Apple, Amazon, Google, and others are pushing us to use our voices rather than our fingers to interact with their products. But do we really want our assistants to be more human? Voice controlled assistants are all the rage right now, as well as the rise of the bots. It's safe to say that we're accelerating to a world where there are less inefficiencies in our day to day lives. The end game, I believe, to all of this is Iron Man's trusted A.I. friend: Jarvis. That, of course, is not a surprise.

If you tell Siri to set an alarm for 5 am, she'll set an alarm for 5 am. But if you start asking her which prescription pain killer is least likely to upset your stomach, she's not really gonna know what to do--just because that's a pretty complicated sentence. Siri is a long way from what computer scientists call "natural language understanding." She can't truly understand the natural way we humans talk--despite the way Apple portrays her in all those TV ads. In fact, we shouldn't really be talking about her as a "her" at all.

YouTube has figured out a way to get deeper inside your head. The Internet's biggest video site on Tuesday rolled out a smarter machine learning engine on its iOS and Android mobile apps, allowing it to serve up better recommendations for viewers. The gussied-up recommendation system is based on deep neural network technology -- the same type parent Google uses for search results -- which will help YouTube find patterns and learn more about what a viewer wants with each visit. "Delivering a personal recommendation engine that shows YouTube really understand you is our goal," Johanna Wright, vice president of YouTube product management, said in an interview. "We're able to do this because Google has some of the best machine learning in the world."

Both theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk have warned that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to destroy humanity. Established geniuses as they are, their words don't seem to have resonated with Dag Kittlaus, the brains behind Siri, the beloved virtual assistant for iPhone. Ignoring words of caution pertaining to pending doom, the Norwegian, along with his team, have given birth to yet another AI, Viv. Dubbed "The Global Brain", this cloud-based virtual assistant is being called the next generation AI assistant. But the question is, is it?

Artificial intelligence: students were surprised to learn they had been dealing with a bot all semester. To help with his class this year, a Georgia Tech professor hired Jill Watson, a teaching assistant unlike any other in the world. Throughout the semester, she answered questions online for students, relieving the professor's overworked teaching staff. But, in fact, Jill Watson was an artificial intelligence bot. Ashok Goel, a computer science professor, did not reveal Watson's true identity to students until after they'd turned in their final exams.

One of the hottest topics the last few years or so have been around AI in all it's forms, everything from being simple female-named chatting tools, to domesday predictions AI that will kill us all, or just make us fat and obsolete in the workplace. So far what we've seen and be able to play with has mostly been in the form of chat bots, helping us navigate through over complicated websites or get some very limited customer service help. November 6, 2001 "Treehouse of Horror XII" was aired, with Pierce Brosnan starring as Ultrahouse 3000. An smart building AI that becomes attracted to Marge and decides to get rid of Homer, attempting to kill him by dumping him into the dining room table's garbage disposal. Alas containing many of the common fears of what an AI eventually will do to us.

To a class of over 300 students at the Georgia Institute of Technology, there didn't seem to be anything unusual about the new teaching assistant, Jill Watson. They never met Ms. Watson, but she always responded to emails quickly and casually. Like any good TA, Ms. Watson's involvement was low-key but helpful. "She was the person –well, the teaching assistant– who would remind us of due dates and post questions in the middle of the week to spark conversations," student Jennifer Gavin told the Journal. Some students envisioned their TA as a young PhD hopeful.

A product team at Google is working on a hardware device that would integrate Google's search and voice assistant technology, akin to the Amazon Echo, Recode has learned. Google's device will resemble its OnHub wireless router, according to several sources. We don't know if it has a name yet, but internally the project goes by "Chirp." The Information previously reported that Google was plotting a competing version of Echo, a portable speaker with voice assistant tech. Sources said the device is unlikely to launch next week at Google's I/O developer conference, but plans are for it to land at some point this year.

The Brooklyn Cruise Ship Terminal opened in 2006 - the same year that Twitter launched. So, you'd think that when one of the tech sector's biggest events - TechCrunch Disrupt New York - moved to the birthplace of hipsters, that cutting-edge development and a good amount of facial hair would be on display. But this year's New York Disrupt didn't seem very disruptive. TechCruch's biggest Disrupt conference in San Francisco, its London version, and past New York events have always attracted innovative technology developers. Jordan Crook, senior writer for TechCrunch, was unconcerned by what seemed to be a slow burn in the sector, even in areas like virtual reality and artificial intelligence. "It's easy to see with hindsight that what seemed to be a slow transition was really a massive shift," she says.