If you're still stymied about what gift to get, here are 10 gift ideas -- from Amazon's Echo Dot to battery chargers and drones. This is the smaller version of Amazon's popular Echo, a smart speaker. The interactive device -- that responds to the name "Alexa" -- can answer fact queries, playback music, provide real-time traffic, and lots of other things. It has a 3.5mm output jack and Bluetooth connectivity. "The Jackery Bolt packs a lot of value into a battery the size of a bar of soap," according to review site The Wirecutter, adding that The Bolt has "enough capacity to charge most smartphones twice over."

In the last few years, commercial organizations have relied heavily on immersive technology, effectively transforming operations and even market competition. The internet makes cross-device integration increasingly common, particularly as more devices become connected. As it becomes easier to connect with one another, the lines between reality and digital world become increasingly blurred. Although Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning were huge buzzwords in 2016, in the coming year we expect to see even more cloud users become accustomed to dealing with bots, and synchronizing their lives and operations to include digital assistants. Last year, Google and Microsoft added more powerful AI services to their cloud platforms.

AI is more present in our daily lives than many people realize. The world is on the cusp of an AI revolution. Companies around the world are already using the technology to help do everything from parse medical records to teach cars to drive themselves. At home, digital assistants like Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri and Google Now, have put a conversational gloss on the burgeoning tech. In 2017, AI is likely to not only get smarter (natch) but also more humanlike.

It's almost Christmas and you still haven't gotten gifts for everyone. In a world that's increasingly wired and well connected, a great tech gift might be the perfect fix for your Christmas gift woes. Here are some items you can get in stores this week at the last second, all of which will be sure to please this Christmas. The Google Home could be a perfect product for any techie. It's essentially like living in a long-imagined future where you speak commands -- such as "Play a favorite song" or ask a random question -- and the little, oblong speaker calmly answers.

By now, everyone's familiar with the tale: Artificial intelligence achieves consciousness, judges that humans are extraneous, and then enslaves or destroys us all. Think 2015's Ex Machina, 2004's I, Robot, 1984's Terminator. The other side of the coin, though, tends to make fewer headlines. Spike Jonze's 2013 film Her offers a sweeter narrative about conscious A.I.: A future in which a lonely writer can fall in love with an A.I. assistant named Samantha. Her eventual transition from conscious to superintelligent does not signal the demise of our species -- it just breaks Joaquin Phoenix's heart.

When creating a new AI-based app, there are many generic problems that are already being solved by other companies, for example face and gesture detection. Unless this is the main business and focus of the company, they will prefer to look for an out-of-the-box AI-as-a-service solution which will save them time, expertise and money. This type of solutions are called AI platforms and give their users many out-of-the-box services, such as computer vision (feature/face and gesture detection), natural language processing (NLP), speech to text, and translations between different language. See also: Artificial intelligence: a force for good or bad? Many companies including Google and Amazon sell this kind of AI services.

Siri had a good run, but its time in the spotlight is over. Alexa has arrived, and it's way smarter than Siri. Alexa, of course, is the voice-activated "smart" assistant lurking inside the Amazon Echo, Amazon Echo Dot and Amazon Tap products. If you own one of these gadgets, you probably know the basics by now--you can ask Alexa for today's weather forecast, a daily news briefing, an oven timer or a favorite playlist. But as the Echo family of products has grown, so has the ecosystem that surrounds it.

The term'Artificial Intelligence' was originally coined in the 1950s by the computer scientist John McCarthy. Human-style intelligence, is the desire for people to create human-like consciousness in a machine, enabling it to apply common sense, work out varied problems and even have emotional intelligence, sometimes referred to as'general' or'strong' AI, and Task-orientated intelligence, is the ability to do a limited range of tasks very well, such as the ability to drive a car, answer questions or to make health diagnoses, referred to as'narrow' or'weak' AI. Human-style intelligence, is the desire for people to create human-like consciousness in a machine, enabling it to apply common sense, work out varied problems and even have emotional intelligence, sometimes referred to as'general' or'strong' AI, and Task-orientated intelligence, is the ability to do a limited range of tasks very well, such as the ability to drive a car, answer questions or to make health diagnoses, referred to as'narrow' or'weak' AI. Today, the hype around artificial intelligence (AI) is ramping up, especially as big tech companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft attempt to commercialize its use. Digital Ad Agencies are also starting to figure out how they can leverage Artificial Intelligence techniques to make their clients' marketing and advertising efforts more effective. So far in 2016, Artificial Intelligence technology has grabbed headlines as the focus of Apple's first acquisition--in the form of Emotient Inc--and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has resolved to build an AI assistant to run his home and help him at work. Google has also gone down in the history books after its DeepMind team developed an AI program capable of defeating human world champions of complex Chinese board game Go. It's an achievement reminiscent of IBM's milestone moment when its cognitive system IBM's Watson thrashed human contestants in the U.S. game show Jeopardy in 2011. Watson was custom-built to process natural language and reason its way through information.

New types of artificial intelligence (AI) will be one of the major themes to watch for at the 2017 CES. AI has been a growing story at the show for the past few years, but at CES 2017 it will be more dramatic and pervasive than ever before. In fact, AI could very well be "The Story of the Show." Expect AI themes focused on experiences powered by AI, though not necessarily visible to the consumer. This is about the convergence of AI capabilities, such as machine learning, natural language processing, and analytics, that spawn more fidelity and more personalized responses.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an important and evolving concept that is having significant impact within the Customer Experience industry -- and it's a topic that is being talked about on a seemingly daily basis at this point. But is AI really ready for primetime in customer care? I spoke with Michael Johnston, Lead Inventive Scientist at Interactions, about frequently asked questions about AI and Machine Learning as they apply to customer care. Artificial Intelligence refers to the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior. Put another way, AI technologies are algorithms that attempt to mimic things that humans do.