, its voice-activated digital assistant. After a series of high-profile Apple launches over the past year -- super-sized iPhones, a digital wallet, a sleek smartwatch -- analysts say this week's news might not seem as dramatic. But the event could reveal more about the company's strategy and its aspirations to be an indispensable part of daily life.

Amazon has published an online guide explaining how to access its virtual assistant Alexa via a Raspberry Pi. The technique presents a lower-cost alternative to buying one of its Echo devices - which are not yet available outside of the US - and an incentive to gain computer skills. The walkthrough includes access to the necessary app data and certificates in order to link the budget computer up to the tech giant's servers. The Raspberry Pi pocket-sized computer was designed by a British charity to encourage children and others to learn how to write computer programs. More than eight million units have been sold or given away.

One of the ultimate aims of artificial intelligence is to create machines we can chat to. A computer program that can be trusted with mundane tasks - booking our holiday, reminding us of dentist appointments and offering useful advice about where to eat - but also one that can discuss the weather and answer offbeat questions. Alan Turing, one of the first computer scientists to think about artificial intelligence, devised a test to judge whether a machine was "thinking". He suggested that if, after a typewritten conversation, a human was fooled into believing they had talked to another person rather than a computer program, the AI would be judged to have passed. These days we chat to machines on a regular basis via our smart devices.

Predicting the future shape of technology is a fool's game. If you believed the forecasts of future-gazers when I was growing up, we would all be taking holidays on the moon, consuming our meals in tablet form and enjoying a 10-hour working week by now. And even very recent predictions seem to be going awry. Figures last week from Apple showed iPad sales slowing, and growth in the overall tablet market is looking less than spectacular, so the idea that the conventional desktop PC is in its death throes now seems to be a bit oversold. Nevertheless, Radio 4's The World At One is taking the brave step of trying to forecast the hot technology trends that we all need to know about.

"I don't know what you mean - how about a web search for it?" If you want the latest football scores, to add meetings to your calendar or launch an app, today's virtual assistants are relatively good at understanding your voice and doing what's asked. But try to have the type of natural conversation seen in sci-fi movies featuring artificial intelligence systems - from HAL in 2001 to the sultry-voiced operating system Samantha in Spike Jonze's Her - and you'll find your device about as smart as a waterproof teabag. "Google and Apple are painfully aware that their systems are not getting better fast enough because right now Siri and Google Now and the other personal assistant type applications are all programmed by hand," says Steve Young, professor of information engineering at the University of Cambridge. "If you speak to Siri about baseball it seems relatively intelligent, but if you ask it something much less common it doesn't really do anything except for a web search. "That's an indication that the programmers have been busy trying to anticipate what people want to ask about baseball but haven't thought about people who ask about, for example, GPU chips because you don't get many queries about that." Microsoft doesn't yet have a virtual assistant on its Windows Phone platform, but the company is experimenting with AI in lifts and reception desks at its headquarters. Eric Horvitz, managing director of Microsoft's research unit, believes part of the solution involves allowing computers to look beyond questions posed. "The ability of a system to understand more broadly what the overall context of a communication is turns out to be very important," he told the BBC. "There are some critical signals in context.

Someone tried to mess around with the FaceUnlock application code from the Android SDK, and stumbled upon this code, which seems to include answers, as if given by a personal assistant or such. We've heard some rumors a few months back that Google may be working on a personal assistant as part of their Google X projects, and they've been doing this for years. These rumors came from someone who claimed he was involved with Google X, and he wanted to give a hint about what they've been working on: This is in total violation of the NDA, but I don't care anymore. The central focus of Google X for the past few years has been a highly advanced artificial intelligence robot that leverages the underlying technology of many popular Google programs. As of October (the last time I was around the project), the artificial intelligence had passed the Turing Test 93% of the time via an hour long IM style conversation. IM was chosen to isolate the AI from the speech synthesizer and physical packaging of the robot.

As consumers, we're familiar with -- if not yet wholly invested in -- the term "artificial intelligence," whether it's by way of self-driving cars or voice-enabled search like Siri and Amazon's Alexa. Artificial intelligence is on course to drastically change the enterprise, with big implications for productivity, and possibly even larger ramifications for the economy. Business intelligence is providing companies with an overabundance of data, but it's AI that's emerging to make this data actionable by giving executives and employees useful insights that are relevant to their specific roles and what they need to accomplish on any given day. To name just a few implications of how business will change with AI, today's workforce will be empowered to take on new approaches with time management, teamwork and collaboration, client service, and business forecasting. For example, instead of just assessing raw data, artificial intelligence can take into account historical patterns and the current context of an employee's role, the nature of the business within which they work, and market dynamics.

It's not the level design or even the gameplay, which are both compelling enough. As a long-time gamer who has fond memories of playing Ico quite a few years ago and then beating the spiritual successor to that release called Shadow of the Colossus in 2005 (all created by designer Fumito Ueda and his team with a focus on forming an emotional bond), I've kept up on this latest project. The Last Guardian features a young boy climbing around on castles and coaxing a giant dragon-like creature named Trico into helping him escape. The interchange between the boy and the creature is what held my attention. It serves as a good lesson in how to make AI in a chatbot, a digital assistant or within an app or any piece of software.

"Wear that blue-colored dress today, it matches your new shoes." "Go to Tahiti on vacation, there is a good price now for tickets for this destination." All of these pieces of advice and more come from AI assistants. A wide range of these assistants have emerged to make our lives better: big ones like Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, and SoundHound and multiple startups that are trying to conquer the market. Alterrа, for example, will help you choose the country for your next vacation.