The digital assistant technology race is heating up, with Samsung announcing plans to acquire the open artificial intelligence platform Viv on Wednesday. It's an intriguing move, not least because it means the team who created Apple's voice-powered assistant Siri is forming closer ties with the South Korean electronics giant. SEE ALSO: Someone turned Samsung's Note7 into a lethal weapon with a'GTA 5' mod As an intelligent interface that can interact with a range of devices, Viv is "an ideal candidate" to integrate with Samsung home appliances and wearables, Injong Rhee, CTO of Samsung Electronics, said in a statement. Samsung makes a whole range of home appliances, so the acquisition suggests the company is keen to have them interacting with customers in the future. Viv will remain an independent subsidiary of Samsung.

Google's Android dominates the smartphone market overall, but Apple has attracted a disproportionate share of high-end users -- and consequently an outsize share of smartphone profits. At a Tuesday event, Google unveiled a two-pronged strategy to change that. Part one was the Pixel, the first smartphone that will be designed and manufactured by Google. Google is betting that building its own phone will allow it to offer the same kind of seamless user experience Apple provides its own users. But the second prong of Google's strategy is more original and received more attention on Tuesday.

We're taking a break today from the election and corporate scandals to do something that most leaders–in fact, most people–generally, don't do often enough: Thinking great big thoughts about how technology will change our lives. Many CEOs tell me their greatest fear is being blindsided by a competitor they never even thought of as a competitor, threatening to make the CEO's business irrelevant by using technology and a business model the CEO hadn't imagined. It's a main challenge now -- simply imagining what might be possible as technology advances ever faster. That's why I urge you to read Roger Parloff's new cover story on deep learning, how it's changing our lives, and how, as he says, it "will soon transform corporate America," and business globally for that matter. This is the technology powering the hugely improved speech recognition in so many products, including the Google Home device introduced yesterday as the company's answer to Amazon's Echo.

Samsung Electronics Co. SSNHZ 0.00 % said Thursday that it will buy U.S. artificial intelligence company Viv Labs Inc., as the South Korean smartphone giant turns to the creators of Apple Inc. AAPL 0.04 % 's Siri service to beef up its own mobile software and services. The deal, for an undisclosed amount, is Samsung's fourth U.S. technology company acquisition in a little more than two years, underscoring the technology player's new willingness to look outside the company to spur innovation, particularly in areas like software, where it has traditionally been weak. The aim for Samsung is to pack its phones with more eye-popping features to help its premium devices stand out from a pack of competitors, including Apple's iPhones. After its acquisition last year of mobile payments startup LoopPayfor about 160 million, Samsung adopted the Burlington, Mass.-based company's technology to launch Samsung Pay, a mobile payment service that rivals Apple Pay. Samsung is looking to follow a similar model with San Jose, Calif.-based Viv Labs, which was founded four years ago by a team that includes Siri co-creators Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer.

Samsung Electronics Co. is joining the race to create the smartest digital assistant by acquiring Viv, a Silicon Valley start-up launched by the same entrepreneurs who sold Siri to Apple. The deal announced Wednesday provides Samsung with technology to compete against Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc. in the increasingly important field of programming computers to learn and respond as if they were human. The specialty, also known as artificial intelligence, has hatched a flock of voice-activated digital concierges -- such as Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana and Google's Assistant -- that work in personal computers, smartphones and Internet-connected speakers. Samsung plans to implant Viv into phones, televisions and a wide range of other devices. The South Korean company did not disclose how much it paid for the start-up.

The specialty, also known as artificial intelligence, has hatched a flock of voice-activated digital concierges including Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana and Google's Assistant that work in personal computers, smartphones and internet-connected speakers.

This post is by Shaheen Gauher, PhD, and Fidan Boylu Uz, PhD, Data Scientists at Microsoft. Cleveland Clinic is a non-profit academic medical center providing clinical and hospital care. Cleveland Clinic launched eHospital in April 2014 and monitors a total of 100 beds in six ICUs. Cleveland Clinic recently teamed up with Microsoft to utilize predictive and advanced analytics to identify potential at-risk patients under ICU care. Sudden cardiac arrest is a major public health problem with more than 450,000 individuals affected annually.

Samsung plans to make its range of smartphones smarter with its acquisition of Viv, an AI virtual assistant platform started by the man who created Siri. The South Korean electronics company, which has been grappling with extended fallout from its recalled Galaxy Note 7, announced Wednesday that it was buying Viv, the machine-learning virtual assistant company started by Siri founder Dag Kittlaus. Where interactions with many of today's virtual assistants still requires users to dumb down their requests into somewhat robotic language, the AI goal is natural language interaction with a virtual assistant that can process layered requests and remember contextual user details. Dag Kittlaus, founder of AI company Viv, was also the man behind Siri, which he sold to Apple.

Samsung has been conspicuously silent as other big platforms like Apple, Google, and Microsoft have made announcement after announcement about artificial intelligence and voice-based personal assistants this year. That seems to have changed with the big news today that Samsung has acquired Viv Labs, the AI firm run by the same people who created Apple's personal digital assistant, Siri. Viv has created a voice-based digital assistant that can guide a user through a conversation that leads to a purchase. The assistant can actually make the purchase without requiring the user to go out to an app to close the deal. Viv may be unique in the field of virtual assistants for having done the legwork of connecting the assistant with retailers and product information in the background.

From Siri creator Dag Kittlaus comes Viv, a product that aims to be the next generation personal assistant. Kittlaus sat down with USA TODAY's Ed Baig to talk about Viv and where he thinks its headed. Samsung plans to make its range of smartphones smarter with its acquisition of Viv, an AI virtual assistant platform started by the man who created Siri. SAN FRANCISCO -- Samsung Electronics just accelerated into the voice-assistant fast lane. The South Korean electronics company, which has been grappling with extended fallout from its recalled Galaxy Note 7, announced Wednesday that it was buying Viv, the machine-learning virtual assistant company started by Siri founder Dag Kittlaus.