Machine learning is at the top of the "hype curve" for emerging technologies and is one of the top 10 strategic technology trends for 2016 according to Gartner. A method of data analysis that automates analytical model building, machine learning can benefit almost any business that gathers data with the intention of acting upon it. It's safe to say that most of us are already interacting with machine learning applications on a daily basis, whether it's Apple's Siri, Facebook's face detection, Amazon and Netflix personalized recommendations, or iOS's autocorrect. What can we learn from this growing trend? What can we do with such a widely applicable technology and how can we maximize its potential?

"We're going to use this technology to breathe life into the inanimate objects and devices of our life through conversation," said Siri co-founder and CEO Dag Kittlaus. Viv (which means "life" in Latin) offers an experience akin to the AI in the film Her. When Kittlaus asked, "Will it be warmer than 70 degrees near the Golden Gate Bridge, after 5 p.m., the day after tomorrow?" Viv quickly retrieved the correct hourly forecast from the Weather Underground app. When I posed the same question to Siri on my iPhone 6S, it pulled up the daily forecast from San Francisco for the next week, but it's unclear if it actually gave me predicted temperatures after 6pm.

The team behind Apple's voice assistant Siri have revealed their latest independent project "Viv", an AI bot that lives on your phone and aims to be "the intelligent interface for everything." Viv was unveiled at Techcruch's Disrupt conference, where a 20-minute demo wowed the audience with a real-time demonstration of its capabilities. The company behind Viv has dubbed it "The Global Brain", and its strength lies in tight partnerships with popular services, and a unique way of understanding human queries. Unlike Siri, Viv's approach is much closer to Amazon's Alexa or Facebook's Messenger bots, offering the ability to connect with third-party merchants and vendors so that it can execute on requests to purchase goods or book reservations. "Will it be warmer than 70-degrees near the Golden Gate Bridge after 5pm the day after tomorrow?"

College of Computing Professor Ashok Goel teaches Knowledge Based Artificial Intelligence (KBAI) every semester. And every time he offers it, Goel estimates, his 300 or so students post roughly 10,000 messages in the online forums -- far too many inquiries for him and his eight teaching assistants (TA) to handle. That's why Goel added a ninth TA this semester. Her name is Jill Watson, and she's unlike any other TA in the world. Jill is a computer -- a virtual TA --implemented on IBM's Watson platform.

TORONTO – A dating website is pledging to match Americans who can't live with a Donald Trump presidency to Canadians looking for love, facilitating the pledge often made by U.S. voters to move to Canada if the real estate billionaire is elected. "Maple Match makes it easy for Americans to find the ideal Canadian partner to save them from the unfathomable horror of a Trump presidency," the Maple Match website reads, before offering a waiting list for interested singles. Trump's bombastic campaign to lead the Republican Party to the November presidential election has alarmed some Americans, both liberals and those in his own party, and the pledge by some to move to Canada if he is elected has gathered steam. In February, the island of Cape Breton on Canada's Atlantic coast marketed itself as a tranquil refuge for Americans seeking to escape should Trump capture the White House. The Maple Match website allows users to add their name to a wait list matching dismayed U.S. voters with interested single Canadians, adding "We'll let you know the next steps soon!" Officials with Maple Match did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Chief Executive Joe Goldman told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that more than 10,000 singles and about 2,500 Canadians had signed up for the website's waiting list as of Tuesday morning.

Some knowledge workers fear they are next in line to be made obsolete by artificial intelligence (AI). Automation, which impacted manufacturing and blue collar jobs, is beginning to encroach on areas previously considered strictly within the realm of human intelligence and judgement -- advisory services for financial services firms, fraud identification, disease diagnosis, editing and structured article creation, and language translation. When first introduced, sophisticated tax software appeared to threaten the jobs of income tax preparers. But it turned out to only be effective for relatively uncomplicated returns. According to the Washington Post, tax preparers -- most using intelligent software to do their work -- completed the same number of returns in 2011 as they did a decade earlier.

Some AI proponents argue that Artificial Intelligence will usurp human intelligence or even make us obsolete. That kind of talk must stop, before we lose control of AI. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the leading Internet trends of 2016, particularly with large companies like Google and Facebook pouring resources into it. While there are many benefits to AI -- for example, Facebook using it to make our news feeds smarter -- the hype is getting hubristic. I'm particularly concerned about the language AI proponents are using.

Who here remembers taking computer programming in school? Whether you learned programming by punching holes in a never ending series of cards, or by writing simple DOS or other computer language commands, the fact remained that computers needed an incredibly precise set of instructions to accomplish a task. The more complicated the task, the more complicated your instructions had to be. Machine learning is inherently different. Rather than telling a computer exactly how to solve a problem, the programmer instead tells it how to go about learning to solve the problem for itself.

If you're also single and looking for love, then Maple Match – a new matchmaking website that promises to "Make dating great again" – may be the catch-all solution you've been waiting for. According to its website, Maple Match aims to make it "easy for Americans to find the ideal Canadian partner to save them from the unfathomable horror of a Trump presidency." "After more than 35,000 hits and more than 4,500 signups in just four days, we are confident that Maple Match will fulfill a clear need in the dating space," site founder and CEO Joe Goldman told Tech Times. He added that the site aims to be operational "as soon as possible." Even Canadians – who are known for being unflinchingly polite – have been vocal about their dislike for Donald Trump, though perhaps that dislike is more out of concern than anything else.

The creators of Siri, Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer debuted their next-gen AI, Viv yesterday at Disrupt NY 2016. Viv is designed to be an open platform that allows developers to create apps, which expand the AIs reach of possibility. We talked about the backstory behind Siri and Viv last week; now the AI has been showcased and you can watch it in action below. Viv connects with third-party applications and recognizes the way humans talk, creating an open artificial intelligence that can complete complex tasks from booking your restaurant reservation to sending your friend money for the drinks she bought you last night. The creators of Siri and Viv see AI tech becoming a broad umbrella under which all the separate apps and services we use can come together seamlessly.