Google to showcase AI advances at its big conference

Google is likely to again put artificial intelligence in the spotlight at its annual developers conference Thursday. The company's digital concierge, known only as the Google Assistant, could gain new abilities to handle tasks such as making restaurant reservations without human hand-holding. Google may also unveil updates to its Android mobile operating system, enable better AI-powered navigation suggestions in Google Maps, and push further into augmented reality technology, which overlays a view of the real world with digital images. The search giant aims to make its assistant so useful that people can't live without it -- or the search results that drive its advertising business. But it also wants to play up the social benefits of AI, and plans to showcase how it's being used to improve health care, preserve the environment and make scientific discoveries.