Apple's intelligent personal assistant and knowledge navigator allows users of its devices to send messages, schedule meetings and make phone calls. The voice-activated, interactive system has been incorporated into Apple's mobile operating systems since 2011 with iOS 5. Microsoft's primary intelligent personal assistant, which was developed in time for the launch of the Windows Phone 8.1 operating system in 2014, is now integrated into Windows 10. The system can be used to track package deliveries, find files on a PC and set reminders. Google's intelligent personal assistant is available for use on its own Android-operated mobile devices and via Google Search apps downloadable on Apple devices. First launched in 2012, it can answer queries, warn users of bad traffic, and provide reminders of dinner dates and flight times.

When Jeff Bezos revealed in May that Amazon employed more than 1,000 people working on Echo and Alexa products, he warned: "It's just the tip of the iceberg." The Echo and Alexa groups are currently looking to fill 400 positions, according to Amazon's Alexa job page. The open positions run the gamut from data engineers to product managers to machine learning scientists. And the job locations are as varied: From Amazon's headquarters in Seattle to other U.S. cities like Tempe, Ariz.; Cambridge, Mass.; and Sunnyvale, Calif. Overseas, Amazon's voice technology groups are also hiring in places like Gdansk, Poland.

Silicon Valley powerhouses are trying to calm public fears about the rise of artificial intelligence. A new non-profit coalition that counts Google, Facebook and Amazon as members is hoping to demystify the emerging technology -- one tech giants believe has the potential to transform their businesses. "They care how these technologies will influence people and [about] the social and societal consequences more broadly." Artificial intelligence is a field that encompasses many different technological developments. It's seen in innovations like self-driving cars, helping them navigate the roads, and in the personal assistant apps on smartphones that answer queries, organize calendars and more.

SAN FRANCISCO – A high-profile Google event Tuesday is widely expected to highlight a new emphasis on hardware, challenging rivals Apple and Amazon and launching a new strategy for the online giant. While the company has offered no official preview, it is expected to unveil a new line of Google-branded smartphones, a tablet and a home virtual assistant. Analysts anticipate that the internet titan will expand on a vision laid out by chief Sundar Pichai at its developers conference early this year. The strategy would seek to take Google's strength in software and merge that with its devices as Apple, Amazon and smartphone leader Samsung all work to get a tighter grip on consumers. Google fired off a Twitter message with hashtag #madebygoogle and a video of what appeared to be a long rectangular search term box morphing into a silhouette of a smartphone.

Nicole White grew up in Kansas City, Missouri and then spent four years at LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where she got a degree in economics with a minor in mathematics. She then went to the University of Texas at Austin where she got her masters degree in analytics, and it was during this time that she found Neo4j and began playing around with it. When she's not graphing all the things, she spends her time playing card games and board games. Your email address will not be published.

Bots will become the next version of mobile apps, creating the emotional connection between brands and consumers through artificial intelligence (AI) and search, according to Ryan Gavin, GM at Microsoft for search, cloud and content. During Advertising Week, Gavin told Search Marketing Daily that bots will replace mobile applications. The conversations on bots will occur more often and will become the new app for brands; and natural language will become the use interface, he said. Microsoft this week announced a new group that will help accelerate the use of AI. About 500 computer scientists and engineers will support the team and will include Microsoft Research along with the company's Information Platform Group, Bing and Cortana -- natural language processing -- product groups, along with its Ambient Computing and Robotics teams.

If you need an Uber, Amazon Alexa has your back. Unfortunately if what you need is a conversation buddy, the personal assistant isn't quite up to the task. In an effort to bolster Alexa's social intelligence, Amazon is putting 2.5 million into a new university competition to design and build "socialbots" for the platform. Engineers will use the Alexa Skills Kit to build the artificial socialites. As part of the competition, the Washington Post, owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, will also be making its corpus available to participants as a tool to train the bots.

Following up on CEO Satya Nadella's big talk about artificial intelligence, Microsoft today announced the creation of the AI and Research Group, gathering more than 5,000 computer scientists and engineers. The group will include the engineering teams for the Cortana personal assistant and Bing search engine. To lead the group, Microsoft has chosen 20-year company veteran Harry Shum, whose previous experience includes Bing and Microsoft Research. The AI and Research Group will work on products, but it will also conduct basic research. AI was a major point in Nadella's keynote this week at Microsoft Ignite, the company's annual IT conference.

Amazon is hoping some universities start getting chatty with Alexa. The online retailer announced on Thursday the Alexa Prize, a 2.5 million award for college students who develop technology to make it more natural to talk with Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant. The company said the goal of the competition is to build a "socialbot" on Alexa that will converse with people about popular topics and news events. The university team with the best performing socialbot will win a 500,000 prize. Amazon also will give 1 million to the winning team's university if its socialbot is able to talk "coherently and engagingly" with humans for 20 minutes.

An industry-wide organisation including five Silicon Valley giants has been formed to promote the fair and ethical development of artificial intelligence technologies. The organisation aims to "conduct research, recommend best practices, and publish research" rather that directly lobby legislators, and will focus on "ethics, fairness and inclusivity; transparency, privacy, and interoperability; collaboration between people and AI systems; and the trustworthiness, reliability and robustness of the technology". The group - known as the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society - includes Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM, with academic and non-profit organisations expected to join in the near future. "Over the past five years, we've seen tremendous advances in the deployment of AI and cognitive computing technologies," said IBM AI ethics researcher, Francesca Rossi, "ranging from useful consumer apps to transforming some of the world's most complex industries, including healthcare, financial services, commerce and the Internet of Things." "This partnership will provide consumer and industrial users of cognitive systems a vital voice in the advancement of the defining technology of this century - one that will foster collaboration between people and machines to solve some of the world's most enduring problems - in a way that is both trustworthy and beneficial."