Cortana is set to fly the friendly skies thanks to a new partnership between Microsoft and Boeing, bring the Microsoft intelligent assistant closer still to the domain of its namesake. Microsoft and Boeing announced a partnership today to move Boeing's suite of digital aviation offerings over to Azure, and the end result is that said servers are going to begin to get smarter, according to Microsoft. "Centralizing Boeing's digital aviation applications on Azure will allow Boeing to analyze a large set of data provided from multiple sources," a Microsoft spokesperson told TechCrunch via email, explaining how the partnership is set to make Boeing's offerings better for airlines that use them. "Boeing could use the Cortana Intelligence Suite to help airline operators more effectively manage inventory, more efficiently schedule pilots and cabin crews, or proactively schedule maintenance that might otherwise delay a flight based on the data intelligence they gather from the cloud." That means that first, this is a very early partnership – the focus here is on the potential to expedite certain tasks in the future.

The history of technology is the history of human interaction with machines. Millions of years ago, we started with SOUND (voice), and soon came the WORD (text). The touchscreen made redundant the mechanical keyboard. However, 90% of human communication still happens through voice because it is natural. Unfortunately, technology progress took the time to catch up with it.

David Kurtz is the chief product officer of Opera Mediaworks. At nearly every major technology event for the past five years we've been given at least one "wow" moment -- when one of the big players would unveil some sort of product or service that no one had ever seen before. The bar was set high for innovation, because there were wide-open spaces to be filled. Technology was revolutionary, not evolutionary. But so far in 2016, technology events have been disappointing.

But stepping back from it, I realized that Siri was everywhere in the roughly two-hour and fifteen-minute presentation. What we saw on Monday was next-level Siri. The software started as a pretty simple voice assistant, then graduated to digital assistant. It is now nothing less than an artificial intelligence -- one that can rain AI fairy dust on any number of services and third-party apps. Hello, SiriKit As predicted, Siri finally has an SDK -- sort of.

Sure, Facebook has "M", Google has "Google Now", and Siri's voice isn't always that of a woman. But it does feel worth noting that (typically male-dominated) engineering groups routinely give women's names to the things you issue commands to. Is artificial intelligence work about Adams making Eves? The response to this critique is usually about the voices people trust and find easy to understand. Adrienne LaFrance over at The Atlantic does a good job discussing those points, so go read her article.

John Melas-Kyriazi is a senior associate at Spark Capital interested in the AI and machine learning space. When I woke up this morning, I asked my assistant a simple question: "Siri, is it going to rain today?" Siri understood my intent, pulled the local weather data via an API and answered me in less than two seconds: "There's no rain in the forecast for today." In the not-too-distant past, this kind of human-computer interaction would have blown away technologists and delighted consumers -- but in 2016, it's nothing special. Conversations with Siri are commonplace, just like they are with Microsoft's Cortana and Amazon's Alexa.

Turing test or no Turing test, Intelligent Virtual Assistants are here to stay. As more and more of our daily interactions are between people and artificial intelligence systems, the demands for meaningful and effective interactions is increasing. Expectations from users of intelligent agents need to be the source of great attention, with the appropriate planning, modeling and measurement in place to guarantee the desired performance and results. Join us as we explore the topic of "Training the Robots" where our experts will discuss the elements needed to build virtual assistant capabilities including identification of target processes for automation/AI enhancement, capturing and organizing process knowledge, and contextualizing virtual assistant /human interactions.

Excited to be invited to ProductHunt to officially be able to comment! We are looking to do some FinTech disruption using Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to help you save more money without even thinking! Think of us as Siri for Saving & Investing except way smarter. If Siri met Tony Stark's A.I. Assistant Jarvis and had a baby, that is what WealRo will look like once we are done! Let us know what your biggest pinch point is with your finances and what you would like most from a finance assistant?

San Francisco: Google announced a deal to buy Moodstocks, a French startup behind technology that helps smartphones recognise whatever they are aimed at. Moodstocks caught the US technology giant's eye for its work in computer vision and machine learning, as well for accomplishments in enabling smartphones or other mobile devices to recognise images and objects. Google is among Silicon Valley titans investing in ways to get computers to see and understand the world around them the way people do. Machine learning has been woven into an array of Google offerings, such as its free language translation and photo services. "There's a lot more to be done to improve machine vision," Google France tech site lead Vincent Simonet said in a blog post.

"Yet, a major challenge stands between the dream assistant and the current reality. It's called the multi-agent problem, and most companies are reluctant to talk about it," Jolley writes. "The solution will ultimately determine how much of an impact assistants will have." Jolley writes, "How does an assistant, with limited knowledge of the world and a limited set of isolated agents, many of which might claim to do the same thing – choose which one to activate for every command in a way that will make users happy?" Much more in the full article – recommended – here. MacDailyNews Take: We're still in the infancy of personal assistants and artificial intelligence.