Artificial intelligence has long fascinated the technology industry and it's easy to see why. Creating a piece of software that can think, and act, like a human mind would be one of the biggest advancements in computer science ever, and that might even be an understatement. The interest in A.I. has meant that big companies, like Google or Facebook, are hiring teams of engineers and researchers to build the technology into their products. While humans have not created anything close to the human mind, machines and software are becoming much better at predicting what we want based on a much smaller set of information. Google, for example, spent much of its annual I/O conference talking about advances in A.I. and how the company plans to implement the technology.

Siri is expected to expand beyond the iPhone and iPad to third-party apps and Macs, a move designed to hike the usefulness and IQ of Apple's personal digital assistant. Analysts who cover Apple predict an expanded role for Siri will be one highlight of Apple's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, which begins Monday in San Francisco.

Many years ago (don't ask me how I know this!) the hamburger chain Burger King began branding themselves with this slogan: "Have it your way!" It was pure marketing genius! The idea that you could order something, in this case a hamburger, at a fast food dispensary that would be tailor-made to your specific personal tastes was revolutionary – it set them apart from their competitors. Something similar happened when Amazon.com, one of the first major online stores in the Internet era, began suggesting books (and other products) to their customers that were an amazingly good match to each individual's personal tastes. Of course, Amazon accommodated its customers with this value-added service by invoking a scientific procedure, data science applied to customer data, not by asking customers directly (as did Burger King).

Ted Dunning (Chief Application Architect at MapR) and Ellen Friedman have written a new O'Reilly Media book on "Practical Machine Learning – Innovations in Recommendation" (released in January 2014). This book examines one of the most interesting, fun, and powerful data science applications in the big data universe: recommendation systems. For me, this was one of the most interesting applications of data mining that immediately captured my imagination after I embarked on the journey to data science (drifting away from my astrophysics roots) about a dozen years ago. It is also one of the most common use cases that are taught in data science MOOCs and other analytics training courses. I believe that the love affair with recommender systems can be partly attributed to two things.

Carol has extensive experience as a developer and architect building complex mission critical applications in the Banking, Health insurance and Telecom Industries. As a Java Technology Evangelist at Sun Microsystems, Carol traveled all over the world speaking at Sun Tech Days, JUGs, Companies, and Conferences. She is a recognized speaker in Java communities.

Today, the biggest technology players are in a mad dash to develop the smartest conversational interface. These personal assistants are helpful, entertaining and already a powerful connector between people and their digital lives. While they function a little differently, they all source every bit of data they can find to engage in unique, valuable conversations with their owners. The astounding pace of technology guarantees that there will always be a new connector, a new privileged broker that draws humans and the digital realm ever closer together. But this shouldn't be a threat to marketers.

Apple may have inadvertently erased doubts that Siri would come to the Mac. Brian Roemmele has discovered that asking iOS' Siri the right question (such as "open settings in the window") sometimes produces a response saying that the voice assistant can't find the Finder app -- you know, a crucial part of the Mac's interface. Barring the inclusion of a full-on file manager in iOS 10 (not very likely), this hints that Apple is laying the groundwork for Siri in OS X.

Best of all, you don't even have to pay it. That is what users have at their fingertips these days. With Cortana spreading her reach, and Siri firmly established in Apple products' interfaces, it brings forth the question if the age of artificial intelligence has arrived. When I hear the word AI, I immediately think of HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey." When HAL first comes onto the scene, he seems like an alright guy.

It appears that the rumor mill has gone into full tilt in the lead-up to Apple's upcoming WWDC event: there are reports that the Cupertino giant is working on opening up its artificial intelligence strategy. The Information reports that Apple may open Siri up to third-party developers and apps. Apple may also be working on an AI-powered smart speaker to compete with Amazon's Echo and its Alexa AI or Google's Home system. Presumably, the speaker will have a microphone and built-in Siri capabilities, meaning users can have their digital assistant read them the morning headlines, weather reports, play music, et cetera. There is no official word from Apple HQ, naturally, but there should be plenty to look forward to at this year's WWDC.

Apple's keynote will take place the first day of WWDC, June 13. This coming Monday, June 13 will bring Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, held in San Francisco, California. The keynote, where a bulk of new software announcements that consumers care about are made, will start at 1 p.m. ET, or 10 a.m. PT where the conference is held. The conference breaks off into smaller sessions after the keynote, where developers get to find out new features they're being given and hoops they'll have to jump through to continue developing for iOS.