Tech giants are hungry for artificial intelligence. In a race to create the best AI solutions in an increasingly hot sector, U.S. tech behemoths like Alphabet's Google and iPhone maker Apple have been quietly snapping up dozens of artificial intelligence companies over the last five years, according to a recent report from analysis firm CB Insights. The firm's data sheds new light on a trend that's been evolving for years. Nearly 140 private companies working to advance AI technology have been acquired since 2011, including 40 buyouts just this year, CB noted. From Google's Assistant to Apple's Siri; Microsoft's Cortana to Facebook chatbots, tech companies appear to be locked in a fierce competition to create autonomous technology that can understand users' needs, and provide information quickly and reliably, CB Insights noted.

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--(NASDAQ: AMZN)--Today, Amazon announced the Alexa Prize, an annual university competition dedicated to accelerating the field of conversational artificial intelligence (AI). The goal of the inaugural competition is to build a "socialbot" on Alexa that will converse with people about popular topics and news events. The team with the highest-performing socialbot will win a 500,000 prize. Additionally, a prize of 1 million will be awarded to the winning team's university if their socialbot achieves the grand challenge of conversing coherently and engagingly with humans for 20 minutes. Teams of university students can submit applications now and the contest will conclude at AWS re:invent in November 2017, where the winners will be announced.

Lady Gaga is starting to reveal some of the songs on her upcoming album Joanne, but it might not be quite the controlled release she was hoping for. Fans with Amazon's Echo speakers recently discovered that they could listen to 30-second previews of currently unavailable songs from the album just by asking Alexa to "play Joanne by Lady Gaga." You couldn't do that on Apple Music, Spotify or even Amazon's own website. The trick only worked in the US and has since been shut down, but it's a reminder that it's no longer enough to hide store listings these days. If you're going to keep music under lock and key before its release, it has to be virtually non-existent online.

Smart homes may soon be equipped with an AI concierge to help you manage all of your connected devices. San Francisco firm Thington has revealed a free iPhone app that pairs with smart lights, cameras, and other devices in the growing Internet of Things to provide centralized control, which can be securely shared with select people. The Thington Concierge chatbot will ask about your preferences and even help you set up your smart appliances so they work with each other, making for a safer and more efficient network. The app can communicate with users through text messages, allowing it to find out specific preferences on the setup of each device by simply asking you a question. To adjust the brightness of your smart lights, for example, you could command it to'Change the settings,' 'stop doing this,' or'leave it as it is.'

Dr. Alessandro Negro is the Chief Scientist at GraphAware. He has been a long-time member of the graph community and he is the main author of the first-ever recommendation engine based on Neo4j. Before joining the team, Alessandro has gained over 10 years of experience in software development and spoke at many prominent conferences, such as JavaOne. Alessandro holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Salento. Your email address will not be published.

So what makes Viv stand out?

Microsoft is jumping on the artificial intelligence bandwagon with the formation of a new research group that will seek to make the technology more accessible via its Azure cloud while helping to deliver new capabilities across applications, services and infrastructure. The infrastructure portion of the effort focuses on combining the processing engines like GPUs and FPGAs designed to improve network connectivity as ways to boost AI performance running on Microsoft's Azure Cloud. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) said last week Harry Shum, a 20-year company veteran who worked on the Bing search and Cortana intelligence personal assistant projects, would head the AI initiative. More than 5,000 computer scientists and engineers work for Microsoft's AI and Research Group. Microsoft's AI initiative seeks to "democratize" AI technology through a focus on agents, applications, services and infrastructure.

Tell it to do things. It's your own personal Google, always ready to help.

Artificial intelligence is now running robots, speech-to-text programs, cars, and doing everything from creating movie trailers to composing music. For now, Google is only offering Assistant on the Pixel, Google Home, and the messaging app Allo. Having an ever-present, artificially intelligent program looking through your contacts, your phone, your habits, and your daily life is a major decrease in privacy. With more information thanks to their new AI product, Google will be able to craft even better ad campaigns.

Brad Grossman (@bradgro) is founder and CEO of Zeitguide, a cultural think tank. As artificial intelligence gets embedded into day-to-day activities -- predicting what we need from virtual assistants, teachers, even doctors -- is the technology neutrally scrubbing out gender biases, or encoding them permanently on our future? The companies developing AI, like most of Silicon Valley, have a predominantly male workforce of engineers and developers. As Melinda Gates noted during this year's Code Conference, "When I graduated 34% of undergraduates in computer science were women… we're now down to 17%." There is real risk that such gender imbalance is invisibly shaping machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence applications.