Artificial intelligence (AI) is slowly making a shift from the research and development stage to touching our lives wherever we go. With so many applications to choose from, it can get confusing as to what exactly artificial intelligence will be able to do over the next five to ten years. Here's a glimpse of the different areas in your life where AI can make a major difference. First of all, who are the companies at the forefront of this? The list is long, but you know these companies: IBM, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Google are currently the biggest players in the artificial intelligence space.

Everybody from Facebook to Microsoft to President Barack Obama thinks that chat bots -- robots you talk to like humans in apps like Facebook Messenger or Microsoft's Skype -- are the future. As showcased by the relative success of gadgets like the Amazon Echo and digital agents like Apple's Siri or Microsoft's Cortana, we're at the precipice of a new kind of computing, where you can use your natural language skills to get stuff done. The problem is chat bots these days kind of stink out. It's often harder to get stuff done with a chat bot than it is with the suite of apps and websites to which we've become accustomed. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Tay Twitter bot had a high-profile meltdown, showing how far AI still has to go.

You can't offend a bot. Most of them don't have enough of a personality to be offended. Not only that, few of the bots available today are smart enough to debate with anyone. There are plenty of bot development tools, an immense amount of venture capital, and a massive number of bots. But no one wants to speak to a dumbot.

After birthing a virtual assistant that knows a little of everything, SRI International is working on ones that know a lot about just one thing. The nonprofit research center is arguably best known in the tech world for spinning off Siri, whose virtual assistant tech Apple acquired in 2010. SRI also incubated Tempo, an AI-driven calendar app that Salesforce bought last year. Now, SRI believes it can infuse AI into even more settings--shopping, banking, travel, business-to-business applications, and so on--allowing for deeply knowledgeable chatbots that know how to carry a conversation. The goal, says William Mark, SRI's president of information and computing services, is to have assistants that are much better at specific tasks than a general-interest assistant like Siri.

Pop culture's many takes on artificial intelligence

Briefly describe the problem being solved and how you approached it.

From the era of the desktop app to the era of the web page to the era of the mobile app to the latest paradigm shift which seems to be happening now: the conversation. These providers will most likely sit at the center of an ecosystem which will handle NLP (Natural Language Processing), semantic analysis, and other core tasks such as location and calendar integration. Currently, there are "bits and pieces" for particulars like dialogs (IBM Dialog) and NLP (IBM AlchemyAPI) all the way to large sdk's for voice and digital assistants (Alexa, Siri, and Google). While the examples above are simplistic they do provide some structure and a view into the basic text lines of voice and chat applications.

New research by Narrative Science, predicted that 62% of organisations will be using artificial intelligence solutions by 2018. The concept of AI may seem revolutionary, but it is something which is already present in our day-to-day lives. Apple's Siri will soon be upgraded, enabling iPhone users to interact with a number of third party apps such as message bots, photo search, personal payments and more. Other examples of everyday use of AI include the smart home. Smart thermostats now include the ability to learn your behavioural patterns, learning your daily routine, saving you energy and money on your monthly bill.

Apple Inc. acquired artificial intelligence startup Turi Inc. for about 200 million, according to people familiar with the situation, in the latest deal by the iPhone maker to accumulate advanced computing capabilities for its products and services. Turi helps developers create and manage software and services that use a form of AI called machine learning. It also has systems that let companies to build recommendation engines, detect fraud, analyze customer usage patterns and better target potential users, according to the Seattle-based startup's website. Apple could use this to more rapidly integrate the technology with future products. Apple's move Friday is part of a broader battle among Google, Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update, the largest update to the PC software since it launched last year, was hailed as the fir major update. However, many users have discovered their webcams no longer work after the update. As part of a security crackdown, Microsoft limited the type of encoding webcams can use - and it is causing many to crash. As part of a security crackdown, Microsoft limited the type of encoding webcams can use for video streams - and it is causing many to crash. 'If your webcam has stopped functioning since the release of the Anniversary update, you are not alone but the good news is a fix is coming, hopefully in September,' said Brad Sams of Thurrot, which first noticed the issue. Windows no longer allows USB webcams to use MJPEG or H264 encoded streams and is only allowing YUY2 encoding.