In a popularity battle that isn't unlike a high school prom court, Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google's, uh, Assistant, are the four front-runners to be queen. With Samsung about to add a fifth candidate -- Bixby -- soon, it seems the A.I. voice assistant catfight is reaching its apex. This is good for us, the consumers, because when billion collar companies compete -- we win. But it's also stressful and annoying having to deal with so many different platforms right now. One Hong Kong-based company -- Vicartek -- is looking to streamline the process with a bluetooth headset that is natively compatible with Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, and Cortana, all accessible via a tap or two on the device's touch panel, without the need for the user to pull out their phone.

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Tomorrow's most effective individuals will combine their personal capabilities with customized digital boosters. Technology now touches and transforms every aspect of personal productivity in the workplace. Mobile devices, bots, and digital assistants are ubiquitous, while managers increasingly use key performance indicator (KPI) dashboards to monitor and measure employee performance. In industry after global industry, effectively collaborating with technology is as important as effectively collaborating with people. Continually boosting the value of employees in this environment -- especially knowledge workers -- poses a difficult design challenge.

Picture shows IBM Watson robot on the third day of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2016. There is no way to spell "retail" without AI. The power of artificial intelligence (AI) to transform the consumer journey dominated the conversation at Shoptalk this week. In its second year, Shoptalk brought together 5,000-plus players across the full ecosystem to better understand the continuous evolution of how consumers discover, browse and buy in the digital era. AI, which refers to technologies capable of performing tasks normally requiring human intelligence, goes back centuries.

These days, job hunting looks a lot like online dating: Seemingly infinite scrolling, a few messages that lead to nowhere, and even fewer human interactions that--more often than not--don't turn out the way you thought they would. Recruiting startup WayUp hopes to convince job searchers that it doesn't have to be such "a miserable process," says co-founder and CEO Liz Wessel. WayUp offers a "smart" platform that uses data to match seekers with potential employers. Wessel says that the site collects about 40 data points per applicant and, armed with that information, is able to suggest "the right jobs to the right people" better than job sites like Indeed and Monster, or professional social network LinkedIn. On Thursday, the company announced that it has raised a $18.5 million series B funding round, led by Trinity Ventures, with participation from WayUp's existing investors, including General Catalyst, BoxGroup, Lerer-Hippeau Ventures, Index Ventures, SV Angel, and Female Founders Fund.

Following the Wikileaks March 7 Vault 7 data dump, which allegedly details a host of CIA hacking tools, people have started looking at their internet-connected devices with just a tad bit more skepticism. With that in mind, people have taken to asking their digital assistants about the CIA. The results, well, are a bit baffling. SEE ALSO: Google Home is now playing unprompted ads for'Beauty and the Beast' "Okay Google," a man asks his Google Assistant in a video posted to YouTube by Michael Hraba. "Do you know what the CIA is?"

We cover many emerging markets in the startup ecosystem. Previously, we published posts that summarized Financial Technology, Internet of Things, Bitcoin, and MarTech in six visuals. This week, we do the same with Artificial Intelligence (AI). At this time, we are tracking 855 AI companies across 13 categories, with a combined funding amount of $8.75billion. To see all of our AI related posts, check out our blog!

Microsoft's push into the connected car space has moved up a gear with a new patent licensing agreement with Toyota. The world's second-largest auto maker will have access to a range of Microsoft patents as part of the deal announced this week. Rather than trying to build a high-tech automobile of its own, Microsoft is focusing on providing carmakers with the tools they need to create smarter vehicles and the Toyota deal is the first of what it hopes will be a series of such agreements. Microsoft offers an entire suite of cloud services aimed at aiding the development of internet-enabled automobiles and is also integrating its Cortana virtual assistant into cars alongside PCs, phones and other devices. In the future, a connected car could become a rolling extension of a user's office, with Office 365 integrations.

Someday soon, you'll be able to tell Siri to book a flight to Chicago, get you a hotel on the Miracle Mile, reserve a table at Morton's, and get you tickets for the Cubbies. Today, to accomplish the same task, you need to dive into five or six different apps for hotels, flights, dinner reservations, sports tickets, and transfers between all the locations, and spend maybe 30 to 60 minutes sweating the details. But the day might be coming sooner rather than later that Siri can do it all for you. Today, Apple announced that it has acquired Workflow, an innovative iOS app that glues together functionality from multiple apps into a single, simple ... flow. Workflow currently allows you to take pictures and automate editing of them, or enter data and flow it to multiple places, or make PDFs out of web pages, or just about anything else you can imagine.

A 4-year-old boy in the U.K. saved his mom's life after he used Siri to call an ambulance, telling emergency services that "she's closing her eyes and she's not breathing." The boy used his unconscious mother's iPhone to contact police, according to a statement released this week by London's Metropolitan Police. The 4-year-old unlocked the device by pressing her thumb to the phone and used Siri to call for help by dialing 999 for emergency services. Police also released part of the boy's heart-breaking call. "Can you go and get mummy?"