"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.

Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that deals with making the computers or a robot controlled by a computer, or software think intelligently just like humans. The term was first coined by John McCarthy in 1956 at the MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to him, AI is "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs". The field of AI draws upon computer science, psychology, mathematics, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy and artificial psychology. The major goal of AI is creating expert intelligent systems which can learn, explain and advice the users and implementing human intelligence in the machines.

Last week I hired a personal assistant named Amy Ingram. She set up four meetings for me, adding them to my calendar with the relevant contact details included. She rescheduled twice when the person I was supposed to meet had to cancel at the last minute. Instead of sending half a dozen emails per meeting, I only needed to compose one to kick things off. This all sounds like pretty simple stuff, but Amy isn't a human being: It's a virtual assistant made by the New York City startup X.ai.

Last week at Microsoft's Build conference, CEO Satya Nadella said that the future of the company was "conversation as platform." In other words, less Windows and Office, and more Cortana and Tay--conversational interfaces that can understand the natural language of human users. If Nadella thought he was expressing some unique vision of the future, though, he was fooling himself. The idea of conversational UI has quickly colonized nearly every corner of Silicon Valley over the past year. Now seems like a good time to ask: What is a conversational interface?

Now Silicon Valley has found its next shiny new thing. And it does not have a "Like" button. In the pixelated cube world of "Minecraft," players can create almost anything their hearts desire. Now, Microsoft is using the popular world-building game to build and test artificial intelligence in the fictional environment. Microsoft has made a platform for (AI) research using a modified version of "Minecraft" that will become available to the public following a limited release to select researchers.

With recent developments like the launch of Facebook's chatbot store, Apple's acquisition of Emotient, and the release of Viv, a virtual assistant from the founders of Siri, there's no doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) has started to quickly proliferate across consumer applications. Nonetheless, many of these new applications are still more novelty than necessity as their functionality is rudimentary at best, though we've come to rely on them daily – from Amazon product recommendations to Facebook facial recognition (auto tagging). Until consumer-facing AI can usher in new technological advancements that provide deeper and more human-like interaction, it still has a long way to go before it reaches its tipping point. Enterprise AI, however, offers immediate applications that help solve problems that many companies and workers face today, such as data overload. Companies across a wide range of industries have already taken advantage of AI capabilities in order to help improve both internal and external processes.

Cortana, Microsoft's answer to Apple's Siri, is already become more intelligent every day, Nadella said, echoing his recent comments in Slate, where he argued that humans and machines will work together, not against each other. "With all the abundance we have of computers and computing, what is scarce is human attention and time," Nadella said. "So having the personal digital assistant really helps me regain my time -- empowers me to get more out of every moment of my life." Nadella spoke alongside Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute and author of "Steve Jobs," at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado, where speakers covered broad topics like the role of machines in policy and the future of Mars. The interview coincided with the announcement of Nadella's new book, "Hit Refresh," that will focus on the future of intelligent machines.

AI (artificial intelligence) personal assistants like Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana have gained significant popularity in recent years. Those voice assistants, available on a variety of different tech devices, can help with a number of different tasks from driving directions to general questions. In fact, the Pew Research Center recently conducted a study where some experts claimed that AI technology like those assistants will be integrated into nearly every aspect of people's daily lives by 2025. So how many people currently use AI personal assistants? We asked 1,000 respondents what they think about the technology and how it has impacted their lives.

Facebook's recent chatbot announcement about delivering ecommerce to the service's extensive user base has put artificial intelligence into the spotlight again. For years, software design has traditionally consisted of three fields, but there may soon be a fourth. Joining UX, UI, and graphic and interaction design is an idea known as "consciousness design" that will emerge as A.I. assistants grow in popularity. Amazon Echo and other A.I. assistants are among the pioneers of virtually "interface-less" experiences that make consciousness design central to product success. The idea is not so much to offer a simple search that delivers less-than-desired results, which is what Facebook bots basically do, but rather to offer a real customized experience that harnesses artificial intelligence to power the coming revolution.

A recommendation system is used to, well... recommend stuff. Netflix is a great example of this; after you rate several titles it will be able to recommend new titles to you. Have you ever wondered how this really works? Or even apply it to own site or application. Well... you're about to find out.