The robot assistants we were promised as children are finally ready for the home. Instead of walking, talking humanoid automatons like Rosie from The Jetsons and Robby the Robot from Lost in Space, our well-spoken helpers are housed in plastic and sit on tables. They answer our questions, control our homes and sometimes tell us a story. The most ubiquitous assistant so far has been Alexa, an Amazon-powered attendant that has made the jump from a 180 tower to the 50 Dot, which isn't much bigger than a hockey puck. That sort of drop in size usually results in a loss of features.

Nearly 140 private companies working to advance artificial intelligence technologies have been acquired since 2011, with over 40 acquisitions taking place in 2016 alone (as of 10/7/2016). Corporate giants like Google, IBM, Yahoo, Intel, Apple and Salesforce, are competing in the race to acquire private AI companies, with Samsung emerging as a new entrant this month with its acquisition of startup Viv Labs, which is developing a Siri-like AI assistant.

The Zen monks of Plum Village monastery had staked out a small space on the green lawn between the hulking bunkers of Moscone North and South, the expo halls at the epicenter of Dreamforce '16. They were steering cross-legged peace-seekers down the path to mindfulness. As I passed by, I liked to imagine that the meditating attendees were seeking solace after three days of trying to wrap their heads around Artificial Intelligence--overwhelmingly the topic of the week. And yet Salesforce had made it all look such fun. With a touch of movie magic, the brands two co-founders Marc Benioff and Parker Harris could be seen on the keynote stage chatting with a cartoon representation of the German genius.

Amazon on Wednesday launched Amazon Music Unlimited, a music streaming service meant to compete with apps like Spotify and Apple Music. Amazon Music Unlimited differs from Amazon's previous music service, called Amazon Prime Music, in that it has a much larger library and is open to users who don't subscribe to Amazon Prime. Whereas Prime Music offers 2 million songs, Amazon Music Unlimited offers "tens of millions," putting it on par with Spotify and Apple Music's selection. Amazon's Music Unlimited app will work on iPhone and Android devices, as well as Windows and Mac computers. Amazon Music Unlimited costs 9.99 a month for non-Prime members, and 7.99 for Prime members (Amazon Prime, which offers free two-day shipping and other benefits, costs 99 a year). A family plan will be made available later this year for 14.99/month, Amazon says.

Artificial intelligence continues to have its moment in the spotlight, with a surge of interest in startups and efforts from huge tech companies to push the boundaries of how we might best use machine learning, computer vision and other areas of AI in the future. The latest development on that front comes from China's Huawei, which today announced that it would form a research partnership with UC Berkeley focused on AI, and fund it to the initial tune of 1 million. The alliance, between Huawei's Noah's Ark Laboratory and Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR), is being billed as a "strategic partnership into basic research", and it will cover areas like deep learning, reinforcement learning, machine learning, natural language processing and computer vision. "The two parties believe that this strategic partnership will fuel the advancement of AI technology and create completely new experiences for people, thus contributing greatly to society at large," Huawei notes. Some of these areas of AI you will have heard a lot about already.

As banking organisations, financial services providers and brands predict and plan for the way consumers will manage their money in the future, artificial intelligence (AI) is high on the business development strategy for 2016 and beyond. Gideon Hyde, co-founder of Market Gravity, proposition design consultancy, shares his thoughts on this emerging technology and explains how businesses can embrace AI to enhance their offerings, meet consumer demand for speed, personalisation and convenience, and launch new products and services to stand out in the competitive marketplace. Gideon Hyde is co-founder and CEO of Market Gravity, which has offices in London, Edinburgh and New York. It works with big businesses, including Boots, Barclaycard, HSBC, Aegon, Standard Life, RWE npower and The AA, to help them realise their innovation capabilities and release the start up within. AI is already around us and used everyday within payments, money management and for robo-advice, particularly in the area of intelligent digital assistants that handle regular customer service enquiries and tasks.

From driverless cars to virtual personal assistants - breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) technology could lead to a loss of jobs for humans. And humankind currently does not have the skills to compete, according to a new report. Government officials have called for a Commission on AI to be established in order to investigate the social, ethical and legal implications of the technology. They warn that if British workers don't acquire new skills, millions could lost their jobs to machines. While some expect rising unemployment as labour is substituted for AI-enabled robots and machines, others foresee a transformation in the type of employment available, says the report.

Over the past four years, readers have doubtlessly noticed quantum leaps in the quality of a wide range of everyday technologies. Most obviously, the speech-recognition functions on our smartphones work much better than they used to. When we use a voice command to call our spouses, we reach them now. We aren't connected to Amtrak or an angry ex. In fact, we are increasingly interacting with our computers by just talking to them, whether it's Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, or the many voice-responsive features of Google.

Ask Siri or Amazon Alexa to tell you a joke, and you'll probably get something a 10-year-old would scrunch her nose at. Google wants to change that. The company unveiled Google Home, its Amazon Echo-like home assistant, last week. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google hired writers from places like Pixar and the Onion to help spice up the Home's dialogue and give its AI more personality. Apparently there's more work to be done: As Tech Crunch points out, Google currently has a job listing for someone with "experience writing dialogue for plays/screenplays, fiction/interactive fiction, and/or comedy/entertainment." Personality can be hard to nail down in AI.