Amazon doesn't have an official presence at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but it's making no shortage of headlines thanks to its Alexa smart assistant. Don't assume, though, that the AI butler will be king forever. If you've been following the news coming out of CES this year, you'll have noticed that voice-controlled AI assistants are everywhere. Conversational interfaces, which we predicted would be a breakthrough technology in 2016, have already made a big impression on consumers, and now companies want to bake them into as many pieces of hardware as possible. Leading the pack by a wide margin is Alexa. It's made its way into third-party speakers similar to Amazon's own Echo device.

If you happen to live in one of the six million US homes that have so far purchased an Amazon Echo, you may think Alexa is just a voice emanating from a cylindrical speaker that knows a couple of tricks. It plays the Beatles on command. It can order more toilet paper. It has jokes, some of which are even kind of funny. Just as Apple taught us that a small portable phone could be a more powerful computing method than our lumbering desktops, Amazon is introducing us to a new computing interface -- a voice devoid of a screen--that will eventually grow to be more ubiquitous and more useful than our smartphones.

The fortune of Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, rose by $3.8 billion in the first week of 2017. The new year has just begun, and Jeff Bezos' net worth is already up almost $4 billion. Coming off a difficult three-month stretch in which Amazon lost more than 10% of its value, the company's stock is once again surging. Between Monday morning and Friday afternoon of this week, Amazon's share price rose by nearly 4%, closing at $795.99 per share at the end of normal trading at 4 P.M. EST Friday. For Bezos, who owns more than 80 million shares and whose personal fortune is almost entirely tied to the business, that increase has led to big personal gains.

Alexa is featured at the Whirlpool booth. LAS VEGAS--Bark out "Alexa" in the congested halls of CES, and you would have heard a chorus of devices, from cars to smartphones to household appliances, answer back. OK, so not literally, but Alexa is assuming an increasing role across numerous products, a sure sign Amazon is leaning on its vocal digital assistant to spread its artificial intelligence system everywhere, and certainly go well beyond the popular Echo speaker where Alexa got its start. Rival Google Assistant wasn't as prominent at this CES, though hot chipmaker Nvidia aims to expand the artificial intelligence-powered assistant's reach throughout the home. Also, Google announced integrations with Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai, and Rishi Chandra, the vice-president for Google Home, gave a talk on smarter homes.

If 2016 seemed politically tumultuous, 2017 promises to be equally tumultuous on the technology front. The pace of change is accelerating at a dizzying rate, with profound implications for the way we we work, play and communicate. So what are the big technology trends to watch out for in 2017? Cybersecurity will undoubtedly be the dominant theme of 2017, as all tech innovations could be undermined by data thefts, fraud and cyber propaganda. Forget Kim Kardashian, it's hacking that could break the internet - and much more besides.

We're barely into the new year, which means it's time for the planet (or the developed world, at least) to get its collective geek on and marvel at the latest electronics at CES. If you've been living in a cave for the past decade or so, CES is the Consumer Electronics Show. It's where newfangled gadgets debut, TV manufacturers try to convince us all that we need to upgrade from our hi-def sets, and techno-hucksters attempt to convince us, yet again, that virtual reality and smartwatches have truly, finally arrived, for real this time. Well, only the cutest little robot you ever did see! His name is Kuri, and you can find him on heykuri.com.

Those amazing, lifelike robots, reports Jefferson Graham on #TalkingTech. LAS VEGAS --The one, coolest thing from this year's 2017 CES is an easy pick -- those amazing robots. We saw robots to make your morning coffee, pour candy, fold your clothes, turn on and off your lights, project a movie on the wall, handle your daily chores and most impressively, look just like a human, or in this case, legendary scientist Albert Einstein, with facial expressions and movement. Why did robots dominate CES? You can thank the popularity of Amazon's Echo device for showcasing the technology of a voice-activated personal assistant.

At this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), dozens of companies selling all kinds of products and services are touting their use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI has been hot for a year or two, and it's only getting hotter as it becomes incorporated into increasingly novel products and services. Jetsons-style robot assistants for the home were on display on the show floor, boasting intelligence that helps discover and adapt to the layout of your home, identify your family's habits, recognize faces, learn from conversations, and even control smart-home devices. LG was the biggest name with a new robot, but smaller companies also unveiled compelling options, including Mayfield Robotics' ultra-cute Kuri and Yumii's Cutii companion for the elderly. AI-powered robots that used to be the province of science fiction may soon be common in our homes.

Microsoft's next big push into the automotive space won't be a Redmond-made self-driving car. Instead, the company hopes to provide the backbone for a whole suite of cloud-based services that automakers can use to enhance the driving experience in their own connected vehicles. In an announcement at CES on Friday, the company unveiled the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform to handle everything from predictive maintenance to "in-car productivity" and advanced navigation. "This is not an in-car operating system or a'finished product;'" Microsoft's EVP for Business Development Peggy Johnson wrote in the announcement. "It's a living, agile platform that starts with the cloud as the foundation."

A team of Twitch streamers have pitted one Google Home against another in bot showdown that has attracted 777,000 visitors to date. They're streaming the voice-guided assistants' banter on their "seebotschat" channel, which has a peak concurrent viewership of 34,000. According to a Twitch spokesperson, the two robotic speakers are running separately and are having a true conversation. "The magic comes from intercepting those messages and altering them to keep things fresh and fun," he said. And the machines' convos are pretty fun.