There have been many technical revolutions in the history of humanity. The agricultural revolution allowed our species to form towns and villages; the industrial revolution resulted in the many tools and resources, from textiles to metals, that we use today; the scientific revolution brought modern medicine into existence. The digital revolution peaked only a few years ago, as the internet became mainstream - now, most cannot imagine life without it. Many may not have realized yet, but we're in the midst of another revolution: artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence has been gaining traction for years, but in the past two years, with the release of the Amazon Echo, Microsoft's Cortana and Google Home, it's gone mainstream and started infiltrating even non-technical consumers' lives.

Mark Zuckerberg has ended 2016 having completed his personal challenge to build a Jarvis-style AI to run his home. He announced at the start of the year that he wanted to build a simple AI that could control his home, including his lights, temperature, appliances, music and security. He also wanted it to "learn his tastes and patterns, learn new words and concepts, and even entertain Max" (his daughter.) And now he has published a blog post explaining how he did it. Zuckerberg's Jarvis uses several artificial intelligence techniques, including natural language processing, speech recognition, face recognition, and reinforcement learning, written in Python, PHP and Objective C. "Before I could build any AI, I first needed to write code to connect these systems, which all speak different languages and protocols," the Facebook founder explained.

Mark Zuckerberg on Monday introduced the world to "Jarvis", an artificial intelligence system the Facebook chief created in his spare time, which can choose and play music, turn on lights, and recognize visitors, deciding whether to open the front door. Jarvis, named after the virtual assistant in the Iron Man movies, could be a step toward a new product, Zuckerberg wrote, although he cautioned that the system he had created in 100 hours over the last year was customized for his house. Zuckerberg announced results of the project, a personal challenge he set for himself this year, as digital home assistants by Google Inc and Amazon.com Inc compete for holiday sales and are expected to outsell popular emerging gadgets such as virtual reality headsets and drones. Creating Jarvis proved humanity is "both closer and farther off" from an AI breakthrough than we imagine, Zuckerberg wrote.

Google Home already allows you to control any connected Chromecast devices with simple voice commands, but if the device is really going to compete with Amazon's Echo line, it's going to need a bigger ecosystem to play in. Starting today, however, users with Sony speakers or Android TV sets can start taking advantage of Google Home's voice commands to control music and video streaming without the need for a complicated smart home setup. According to Sony, a firmware update for all its "Chromecast built-in" speakers and Android TV-equipped sets adds the missing support for Google's smart hub and personal assistant. That means commands like "OK Google, play Spotify on my Sony speaker" will automatically route the audio to your desired speaker. Likewise, calling out, "OK Google, play Stranger Things from Netflix on the TV" will also work with any of Sony's Android TV sets like the Bravia line or its latest 4K HDR panels.

Since the earliest days of the Internet, most government agencies have eagerly explored how to use technology to better deliver services to citizens, businesses and other public-sector organizations. Early on, observers recognized that these efforts often varied widely in their implementation, and so researchers developed various frameworks to describe the different stages of growth and development of e-government. While each model is different, they all identify the same general progression from the informational, for example websites that make government facts available online, to the interactive, such as two-way communication between government officials and users, to the transactional, like applications that allow users to access government services completely online. However, we will soon see a new stage of e-government: the perceptive. The defining feature of the perceptive stage will be that the work involved in interacting with government will be significantly reduced and automated for all parties involved.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is seen on stage during a town hall at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California September 27, 2015. Jarvis, named after the virtual assistant in the Iron Man movies, could be a step toward a new product, Zuckerberg wrote, although he cautioned that the system he had created in 100 hours over the last year was customized for his house. Zuckerberg announced results of the project, a personal challenge he set for himself this year, as digital home assistants by Google Inc and Amazon.com Inc compete for holiday sales and are expected to outsell popular emerging gadgets such as virtual reality headsets and drones. Creating Jarvis proved humanity is "both closer and farther off" from an AI breakthrough than we imagine, Zuckerberg wrote.

The fashion industry – from your department store to your luxury boutique – is undergoing significant change at the hands of the digital revolution. Neither, mind you, is talking about things like artificial intelligence, virtual reality or blockchain as emerging technologies. Put those two together however, and things start getting interesting. Broad business adoption of machine learning (for instance) is one thing, but in the context of the impact that then has on shopping, we start to be able to see what the future might look like. At this time of year, the web is inundated with predictions for what lies ahead, especially in the marketing and technology space.

"With upcoming Windows 10 Creators Update, Cortana will be available on Windows 10 IoT Core devices with displays," says the slide. Windows 10 Creators Update is expected to arrive in March 2017. In the Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft is also adding "wake on voice from modern standby" and "far-field voice" with Cortana. This will enable hardware companies to build devices that can wake up Cortana with voice queries and it will be able to listen to people from different rooms. Foley said that the Cortana on Windows 10 IoT Core will launch in English for the U.S. and U.K. markets first.

Mark Zuckerberg says he's built an artificially intelligent, voice-controlled butler for his home – and named it Jarvis, after superhero Iron Man Tony Stark's home computer. The Facebook honcho's AI personal assistant can turn the house lights on and off, play songs, recognize who's at the front door and let people in, manage the temperature, activate a toaster – and has even been programmed with a sense of humor. "I've taught it fun little games like [wife] Priscilla or I can ask it who we should tickle and it will randomly tell our family to all go tickle one of us, [daughter] Max or [pet dog] Beast," Zuckerberg writes in a Facebook post Monday. "I've also had fun adding classic lines like'I'm sorry, Priscilla. Zuckerberg said the project was one of his 2016 challenges. "In some ways, this challenge was easier than I expected," he wrote, comparing it to his other goal of running 365 miles in 2016. He says building Jarvis, which "uses several artificial intelligence techniques, including natural language processing, speech recognition, face recognition, and reinforcement learning, written in Python, PHP and Objective C," took less time than the running. But he said one of the biggest takeaways from the project was figuring out the promise and limits of AI. "In a way, AI is both closer and farther off than we imagine," he wrote. "AI is closer to being able to do more powerful things than most people expect – driving cars, curing diseases, discovering planets, understanding media.

Microsoft is trying to help create machines that can have conversations by releasing a new set of data for free. The data, called the Microsoft Machine Reading Comprehension dataset (MS MARCO) is a bundle of 100,000 English queries along with corresponding answers. It's supposed to help people build artificial intelligence systems that can understand human written language. The company is opening up its dataset in the hope that Microsoft can work with other organizations on making machines better at reading comprehension, said Rangan Majumder, program manager for the Microsoft Partner Group, in a blog post on Friday. The queries in MS MARCO are based on anonymized questions that were submitted to Microsoft's Bing search engine and Cortana virtual assistant.