This week Google held its I/O developer conference and presented its self-learning Artificial Intelligence engine, the Google Assistant. Google is following Amazon's example by releasing a smart speaker that will monitor the sound environment in order to receive messages from the user and help them quickly finishing tasks. Google Home is a bit like Amazons Echo. Since it is connected to the Google Assistant, it will learn your preferences and will make suggestions based on them. In the simultaneously released messaging App Allo, the Google Assistant will monitor your way of answering to questions and will learn in which situations you give which answers to suggest you the answer you could give before you start typing.

Google is announcing a new messaging app today. It's called Allo and its main feature is a Google assistant that's built right in. Google says it'll be available later this summer -- for free -- on both iOS and Android. Allo (pronounced like "Aloe" and not like "'allo, guv'nor!") is a mobile-only app that you might think is meant to replace Google's other messaging app, Hangouts. Allo is explicitly meant to be a fresh start for Google's new communication's division (which also runs Hangouts and Project Fi). "It's really liberating to start from scratch sometimes," says Erik Kay, director of engineering, communications products.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the theory and development of computer systems that can perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. AI can also be used to analyze the data produced by IoT, social media, mobile phones and other sources to provide active learning analytics that can create a virtuous circle. Not too long ago, A.I. seemed a distant dream for many. Today, it is all around us. We carry A.I. in our pockets, in our cars, and in many of the web services we use throughout the day.

Google wants to play an even bigger role in managing people's daily lives, while also nudging them into an alternate reality, as the Internet company responds to competitive threats posed by Facebook, Amazon and Apple. As part of an onslaught of upcoming products, Google will implant a more personable form of artificial intelligence into an Internet-connected device called Home, which echoes the Echo, Amazon.com's Meanwhile, Google will also delve deeper into the still-nascent realm of virtual reality with a system called Daydream that's meant to challenge Facebook-owned Oculus's early lead in fabricating artificial worlds. In an attempt to outshine Apple, Google is also adding features to its Android operating system, including the ability to run apps without actually installing them on a device. That feature, called Instant Apps, might have been the biggest breakthrough that Google announced Wednesday at its annual developers conference held in an amphitheater located a few blocks from its Mountain View, California, headquarters.

The speed of technological change is exponential, and what was yesterday's hot ticket quickly becomes tomorrow's old news. We are living in the midst of a huge surge of interest and research in Artificial Intelligence ( A.I.). It seems like every week there is a new breakthrough in the field and a new record is set in some task previously done by humans. If you don't already know what IoT, AI, VR, AR and the'bots' mean, you better get up to speed immediately; for these technologies are changing the way data is created, collected, interpreted and communicated. In the digital age -- 'data is money'.

The name of the game in data-driven marketing is specialized datasets. Be they Spotify's look into artist and music preferences of its users; Facebook's deep understanding of its users' behaviors across its entire social graph, platform and app ecosystem; or even Google's stranglehold on data around search, browsing, email, and beyond -- the more granular the insights they can provide on users, the more useful and appealing for marketers looking to better tailor their tactics to target audiences. In The Weather Company's case, the value is in marketers wanting to create personalized messaging. One way to do so is to send marketing communications based around the weather happening to the recipient as it is happening. For example, if a retailer knows a major snow storm is in the forecast, it can send a promotional message with a discount for snow-related products only to people who fall under the forecast area.

The Burning Man vibe was intentional. For Google I/O this year -- its annual developer conference, typically held in San Francisco's antiseptic Moscone convention center -- the company stayed in Mountain View, camping out at Shoreline Amphitheatre, a grassy concert hall just a short bike ride away from its headquarters. The keynote kicked off with a wink to the libertine festival. From control booths in the back of the theater, a woman in a leather vest and a man in a collarless blazer strummed a supersized string instrument made from cords that hung in the air high above the audience -- an Earth Harp that previously made an appearance in Black Rock City. Google parked a massive "art car" shaped like a ship and festooned with Burning Man bumper stickers in the middle of its sandbox playground for new software and hardware.

Alphabet's Google unveiled its answer to Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant along with new messaging and virtual reality products at its annual I/O developer conference on Wednesday, doubling down on artificial intelligence and machine learning as the keys to its future. Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai introduced Google Assistant, a virtual personal assistant, along with the tabletop speaker appliance Google Home. He also unveiled Allo, a new messaging service that will compete with Facebook's WhatsApp and Messenger products and feature a chatbot powered by the Google Assistant. Allo, such as WhatsApp, will also have end-to-end encryption when it is rolled out this summer. Amazon's Echo, a surprise hit that has other tech giants racing to match it, uses a virtual assistant called Alexa, a cloud-based system that controls the Echo speaker and responds to voice-controlled commands by users.

First there was TensorFlow, Google's machine learning framework. Then there was SyntaxNet, a neural network framework Google released to help developers build applications that understand human language. What comes next is anyone's guess, but one thing is clear: Google is aggressively open-sourcing the smarts behind some of its most promising AI technology. Despite giving it away for free, however, Google is also apparently betting that "artificial intelligence will be its secret sauce," as Larry Dignan details. That "sauce" permeates a bevy of newly announced Google products like Google Home, but it's anything but secret.

The artificial intelligence revolution is clearly happening. A.I. will transform medicine, give us all super-smart virtual assistants, fight crime and a thousand things more. In order for A.I. to work its miracles, it's going to need data. And I'm predicting that we'll willingly give that data. Do you use Siri, Google Now, Cortana or Alexa?