Entrepreneur is on the ground at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. Check back for highlights from the event as well as insights from thought leaders and innovators. Amazon's Alexa, which provides an easy way to play music, turn on a light or order toiletries, is one of the first steps to artificial intelligence that can greatly benefit us in our day-to-day lives. But while Alexa may be a standout in AI, the technology isn't alone. Just this year, Google's AlphaGo made history by defeating a master human player at the ancient game of Go, and Mark Zuckerberg unveiled his AI home assistant, Jarvis.

Don't expect January Jones to be joining any online dating sites anytime soon. The 38-year-old single mother and "Mad Men" star says she doesn't "feel unhappy or lonely" without a partner. "People want to set me up all the time and I'm like, 'No way.' If I meet someone and we go out, then fine, but I'm not going to go look…," Jones told Red. Jones has kept the identity of the father of her 5-year-old son Xander under wraps, but about being solo, she boasts she has no qualms.

From the never-ending stream of bad news to a brutal election that seemed like it would never end to the dozens of celebrities -- including a few in the tech world -- that passed on, it was a tough year. But 2016 also had its share of important technological breakthroughs that changed how we live, work, and play. Virtual reality made a big comeback in 2016 and is sure to get even hotter this year. Virtual assistants moved out of our cell phones and into our homes, and smart home technologies may have finally broken through to the mainstream after years of trying. So what do we expect in the new year?

A humanoid robot is the latest product to be powered by Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant. The BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones was given the first look at Lynx at the CES tech show in Las Vegas.

Ashley Madison users have already unwittingly encountered a great deal of bots, but in 2017 they are going to become more prevalent – and more transparent to the user, according to U.K.-based Juniper Research. In its top 10 predictions for the year, the organization forecasts that chatbots – virtual agents which operate via social networks and messaging platforms – will grow in presence and popularity, streamlining e-commerce activities such as booking flights and hotels, or to order items directly by speaking with a bot through an app. The research firm also expects there will be more opportunities for businesses to personalize these services, using social media analytics to provide consumers with specially tailored incentives. While acknowledging that many messaging bots have not seen a significant uptake in Western markets yet, due to their basic features and the technology not being fully-developed, Juniper noted that in Asian markets including China platforms such as WeChat have already established chatbots that aid in daily tasks. Meanwhile, North American applications such as Facebook Messenger are finally beginning to drive chatbot integration using ads. Bots won't be the only helpful technology to get more widespread use this year: With Google Assistant coming to multiple devices and Alexa, Cortana and Siri already available on several platforms, Juniper said 2017 will be the year when digital assistants become sufficiently mainstream for the device ecosystem to become a key battleground.

Google Assistant will be available soon on Android TVs, with plans to offer the voice-activated personal assistant on car infotainment systems and smartwatches as well. The technology will feature in the coming months, starting with the Nvidia Shield, on Android TVs in the U.S. running Android 6.0 Marshmallow or Android 7.0 Nougat. Some of the devices expected to ship with Google Assistant are the AirTV Player, Sharp Aquos, Sony Bravia and Xiaomi Mi Box, Sascha Prueter, director of Android TV at Google and Gummi Hafsteinsson, product lead for Google Assistant, wrote in a post on Thursday. "Over time, you'll also see the Assistant come to other new surfaces, like smartwatches running Android Wear 2.0, Android-powered in-car infotainment systems and many other types of devices through the Embedded Google Assistant SDK," the executives wrote in the post. Google Assistant is already available on Pixel smartphones, Google Home and the Allo smart messaging app.

OLED TVs, smart refrigerators, and devices that aim to blend in with your home decor dominated the second day of media previews in Las Vegas as CES preps to officially kick off on Thursday. The day brought major product reveals from a number of companies, including LG, Samsung, Sony, and HTC. Amazon's Alexa voice assistant also made a splash during the press day events, with many companies revealing they'd integrated the technology into their products. Many companies revealed the addition of Amazon Alexa to their devices - including Chinese firm Huawei. HTC unveiled a number of new innovations in virtual reality, including trackers that will pair with a physical object, like a bat or a toy gun, to bring them into the VR world.

Amazon's Alexa and Google's virtual assistant have already made their way into our living rooms, but Chinese tech giant Baidu is betting that verbal answers may not always be enough. The company is launching a new home-centric computer that includes a screen for displaying helpful information in response to voice commands. Baidu is teaming up with Chinese consumer tech company Ainemo to launch the device, called Little Fish, which is being positioned as a voice-centric home robot. Ainemo created the hardware, while Baidu created the operating system that powers it. The computer, about the size of a lamp, is designed to handle many of the same tasks one might expect from such a device: managing calendars, answering questions, getting news updates, and ordering food, among other tasks.

In-home assistants like Amazon Echo and Google Home are handy, but their functions are limited: They can tell you where to find a can of soda, but they can't actually bring one to you. Robotics company Ewaybot created Moro as a rolling, humanoid assistant for research labs and universities, and it's currently in a handful of schools across China. Moro is about four feet tall, weighs roughly 77 pounds, and its arms have six points of articulation; they each end in a three-pronged version of a hand that can grip everything from pens to heavy vials. The robot responds to voice communication as well (watch out, Alexa). Moro uses Intel's RealSense camera to avoid obstacles, plus ultrasound and infrared sensors.

Nvidia had a huge 2016 with one of best performing stocks of the year. In the past 12 months, the graphics processing chipmaker's stock value has boomed 230%. This is mostly due to its impressive growth in artificial intelligence applications using its graphics processors in data centers and cars. Meanwhile, Nvidia maintains a fast-growing business in its core gaming market. Partially as a reflection of the growing importance of AI in the tech industry, Nvidia stole the opening Consumer Electronics Show keynote this year from Intel.