Having a robot for a boss could afford you many benefits and could even help with your career advancement. Most that work for any Company have someone within this entity that they must answer to. It could be a team leader, supervisor or manager. Then for the executive management level it is usually the company owner itself. This means that most have to rely on human nature to lead them to success in the Company that they work for.This can come with a lot of challenges, but what if that leadership were in the form of robots?

A year ago I wrote that I had seen the future. I had attended the IBM Insights conference in Las Vegas, an entire conference devoted to the Internet of Things, analytics, cognitive marketing and related topics. And if the concept of Moore's Law (that technology doubles every year – or every 18 months or two years, depending on what you read) holds true, then a lot has happened since then. While last year's future is now a history lesson, what is currently happening in the World of Watson is moving at warp speed! This past week more than 17,000 people attended IBM's World of Watson, the new name of the conference devoted to cognitive technology.

If you thought Siri was smart, wait until you get a load of Spaun. Created by neuroscientist Chris Eliasmith at the University of Waterloo in Canada, Spaun is "the world's largest simulation of a functioning brain," according to a report from Canada.com. Spaun is able to recognize numbers and memorize lists and patterns and reproduce them on command. This makes Spaun unique among its virtual peers, since other large-scale models of the brain "don't do anything," Eliasmith said. Spaun, which stands for Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network, has 2.5 million simulated neurons organized into subsystems to resemble the prefrontal cortex, basil ganglia, thalamus and other cognitive machinery in the brain.

While Microsoft is preparing for the release of Windows 10 IoT Core for a multitude of devices, the Redmond giant is also quietly pushing for the availability of Cortana in all the devices that the Windows 10 software variant will be supporting. This is based on the information Microsoft officials provided last week at WinHEC 2016 in Shenzhen that has come to light early this week. In a presentation, entitled "Cortana and the Speech Platform," Microsoft officials revealed to OEM partners what the company's big move for its advanced voice assistant is all about. ZDNet has learned that the tech giant is preparing for its PCs and device partners to utilize the "Wake on Voice from Modern Standby" and "Far-field Voice" functionality of Cortana through the Creators Update that is arriving in Spring 2017. The "Wake on Voice from Modern Standby" technology enables Cortana to control devices from their inactive state.

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. Then, you can tap on your friend's address in Facebook messenger to summon an Uber driver to take you to the party.

At long last, Microsoft has set a public target of bringing consumer devices--that aren't PCs--to market in 2017 with its personal digital assistant, Cortana, inside of them. On Tuesday, Microsoft announced a way to challenge Amazon's Alexa-powered Dot and Echo devices, as well as Google's Google Home. Microsoft's New Devices SDK will allow to power a new line of connected-car speakers from Harmon Kardon in 2017, executives said, with presumably more partnerships to come. This follows an earlier announcement that Cortana is coming to Windows 10 IoT, Microsoft's operating system for smart devices. Why this matters: Though Apple, Microsoft, and Google all have prominent artificial-intelligence initiatives, it's been Amazon--and, to a lesser extent, Google--that have designed devices around their technology.

Microsoft's Cortana virtual assistant is getting a lot smarter. On Tuesday, the company announced a set of developer tools aimed at bringing it into the internet of things, and adding support for developers to build new functionality for it. The makers of IoT devices like speakers and cars will be able to use a Microsoft software development kit to integrate Cortana into their products. In addition, developers will be able to build custom integrations that add capabilities to Microsoft's virtual assistant. Microsoft is also launching a new service designed to help users simplify the process of scheduling meetings.

One of the undisputable realities of moving into a digital work era is the continuous improvement in technologies which mimic and replicate what human employees are doing. The introduction of'bots' into the workplace to perform logic-based and repetitive tasks is becoming a common occurrence. These task robots are able to perform activities faster, with greater accuracy and more efficiently that their human colleagues. In fact their capacity is close to 700 per cent greater than the human employee, who generally works at a 60 per cent utilisation rate for 7-8 hours a day, can be absent for a variety of reasons, doesn't work 7 days a week, and who's productivity is influenced by a plethora of human frailties. It's no wonder'bots' are attractive to organisations for this type of work.

If you have been as glued as we are in the Mysoft office to the new series of Channel 4's'Humans' then you will be fascinated by the idea of this'Artificial Intelligence' future that it presents. The concept of code going to this next level, where it is able to write and develop itself into thoughts, feelings and actions, feels like science fiction but has some eerie roots in reality. Will a similar plethora of new AI technology soon become main stream? And what could it mean for the advancement of ERP and Sage X3 solutions? We are already seeing a wave of products that use AI technology to enhance the user experience.

More important to me is how this will change our lives. I spent some time last week talking to IBM about how its partnership with NVIDIA and its advancements with Watson and OpenPOWER will be changing the world around us. We spoke about a number of artificial intelligence trends and several stood out for me. Artificial Intelligence and Credit Card Security Every year, financial institutions write of billions in losses due to credit card fraud, and a great deal of focus has been placed on stopping this steady drip, drip, drip of illegal cost. Currently, systems are advanced enough to do four fraud checks at the time of the transaction, but they simply aren't enough to stop the flood of people cloning, stealing and skimming credit cards to steal money.