Babak Hodjat believes humans are too emotional for the stock market. So he's started one of the first hedge funds run completely by artificial intelligence. "Humans have bias and sensitivities, conscious and unconscious," says Hodjat, a computer scientist who helped lay the groundwork for Apple's Siri. "It's well documented we humans make mistakes. For me, it's scarier to be relying on those human-based intuitions and justifications than relying on purely what the data and statistics are telling you."

You can't have failed to notice the rise of the AI-powered assistants on phones, from Siri to Google Assistant to Cortana... and there are apparently more on the way in the near future. These apps offer a lot of the same features, though there are some differences too. Below we've taken four of the most well-known digital assistants of the moment and put them through their paces to see where their strengths and weaknesses lie, and to see whether some offer a better level of assistance than others. Apple was the first to put a voice-controlled assistant on a phone and Siri has grown from being a basic interface to your iPhone's functions to something much smarter and astute - and of course it's found its way to macOS now as well. Siri's still happier answering general questions it can look up on the internet rather than anything personal or specific, due in part to Apple's determination to put user privacy first (which means not collecting a load of information from your emails or your location like Google does) - but it can still bring up messages, calendar entries and so on.

Even though artificial intelligence may have positive effects, why create it if it has the potential to backfire. Many big tech companies are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence to make their businesses more efficient. In January 2015, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and dozens of artificial intelligence experts signed an open letter on artificial intelligence calling for research on the societal impacts of AI. Artificial Intelligence, chatbots, self –driving cars and robots often seem like a part of science fiction movies, but in reality, they have already started affecting our daily lives. For example, companies like Wipro and Infosys are deploying AI platform to do the job of engineers.

Amazon's Alexa added a new productivity skill to its tool set after we inadvertently discovered in mid-February. Amazon's Echo is versatile and powerful; it's a terrific value all around. The smart assistant--embedded in the Echo line of smart speakers, as well as many other devices--now works with Office 365 business accounts, officially. That means anyone using Office 365 for work can now get their calendar updates from their smart speaker at home or in the office, as TechCrunch first reported. Office 365 isn't the first calendar to work with Amazon's Echo.

Barack Obama is working with the communist Chinese government to plan a coup. That's according to Google's Home assistant, the little cylinder that sits in people's houses and speaks to them, working similar to Amazon's Alexa. But there is absolutely no evidence for the claim and Mr Obama does not appear to be planning to overthrow Donald Trump. That doesn't stop the box spewing out the fake news, if it's asked whether or not Mr Obama is planning a coup – a common conspiracy theory that has been suggested by Mr Trump in recent days. And here's what happens if you ask Google Home "is Obama planning a coup?" pic.twitter.com/MzmZqGOOal

Amazon arguably kicked off the "personal assistant in a can" line of products, so it's almost fitting that it also be the first to implement one of the most needed feature for smart speakers. These devices can already recognize and understand voices and speech, but they can't really differentiate one voice from the next, which makes for a sometimes hilarious, sometimes frightening situation. Amazon, however, is tipped to be working on a certain "Voice ID" feature that would put those worries to rest. Neither of them can really tell their owner's voice from other voices within earshot. That has lead to rather comical instances where Echo would try (and fortunately fail) to order toys for kids or Google Home responding to triggers in an advertisement for Google Home. It is a security nightmare waiting to happen.

What does the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) conjure up in the mind of the consumer? Will our children be replaced by fun-loving androids as the eponymous 2001 Steven Spielberg film A.I. suggests? Or perhaps grown adults will suddenly be replaced by robots in the workplace? While all of that may seem a little far-fetched, in reality, AI is already integral to many consumers' daily lives – in the form of image and voice recognition on mobile devices; personalised viewing suggestions on streaming platforms such as Amazon Video or Netflix; or voice interaction/recognition analysis incorporated into search engines such as Google. AI has also gained recognition in the healthcare sector – machine learning applications that have the potential to assist hospital staff in routine tasks such as keeping a patient's treatment records up to date are being tested and the voice-controlled Amazon Echo device, Alexa, can assist patients at home with tasks such as reminding them to take medication or arranging a GP appointment.

After conspicuously being absent when the group came together in September 2016, Apple has joined the Partnership on AI. Tim Cook's firm has become a founding member of the organisation, which includes Google/DeepMind, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook and Amazon. Apple's Tom Gruber, the chief technology officer of AI personal assistant Siri, has joined the group of trustees running the non-profit partnership. "We believe it's beneficial to Apple, our customers, and the industry to play an active role in its development and look forward to collaborating with the group to help drive discussion on how to advance AI while protecting the privacy and security of consumers," Gruber said in a statement . Although Apple didn't join the partnership from the beginning it is said discussions involving its membership have been ongoing.

New technologies are emerging and showing up in our everyday lives at a rapid rate. Voice-recognition, like Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa, and image recognition in our Facebook and Google accounts are just two mainstream applications that leverage artificial intelligence (AI)--one of the newest technologies gaining widespread momentum today. Artificial intelligence (AI) is defined by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence as "the scientific understanding of the mechanism underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines." It is one of the Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2016 chosen by the World Economic Forum, based on the power to improve lives, transform industries, and safeguard the planet. Combining artificial intelligence with the advancements in natural language processing (NLP), social awareness algorithms, and big data enables its many applications.

So why is Google giving you this right-wing conspiracy acid-trip? Basically, it's quoting Google's own "featured snippets," results that show up at the top of the page for certain search terms. Unlike the "Knowledge Graph," which shows reliable, well-sourced replies, featured snippets "provide an automatic and algorithmic match to a given search query," Google told Recode. In other words, the information is first surfaced by a bot from not-necessarily-reliable sources, then read back to you by Google Home (powered by Google Assistant AI). The device focuses on featured snippets because it would be impractical to read a list of search results.