Artificial intelligence (AI) is all about getting a machine to mimic a human in every way: thought, speech, movement. That's why one of the tests for AI is the Turing test: whether a robot can fool a human into thinking it is conversing with another of its own species. An integral part of accomplishing this is making the AI recognize human emotions. So one research lab is working on the next iteration of virtual assistants, those that can recognize and react to emotional cues. SRI International, the birthplace of Siri, is working on better chatbots and phone assistants that can detect agitation, confusion, and other emotional states, and respond accordingly.

With all of iOS 10's new messaging features, you'd be forgiven for forgetting that Siri support for third-party apps was one of the biggest new features to launch with the update. Thanks to iOS 10, you can use Siri to send messages, hail rides, make payments and more with many of the apps you already use. Before you get started, it's important to note that you'll need to manually enable your apps to work with Siri by heading to Settings - Siri -- App Support (you can also use this menu to find out which apps you already installed that are compatible with Siri). Once that's taken care of, you can start testing out Siri's new powers for yourself. It may not be immediately obvious how to use each app with Siri, so remember that the apps fall into a few categories: ride hailing, messaging, photo search, payments and workouts.

It might surprise some of you to know that artificial intelligence (AI) is already in use and a routine part of our daily lives, but we leverage this technology when we use our smartphones or other devices to ask Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, Google Now, or Amazon's Alexa a question to get the facts or data we are looking for. Using your voice, you can say, "Where's the nearest gas station?" or "What's on my calendar today?", and the intelligent personal assistant (IPA) will respond by finding information and relaying it from your phone or sending commands to other apps. However, AI is not only being used in the context of a personal assistant. Self-driving cars are moving closer to reality, retailers are using anticipatory shipping in the hopes to send you items before you need them, and banks are using AI to detect fraud to monitor accounts and alert the owners when questionable transactions occur. So it is here, but what is AI? AI is an intelligent system's ability to improve predictions, accelerate problem solving, and automate administrative tasks, ushering in an era of automation.

Machine learning has had fruitful applications in finance well before the advent of mobile banking apps, proficient chat bots, or search engines. Given high volume, accurate historical records, and quantitative nature of the finance world, few industries are better suited for artificial intelligence. There are more uses cases of machine learning in finance than ever before, a trend perpetuated by more accessible computing power and more accessible machine learning tools (such as Google's Tensorflow). Today, machine learning has come to play an integral role in many phases of the financial ecosystem, from approving loans, to managing assets, to assessing risks. Yet, few technically-savvy professionals have an accurate view of just how many ways machine learning finds its way into their daily financial lives.

With the Echo listening constantly for the wake word (e.g., "Alexa"), it is conscious of everything you are saying. Nothing is actually recorded and sent to the Amazon cloud until the wake word has been heard, then recording starts (including a clip that spans a few seconds before the wake word was spoken). This is set up so that Echo can be continually learning how you are using Alexa. Becoming familiar with the ways you are interacting with the device is the most effective way to improve the product over time.

This article was originally published on TechRepublic. Remember the famous scene in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey, when Hal 9000--the intelligent-turned-malevolent computer--regresses to his "childhood" and sings "Daisy Bell" as he's decommissioned by astronaut Dave Bowman? Its inspiration was a real-life Bell Labs demonstration of speech synthesis on an IBM 704 mainframe in 1961, witnessed by Arthur C Clark, who later incorporated it into his 2001 novel and screenplay. Although Bell Labs' involvement in the field stretches back to the 1930s with Homer Dudley's keyboard-and-footpedal-driven Voder speech synthesis device, it's undoubtedly the classic Kubrick/Clarke movie that cemented the ideas of artificial intelligence (AI) and conversing with computers into the public mind. Depending on how old you are, we're now familiar with computerised voices, thanks to devices like Texas Instruments' popular 1978 Speak & Spell educational toy, Stephen Hawking's speech synthesiser (memorably sampled in the Pink Floyd song Keep Talking), GPS navigational systems in your car, and any number of public information and call handling systems. More recently, the combination of automatic speech recognition (ASR), natural-language understanding (NLU) and text-to-speech (TTS) has come to mainstream attention in virtual assistants such as Apple's Siri, Google Now, Microsoft's Cortana, and Amazon's Alexa. To get a handle on how speech technologies work, we clearly need to know something about the mechanics of human speech and the structure of language. When we speak, air from the lungs passes through the vocal tract to produce "voiced" or "unvoiced" sounds (depending on whether the vocal cords are vibrating or not) that may then be modulated by the tongue, teeth and lips.

Imagine if you could easily add voice recognition to your app or service even if you have no experience with voice-based sevices. Amazon hopes you'll do just that with the new Alexa Skills Kit, a collection of self-service APIs, tools, and code samples that make it a snap to add skills to Alexa. Alexa is the voice service that powers Amazon's Echo device. The Echo is a small, internet-connected speaker that responds to voice requests and can do things like manage calendar appointments and shopping lists. The Echo had been available in limited fashion to Amazon Prime subscribers until this week, when the online retailer made Echo available to anyone for 179.

Amazon launches the Amazon Echo, which is an artificially intelligent Bluetooth speaker and it is based on Amazon's cloud-based voice service, Alexa - this can make your house a whole lot smarter.

We have grown up with poor voice recognition and error prone requests on our mobile devices but Amazon started a full 12 months before Google on developing a high-precision microphone and voice recognition system that is built into its marketplace ecosystem. You can order pizza, pay a credit card bill, order books, check your diary, as well as listen to music and news. You can also ask and use the IFTTT integration function to also link to many home smart appliances across many brands such as switch lights on, set and check home security, switch hot water and heating on or off and control fridges, cookers, TVs and many other things all by simple voice commands.

Echo has seven microphones and beam-forming technology so it can hear you from across the room--even in noisy environments or while playing music. Echo is also an expertly tuned speaker that can fill any room with 360 immersive sound. When you want to use Echo, just say the wake word "Alexa" and Echo responds. If you have more than one Echo or Echo Dot, Alexa responds intelligently from the device you're closest to with ESP (Echo Spatial Perception). ESP works best when Echo devices are at least 6 metres apart.