Digital assistants like Siri and Cortana do utilize traditional search engines, but only when necessary to find information. The key to optimizing in this new format is to make sure your business information is easily accessible to these assistants, rather than trying to funnel people to your site specifically. Search engines are evolving in strange new ways. Mobile searches have overtaken desktop searches (at long last), and competitors like Bing and Yahoo are growing more and more like Google every day, unifying the capacity of every major search brand. As if that weren't enough, a wave of digital assistants like Siri, Google Now, and Cortana have begun to emerge to redefine the search process -- rather than opening a browser window, going to a search engine site, and plugging in an entry only to wade through a string of possible results, users can now use conversational commands and queries to engage with a human-like interface and be met with an almost immediate answer.

With AI becoming integral to nearly every industry, it's no surprise that banking is increasingly automated. Chatbots like BankBot and Nao are slowly taking us one step further than digital banking, but there are still privacy risks that come with feeding both banks and their bots more information. BankBot is an app prototype designed by the Polish digital design and communication agency K2. BankBot itself is a robotic bank teller, financial advisor, and personal assistant all in one. The automated sidekick provides a conversational text-based interface, but users can also use their voices instead of typing.

It looks like Apple's Siri is a huge fan of the HBO sci-fi show "Westworld." Evan Rachel Wood, who plays Dolores Abernathy in the show, had a little fun with Siri and asked the robotic personal assistant things about the Season 1 finale of "Westworld." The actress even posted screenshots of her conversations with Siri on her Twitter page. In one tweet, Siri quoted the typical response given by hosts whenever they are presented with images of the modern world: "It doesn't look like anything to me." When Wood turned the tables and used quotes from the show, Siri gave out hilarious and witty responses.

In its latest Windows 10 Insider Preview Build, Microsoft has given you the power to shut down or restart your PC by your voice alone--a convenience that also may allow pranksters of all stripes to wreak havoc. Microsoft rolled out Preview Build 14986 of Windows 10 to insiders in the Fast ring on Wednesday, on the first day of its Windows Hardware Engineering conference (WinHEC) in Shenzhen, China. It's a rather substantial build, offering the ability to restart, lock, or shut down your PC via Cortana. It allows you more freedom to control your music via Cortana, provides better PC game support via the Windows Game Bar, includes a Windows Defender dashboard, features improved Windows Ink capabilities, and much more. The new build also ships with specific improvements for customers in Asia, including a better typing experience for Chinese keyboards.

I'm taking the next step in the smart world here at Fluxx, and focusing in on AI, smart chat bots and stupid virtual assistants to hopefully find some interesting examples on what's out there. One of the hottest topics of the last few years has been AI in all its forms, everything from simple female-named chatting tools, to domesday predictions that AI will kill us all, or at least make us fat and obsolete in the workplace. So far what we've seen and been able to play with has mostly been in the form of chat bots, helping us navigate over-complicated websites or get some very limited customer service help. November 6, 2001 "Treehouse of Horror XII" was aired, with Pierce Brosnan starring as Ultrahouse 3000. A smart building AI that becomes attracted to Marge and decides to get rid of Homer, attempting to kill him by dumping him into the dining room table's garbage disposal -- many of the common fears of what an AI eventually will do to us. Some of you might remember that a few years back it felt like most service providers started using Automated online assistants like Anna from IKEA here, often used by banks or insurance companies to provide visitors with another form of customer service.

Amazon's virtual assistant tells jokes, dims your living room lights, and responds to famous Star Wars quotes. I mean, what more can you ask for? In addition to rattling off compelling news stories, she also entertains the masses wherever she goes. My sister, for example, stores the portable Echo device in her kitchen because she likes playing music while she cooks. But whenever I'm over her house, I always end up having a wild dance party with her two young children in the kitchen.

The vast product variety and product variation offered by online retailers provide an amazing amount of choice options to individuals, thus posing a big challenge to them finding and choosing interesting products which provide them the most utility. Consequently, consumers have to be satisfied with finding a product that provides them sufficient utility. Beyond that, individuals tend to even defer product choice [Dhar, 1997]. Recommender systems have emerged in the past years as an effective method to help individuals with finding interesting products. As a result, the consumer welfare enhanced by $731 million to $1.03 billion in the year 2000 due to the increased product variety of online bookstores [Brynjolfsson et al., 2003].

That five-inch phone in your pocket, the one you absolutely can't live without, does damn near anything these days. It is the Great Usurper, rendering everything from newspapers to music players to actual human interaction all but obsolete. People embraced smartphones faster than any other gadget in the history of the world, creating a trillion-dollar industry that is expected to reach more than six billion people in the next four years. I hear this question from smartwatch manufacturers and lightbulb companies and headphone makers and so many others in tech. They're all trying to find The Next Big Thing and figure out what the world looks like when smartphones finally go away.

We surround ourselves with technology that is able to help us in our daily lives. The success of autonomous cars, advancements in clinical research and personal digital assistants has shown the incredible potential of technology and how far it has come in recent decades. Despite the progress that many other industries have made, healthcare is likely to be the one market where artificial intelligence can truly have an impact that goes beyond convenience and positively affects human lives. Is the information collected by Fitbits and Apple Watches covered by HIPAA regulations? Find out more about what's covered – and what isn't – when it comes to wearable devices and data so you can avoid the risks.

A knife is brandished on a crowded subway platform. A backpack sits abandoned in a busy airport terminal. Images of sickness and death appear on social media. Security cameras often play a forensic role after a crime is committed, while an online platform can serve as both a megaphone and recorder. The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) hopes to get to a point where a camera not only recognizes the difference between a standard and suspicious action, but can alert law enforcement before something bad happens, and a trend on Twitter can signal a disease outbreak to doctors.