When Mark Zuckerberg wants an AI assistant, he recruits the "Voice of God." The Facebook (FB, Tech30) CEO and cofounder posted a video teasing an artificial intelligence application on Tuesday that he built for his home, voiced by none other than actor Morgan Freeman. In October, Zuckerberg asked his followers for suggestions to be the voice for Jarvis, his AI tool inspired by Iron Man. Freeman was a top pick. Zuckerberg personally called Freeman to ask him to do it.

Zuck's smart home AI can fire him gray T-shirts from a cannon. Yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off Jarvis, the artificial intelligence system he built to serve as a digital assistant around his house. Now we know what the software sounds like, and it's got the voice of God. Well, the guy who played God in movies. Zuckerberg on Tuesday released a video of Jarvis at work, and the software is voiced by none other than Morgan Freeman.

Smart personal assistants are the new weapon of choice of tech giants, but, idyllic as they may sound, they are currently a misnomer. These artificially intelligent assistants might be good at analyzing speech patterns, spoken commands, and connecting to Internet services, but they aren't yet that capable yet when it comes to accurately predicting what we really want, let alone anticipating what we need. But most importantly, these AI lacks a critical element that would make these personal assistants truly relatable, but is also the most difficult human trait to reproduce: emotion. Artificial intelligence has mostly concerned itself with things like machine learning, language processing, and similar "hard" aspects of knowledge formation, and rightly so. These functions and features of human intelligence are more easily quantifiable than emotions.

Algorithms use ratings, rankings and recommendations to present us with items Before items can be ranked, they need a measure by which they can be ordered This is really a rating of each item's quality according to some criterion With ranked lists in hand, websites may turn around and make recommendations This is really a rating of each item's quality according to some criterion This holiday season, when we Google for the most trending gifts, compare different items on Amazon or take a break to watch a holiday movie on Netflix, we are making use of what might be called'the three R's' of the Internet Age: rating, ranking and recommending Apple's new AirPods are tough to recycle: Breakdown reveals... How to win like Andy Murray: Adversity and hardship could be... Does hurting a girlfriend's CAT make you more immoral than... The root of human kindness is NOT in our ancestors:... Apple's new AirPods are tough to recycle: Breakdown reveals... How to win like Andy Murray: Adversity and hardship could be... Does hurting a girlfriend's CAT make you more immoral than... The root of human kindness is NOT in our ancestors:... Websites' algorithms use the'new 3 Rs' to combine, process and synthesize information before presenting it to us. AMAZON'S ALGORITHM DOESN'T ALWAYS GIVE THE BETTER PRICE Before items can be ranked, they need a measure by which they can be ordered This is really a rating of each item's quality according to some criterion With ranked lists in hand, websites may turn around and make recommendations Amazon has mechanisms in place to screen out these sorts of reviews – for example, by requiring a purchase to have been made from a given account before it can submit a review. The prime example of recommendation systems is Netflix's method.

Retailers and technology firms are experimenting with chatbots, powered by a combination of machine learning, natural language processing, and live operators, to provide customer service, sales support, and other commerce-related functions. Chris Messina of Uber recently coined the term "conversational commerce" to describe this movement, which he defines as: The net result is that you and I will be talking to brands and companies over Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, and elsewhere before year's end, and will find it normal. While messaging and voice interfaces are central components, they fit into a larger picture of increasing infusion of technology into our daily lives, which in turn is unlocking new potential for brand-to-consumer interaction. The fact is, technology overall is becoming more deeply woven into our lives, and the entire ecosystem is enjoying tighter cohesion through the increasing availability and sophistication of APIs. Smart companies are finding new and innovative touch points with consumers that are contextual, relevant, highly personal, and, yes, conversational.

These were all prime fields of growth and innovation in 2016 and we can expect these trends to continue into next year and probably far beyond. In truth 2017 is likely to be the year when many of these technologies hit the mainstream – rather than something only those companies with the largest corporate budgets and most tech-friendly executive teams. A strong growth in the availability of technology delivered "as-a-service" through cloud platforms, as well as hardware improvements in the form of affordable sensor and display technologies, should help to bring into reality the "democratization" of data-driven enterprise which has become fashionable to talk about this year. So here is a run-through of my key predictions for the next year. Organizations wanting to stay ahead of the curve will want to ensure they are exploring all of the opportunities indicated by these trends.

We consider Virtual Assistants (VAs) to be artificial conversational entities capable of engaging in human-like conversation, designed to convincingly simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner. VAs are typically software incorporating natural-language processing, dialogue control and domain knowledge. They adapt according to the content and context of the dialogue. They can exhibit goal direction (i.e. For the sake of this Pit Stop, we consider VAs to primarily engage through speech-to-text (e.g. as a gateway to a visual experience) and speech-to-speech methods.

Coming soon to a tech billionaire's Silicon Valley home, Morgan Freeman is: Jarvis. As I wrote yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has finished building Jarvis, his home AI assistant. Among other things, the system can turn lights on and off, play music based on the personal tastes of both him and wife Priscilla Chan, automatically open their front gate for friends, make toast, and even wake up their one-year-old daughter Max with Mandarin lessons. The system was inspired by Tony Stark's Jarvis AI, from the Iron Man movies. Stark, of course, is played by Robert Downey, Jr., and after Zuckerberg asked the public in October who should be the voice, Downey himself volunteered, saying he would "do it in a heartbeat" if actor Paul Bettany, the voice of Jarvis in the Iron Man films, got paid and the resulting money went to a charity of Benedict Cumberbatch's choice.

If you want to purchase Amazon's Echo for Christmas or Hanukkah online, you're out of luck. All versions of the Echo, powered by voice activated digital assistant Alexa, are sold out on Amazon's site and won't be available until after the holidays. Going after other Alexa devices, like the Echo Dot, won't help either, since those are sold out too. When Will Amazon Echo Be Available? Amazon Echo in black, priced at $139.99 will be in stock on Jan. 19, 2017.