Microsoft shows what it would be like to live in a world where A.I. is everywhere

At its big conference for developers on Monday, Microsoft executives were showing what it will be like to live in a world infused with artificial intelligence. Cortana, the company's digital assistant and its rival to Amazon Alexa and Apple's Siri, is at the heart of Microsoft's effort to embed voice and image recognition into more of its services. Microsoft representatives demonstrated how artificial intelligence could help drones spot anomalies they see from above and recognize the people who come into a conference room for a meeting, speedily transcribing what they say. Four years into his gig running Microsoft -- and after initially proclaiming that the world is primarily mobile-first and cloud-first -- CEO Satya Nadella is focused on expanding the powers of Cortana, which is embedded into Windows 10 and has nearly 150 million people using it every month. But there are limitations, and among them is Alexa's popularity in the home through the Amazon Echo.