Tonight is your friend's birthday party. You've forgotten to get a gift, and you have to work late. The solution is in the palm of your hand. With your smartphone, you can ask MyKai, a mobile tool that connects to your bank account, how much you can spend. You can then send a quick text message to 1-800 Flowers for a bouquet of flowers.

Why does Amazon's Alexa team need 1000 people? I have stated for quite some time that 50% of all human interaction with computers will be through voice-assisted AI in the next ten years [2]. "What if we didn't need to learn arcane commands? What if you could use the most effective and powerful communication tool ever invented? This tool evolved over millions of years and allows you to express complex ideas in very compact and data dense ways yet can be nuanced to the width of a hair. It is our voice… The last 60 years of computing, humans were adapting to the computer. The next 60 years the computer will adapt to us. It will be our voices that will lead the way; it will be a revolution."

Microsoft is trying to turn Cortana into the digital assistant of your dreams with a new AI bot called Calendar.help. The beta service requires an invitation, but once signed up, you link it to your Outlook, Google or Office 365 calendar apps. Then, when it's time to schedule a meeting, send an email to attendees and Cc: Cortana. The message can include natural language like "sometime next week" or "make this a Skype meeting." From there, it'll look at your calendar and contact other attendees by itself to find the best time for everyone.

Steadfast robots replace hotel desk clerks and retail workers, autonomous cars and drones transport robots that deliver packages more efficiently, shopping sprees take place in virtual reality – these are just a few of the innovations Gartner, Inc. predicted during a webcast entitled, "The Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2017." In a fascinating presentation that encouraged companies to experiment with scenarios for these and other technologies based on targeted business value, David Cearley, Vice President and Gartner Fellow, explained how intelligence anywhere and everywhere actually puts people in charge. More and more people will use augmented reality for more personalized shopping experiences. It's about all of that together," said Cearley. "We need to…put the person at the center.

Recently, we had written about how Expedia is planning to become the first $100 billion online travel company. One of the main drivers to help Expedia reach its target is technological investments. In one of its moves towards technological advancements, Expedia has recently announced voice activated searches on its platform through Amazon Alexa. This is the company's first move towards introducing a voice activated search product and it marks progress in Expedia's ongoing work on the processing of natural language. The feature will enable Expedia customers to ask Alexa about the status of their existing flight reservations, it will help them rent cars and also answer queries about the customers' loyalty program numbers.

THE ORIGINAL MACHINERY question, which had seemed so vital and urgent, eventually resolved itself. Despite the fears expressed by David Ricardo, among others, that "substitution of machinery for human labour…may render the population redundant", the overall effect of mechanisation turned out to be job creation on an unprecedented scale. Machines allowed individual workers to produce more, reducing the price of many goods, increasing demand and generating a need for more workers. Entirely new jobs were created to oversee the machines. As companies got bigger, they required managers, accountants and other support staff.

Conversational artificial intelligence company Conversica has raised $34 million in an oversubscribed Series B round led by Providence Strategic Growth Capital Partners. Toba Capital, Wellington Financial LP, and Recruit Strategic Partners contributed to the round, as did Series A investor Kennet Partners and Conversica founder Ben Brigham. The funding will be used to boost the company's sales and marketing activities and for expansion into international markets. It will also support ongoing product development efforts including the launch of new AI assistants and multilingual support. Our planes are now'big flying mobile devices' and top hacking targets Consumers check smartphones more than 9 billion times a day and enable new businesses PwC sends'cease and desist' letters to researchers who found critical flaw China targets aviation industry to spy and steal secrets Our planes are now'big flying mobile devices' and top hacking targets PwC sends'cease and desist' letters to researchers who found critical flaw Conversica's flagship product, the AI Sales Assistant, automatically engages with prospective customers using natural, two-way email conversations until the lead converts into an opportunity or chooses to opt out.

Software giant Microsoft has continued its diversification drive with the launch of a bunch of clever things loosely grouped into the artificial intelligence silo. While Microsoft had a slight fall from grace during the late 90s and 00s with the rise of more millennial-friendly technologies, its recent surge in the cloud computing market has put the giant firmly back in the top division. Cloud computing has positioned the vendor as a must-have for numerous CIOs around the world, and now the team are looking towards one of the next major technology booms to fuel further growth; artificial intelligence. There are a number of players throughout the industry who are making moves in the potentially lucrative AI industry, though Microsoft looks to be one which has the strongest footing. True, Google's Deepmind and IBM's Watson have arguably made more progress in the AI arena, though Microsoft's current penetration into the world of enterprise technology gives it a notable advantage, even if it is playing catch-up on the AI side of things.

Microsoft is partnering with audio company Harman Kardon to launch a speaker with its Cortana personal assistant built in. Described as "a voice-activated speaker," a short teaser video shows glimpses of a (rendered) cylindrical design not too dissimilar to Amazon's Echo. It also takes cues from Google Home, with a display atop fashioned after Cortana's familiar blue circle that shows when the assistant is thinking. Unfortunately, the teaser video is all we have to go on, and that only tells us the device is "coming in 2017." It seems a pretty safe bet that it won't be the only speaker with Cortana built in, though. Microsoft is making a big push into the "internet of things" with the Cortana Devices SDK, hoping to partner with many manufacturers to bring the assistant to various devices and appliances.

After attending this year's IBM World of Watson event in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, I was both stunned and overwhelmed by the advancements in artificial intelligence and cognitive. I have written about IBM and Watson several times over the last few years, but this year seems to be it's coming out party. I remember when Watson was a contestant on the TV game show "Jeopardy." It has grown leap years in the last five years. What we think we know about AI mostly comes from the movies, TV and sci-fi, and it has been with us for quite a while.