Eric Poindessault is founder and CEO at Biggerpan. From HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey to Samantha in Spike Jonze's Her, for decades we have been obsessed with the idea that artificial intelligence powered-computers will one day be able to interact with people, follow spoken instructions and make decisions independently, like a human would. Since Siri hit our screens on the iPhone 4, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Baidu have entered the playing field, too. But while each new generation brings its lot of interesting new features or use cases, they are still far off from the AI representations in movies. It's hard to imagine anyone engaging in a romantic relationship with Siri, or NASA putting Alexa in control of a spacecraft just yet. Movies have set the bar pretty high, and we are still waiting for such ubiquitous voice-controlled AI assistants to enter the real world.

The creators of Apple's artificial intelligence assistant, Siri, have come out with a new product, Viv, which can handle more complicated tasks and partner with third party sites. Ordering things online is definitely going to become a helluva lot easier. Siri is great and all, but she's got some flaws (sorry baby). Most of what she can do is Google search things for you, which is helpful, but also not spectacular with a boat load of other requests. For instance, what if you wanted to order some flowers for your mom on Mother's Day? Siri wouldn't be able to do that since it doesn't play well with external sites.

When last we met, ProPublica had just launched a bunch of fun new features, of which this is allegedly one. The idea of this column is to share with you, dear readers, some of the digging skills that investigative reporters use on a daily basis. After all, we're not the only ones that need to find out stuff.

Tech news site Recode reported May 11, 2016 that Google was working on a stand-alone digital assistant that would resemble the OnHub. SAN FRANCISCO -- The crowd of stand-alone, voice activated digital assistants may get a little bigger soon, with a report from Recode that Google could be working on its own version. While voice activated assistants such as Siri, Cortana and OK Google have been in use on smart phones for several years, the surprise success of the Amazon Echo and it's Alexa has presented tech companies with the possibility of a new and so-far mostly untapped way for customers to use these assistants. A further broadening of the market could mean a shift in how people interact with technology. Voice recognition software that isn't tied to a smart phone but is on a communal device meant for home use is inherently less anti-social, say tech watchers.

Apple hasn't had a great time holding on to the original Siri team, and we don't just mean the founders -- there are precious few of those core members left. And today, we're learning that one of those last remaining pioneers may have walked out the door. The Information's sources claim that Darren Haas, a Siri co-founder and Apple's head of compute-focused cloud engineering, has left the company to join GE a few weeks after one of his fellow Siri alumni, Steve D'Aurora, reportedly did the same. The two are believed to be working on a similar cloud platform at their new employer.

Meet Jill Watson, a first-time teaching assistant at Georgia Tech assigned to moderate an online forum for a computer science class. Jill was 1 of 9 TAs assigned to help answer questions about coursework and projects from the 300 students enrolled in the advanced course. During the first few weeks in January, Jill really struggled. This was Knowledge-Based Artificial Intelligence, after all, a course with the goal to "build AI agents capable of human-level intelligence and gain insights into human cognition." It was also a requirement for graduate students to earn their master's degree.

The creators of Siri have announced a brand new creation from their brilliant minds, the artificial intelligence assistant named Viv. Apple based Siri has become both a technological powerhouse, and a cultural touchstone. Now the creators behind it have moved on to the next stage. Viv is a more advanced AI that works by connecting to multiple sources of information and drawing responses right from the pools of data themselves. No more regurgitating web search results; this assistant is smarter, sleeker, and more accurate.

It caused an outcry when Microsoft first launched Windows 10. Called Wi-Fi Sense, it was designed to easily let people share wifi passwords with friends. However, experts found the feature actually automatically shares your wifi passwords with all Outlook, Skype and Facebook contacts who also use Windows 10. Microsoft today confirmed it has killed off the product due to'low demand' The feature is designed to easily let people share wifi passwords with friends, but security experts describe it as'an accident waiting to happen'. To change your settings, go to Network settings then Manage Wi-Fi settings (Settings Network & Internet Wi-Fi Manage Wi-Fi Settings).

Artificial intelligence, or AI, no longer simply exists in science fiction movies and books. Scientists warn AI has and will continue to change almost every aspect of how people conduct business and live. Researchers say artificial intelligence can be a threat, as well as helpful, to humans. From the iPhone personal assistant Siri, to doing searches on the Internet, to the autopilot function, simple artificial intelligence has been around for some time, but is quickly getting more complex and more intelligent. "If we are going to make systems that are going to be more intelligent than us, it's absolutely essential for us to understand how to absolutely guarantee that they only do things that we are happy with," said Stuart Russell, computer science professor at the University of California Berkeley.

KITT.AI wants to help developers add voice activation features to almost any device for free. The Seattle startup today unveiled its first software toolkit called Snowboy, which lets developers add verbal "hotword detection" to devices. It's the same technology that tech giants like Amazon and Apple use for products like Alexa and Siri, but now KITT.AI is enabling anyone to easily add the functionality to their own hardware. The idea is to let users talk to devices in order to "wake" or "command" them to do something. Snowboy uses deep neural network technology that learns and recognizes unique patterns in voices.