At the Four Seasons hotel in South Korea, AlphaGO stunned grandmaster Lee Sodol at the complex and highly intuitive game of Go. Google's artificially intelligent system defeated the 18-time world champion in a string of games earlier this year. Backed by the company's superior machine-learning techniques, AlphaGo had processed thousands and thousands of Go moves from previous human-to-human games to develop its own ability to think strategically. The AlphaGo games, watched by millions of viewers on YouTube, revealed the ever-increasing power and progress of AI. This contest between man and machine was not the first of its kind.

Coming soon to a tech billionaire's Silicon Valley home, Morgan Freeman is: Jarvis. As I wrote yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has finished building Jarvis, his home AI assistant. Among other things, the system can turn lights on and off, play music based on the personal tastes of both him and wife Priscilla Chan, automatically open their front gate for friends, make toast, and even wake up their one-year-old daughter Max with Mandarin lessons. The system was inspired by Tony Stark's Jarvis AI, from the Iron Man movies. Stark, of course, is played by Robert Downey, Jr., and after Zuckerberg asked the public in October who should be the voice, Downey himself volunteered, saying he would "do it in a heartbeat" if actor Paul Bettany, the voice of Jarvis in the Iron Man films, got paid and the resulting money went to a charity of Benedict Cumberbatch's choice.

Back in those now forgotten days of January, before The Great Inversion of 2016, Zuckerberg was surely kicking his heels when he set himself that "personal challenge" to build a simple AI, which he said would be like: "[l]ike Jarvis from Iron Man - to help run my home and help me with work." Since then, Zuckerberg's challenge has taken on a different, rather more pressing dimension, one which even the deliverance of his actual Jarvis couldn't distract us from: elevating Facebook from the mire of fake news. Whether Zuckerberg was first to the punch or simply the cipher for a trend, he succeed in putting the stamp of AI on 2016 - at least in enterprise circles - and 2016 broadly became the year when anything AI-related could generate headlines. But if your idea for December was for a piece of AI more sophisticated than a voice-activated version of Nest controlling all Zuck's domestic appliances - and not just his central heating - sorry. Like British supporters of the membership of the European Union and those Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton, the year didn't quite go your way.

When new engineers join Facebook--no matter whether they're just out of college or VP-level veterans--they spend their first six weeks in Bootcamp, an intensive program designed to help them learn the ins and outs of the company's massive code base and the always-evolving set of programming tools at their disposal. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's original engineer, contributed more to that code than anyone else in the early years of its existence. But the 32-year-old CEO never went through the Bootcamp program, which was launched in 2006, two years after he founded the company in his Harvard dorm room. Last January, Zuckerberg announced that he planned to build an AI system to run his home using Facebook tools, in the latest of the personal-growth challenges he gives himself each year. An exciting exploration of the state of the art of AI--a technology field essential to Facebook's future--the project also forced him to refresh his command of the company's programming tools and processes.

This $6,000 appliance might seem like an excessive purchase, but it's just one example of how the connected home industry is likely to grow tremendously in the coming years. Smart home devices got a lot of hype in 2016, from in-home assistants like the Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Echo to connected and automated toilet seats. While most of these smart home devices range from under $100 to a few hundred, the Samsung (NASDAQOTH:SSNLF) "Family Hub" refrigerator, clocking in at a cool $5,999 on the high-end model, takes the prize as the most expensive smart home device of the year. Here's what that hefty price tag will get you, and why 2016 looks like just the beginning of a connected home revolution. The Samsung "family hub" refrigerator is not your typical ice box.

Artificial intelligence (AI) will take on a more concrete shape at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2017 next week, with industry-leading electronics giants ― Samsung and LG ― planning to showcase new home appliances equipped with AI features. In recent years, the CES has been all the rage with such themes as the Internet of Things (IoT), connected vehicles and smart TVs, with global IT firms hyping their latest technological achievements. But AI is expected to start taking center stage as a new keyword, as appliance manufacturers as well as automakers here and abroad hinted at unveiling their new products driven by their AI brains at the upcoming events. The move comes as the global technology industry is bracing for an AI-led paradigm shift, amid sluggish growth in such hardware-centered industries as smartphones. Global smartphone shipments this year will reach some 1.45 billion, growing only 0.6 percent from a year ago, according to market researcher IDC.

First, make sure your Echo is charged. Turn it on and set up the WiFi connection by installing the Alexa app on your phone. The cool thing about Alexa is she learns from you. The more questions you ask, the smarter she gets. Use your Alexa app to get started by activating those apps and services you use.

Home will walk you through the typical steps of choosing a language, setting up the Wi-Fi, that sort of thing. You can do this in your sleep. Before long, the app wil ask where in your home you are placing your Home. Choose someplace accessible, like the bedroom or living room. Once that's done, the app will prompt you to sign in to your Google account.

Microsoft is positioning itself as the world's platform for artificial intelligence, and that's a smart move. In 2014 I wrote that Microsoft's Cortana would be the next big thing. Redmond's vision for its johnny-come-lately AI is that it, like the GUI before it, will be pivotal in the evolution of the personal computing user interface. Microsoft's ambitions for Cortana were evident in 2014. Microsoft envisions an unbounded AI that developers and partners will incorporate into a range of everyday and innovative devices enabled by the Cortana SDK.

Virtually everywhere you look, Bay Area tech businesses are running into walls. Smartphones were revolutionary and lucrative, but the U.S. market is saturated, and Apple's iPhone sales have fallen for three quarters. The "app economy" has matured, with more people using existing apps than downloading new ones. And Facebook, which has filled users' news feeds with so many ads it can barely add more, is predicting its revenue growth will slump next year. Silicon Valley needs its next big thing, a focus for the concentrated brain power and innovation infrastructure that have made this region the world leader in transformative technology.