If there was any doubt that artificial intelligence is the future of technology, look no further than Google. The company announced the new AI research push on Thursday in a blog post. Opening as part of Google's existing Google Research center in Europe, the Machine Learning Research Group will focus on, naturally, Machine Learning, in which computers use vast amounts of data to teach themselves and build rules about the data; Natural Language Processing for speech-systems and conversational queries; and Machine Perception, which is used to understand the contents of images, sounds, music and video. This announcement comes four years after the company began aggressively pursuing machine learning technologies, three months after Google's AI beat one of the world's best Go players and just weeks after Google codified its approach to AI during its annual Google I/O developers conference. During I/O, Google unveiled Google Assistant, a voice-based digital assistant designed the take on Microsoft's Cortana, Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa.

While it already feels that AlphaGo is ancient history in the fast moving AI world, I think it makes a powerful case for how human-machine collaboration could help us improve our own mastery of complex tasks. Google DeepMind also made the headlines for the data sharing agreement they signed with three hospitals that are part of UK's National Health Service. The data on 1.6 million patients includes live and historical medical records stretching back 5 years. Its stated use is for "real time clinical analytics, detection, diagnosis and decision support", with an initial focus on the Company's Streams app for measuring the risk of acute kidney injury. While many engaged in heated debate over data privacy (see this headline, courtesy of The Daily Mail), my view is that medicine should be moving towards real-time monitoring of health and prediction of future conditions.

Pretty much every cinematic portrayal of artificial intelligence has been less than encouraging. HAL 9000 kills the crew members on the Discovery in 2001: A Space Odyssey, making us all a little bit afraid of handing the reins over to computers. Sonny kills his creator in I, Robot, increasing worldwide scepticism about the integration of humans and their smart robots. Even real life AI has given us pause. For example, when an IBM computer defeated Russian chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov in the 1990s, it was definitely a cause for concern. For the most part, though, AI has been more accepted in everyday practice.

Analysts are saying that Apple's upcoming updates to its Siri voice assistant should help the company address criticisms that it can't compete on artificial intelligence. Apple is now opening Siri to apps made by other companies, and like Google and Microsoft, it's bringing the digital assistant to desktop and laptop computers. It's also making Siri smarter by using what Apple calls differential privacy. Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy explains it as Apple using non-personal information in aggregate to teach Siri new tricks, then having all the personalization take place on the individual device. It's in contrast to Google's approach of doing everything over the internet -- that is, in the "cloud."

We're a nation glued to our smartphones, according to a 2015 Ofcom report. Sixteen- to 24-year-olds are the biggest user group – 90% of them own one and look at it 387 times each day on average. It's clear that if recruiters are searching for a young, captive audience from which to source talent, they should be thinking mobile. Software companies are seeing growing demand from employers looking for gamified recruitment apps. Whether companies are seeking greater diversity or bubbly shop assistants, there's much in this new breed of digital tools to attract businesses.

SugarCRM has put A.I. at the core of its product plans and is working on a new intelligence service along with a Siri-like agent named Candace. Tapping the company's recent acquisitions of Stitch and Contastic, the new technology will be designed to help businesses spend less time entering data into their customer relationship management (CRM) software, and more time learning from and acting upon it. SugarCRM is scheduled to demonstrate the new capabilities Wednesday at its SugarCon conference in San Francisco. "In the CRM space, we want people to focus on what they're good at: Relating to others, such as customers and partners," Rich Green, SugarCRM's chief product officer, said in an interview last week. "As data becomes more and more available, it typically has required quite a bit of labor to ensure that your CRM system stays up to date," Green explained.

We always knew Cortana was heading to Xbox One -- it was part of the strategy for the digital assistant as far back as 2013. But Microsoft used its E3 2016 press conference to confirm that Cortana is poised to arrive with a host of updates, including a number of changes to community services with the addition of clubs and new game matchmaking. When Cortana lands it will replace the traditional voice commands that Xbox gamers are able to use. So instead of just loudly saying "Xbox" to wake up the Kinect's voice recognition, you'll be able to say "Hey Cortana". I saw a quick demonstration of an early build of the Xbox version of Cortana at E3 2016.

At its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco this week, Apple suggested that it was more than willing to compete toe-to-toe against Google, Amazon, and Microsoft in the artificial intelligence (A.I.) arena. As those rivals build increasingly sophisticated bots that can respond to users' natural-language commands, Apple has opened its own digital assistant, Siri, to third-party developers. If things pan out as the company expects, Siri will rapidly add more functionality, essentially becoming a butler for a growing collection of tasks. And that's just the first of what will surely be many A.I.-related initiatives on Apple's part. But how can Apple reconcile its need for personal data--the fuel of an effective A.I. platform--with its rigorous user privacy stance?

The competition among Siri, Cortana, Google Now, Alexa, and Facebook's M (still in its early stages), has kept the spotlight on virtual assistants for the last couple of years. The assistants and the AI technologies that power them have piqued the interest of venture capitalists as well. "Having written a bad version of ELIZA [an early-stage natural language processing program] as one of my earliest programs, I have been excited about the prospect of conversing with machines for a long time. So I will be watching this development closely…" Union Square Ventures' Albert Wenger wrote in his blog. We've identified 21 startups working in the virtual assistant space or providing underlying technology to power digital assistants that either received either Series B, Series A, or seed/angel funds since 2015.

Apple Inc.'s new artificial-intelligence capabilities may help it protect its software and services businesses from incursions by Alphabet Inc.'s Google -- and cut the internet giant out of lucrative search roles on its devices. At Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference this week, the company unveiled a crop of new AI-powered features: Its Siri voice-based digital assistant expanded from iPhones and iPads to its Mac laptop and desktop computers; natural-language processing brought new automated emoji creation to the iPhone maker's iMessage service; and image-recognition will give its gadgets the ability to automatically understand and organize photos stored on them. The capabilities are, in part, a natural riposte to recent AI-infused Google offerings, such as a mobile keyboard, a popular picture-organizing app named Photos, and a planned digital assistant that will live inside a new mobile messaging system called Allo. The Gboard keyboard was specifically designed for iPhones and is a way for Google to get its search service used in new ways on those devices. The Photos app works on iOS devices and Google's own Android mobile operating system and represents a twist on Google's search capabilities.