In his upcoming book, The Future Is Faster Than You Think, which will hit bookshelves in late January 2020, Diamandis makes the case for why he believes big tech companies are going to be running healthcare by 2030. In December, he came to Fast Company's offices to make the case for why Big Tech is the doctor of the future. "We're going to see Apple and Amazon and Google and all the data-driven companies that are in our homes right now become our healthcare providers," he says, referring to smart speakers such as Google's Assistant, Amazon's Alexa, and Apple's HomePod. While many of these home voice assistants started with simple tasks like restocking home pantries and surfacing cooking tutorials, they're already starting to move into the business of managing family well-being. Amazon has put significant effort into making Alexa a health resource.

Facebook is serious about joining the AI assistant race. The social media giant has been expanding its effort to create its own artificial intelligence chips, Yann Lecun, Facebook's chief AI scientist, told the Financial Times. Facebook's hope is that its AI chips could one day power a voice assistant with the'common sense' to carry out a full conversation with humans and even rival voice assistants created by the likes of Amazon and Apple. Facebook is serious about joining the AI assistant race. The social media giant has been expanding its effort to create its own artificial intelligence chips, Facebook's AI lead said'In terms of new uses, one thing Facebook would be interested in is offering smart digital assistants - something that has a level of common sense,' Lecun told the FT.

There are smart speakers, which connect wirelessly to other devices, and then there's the new era of smart speakers, designed to offer services through voice-controlled virtual assistants. Sonos, for a long time, was all about the former, having been a pioneer of high-quality, WiFi-connected speaker systems. Now it's entered the next era with products like Sonos One and Sonos Beam, which work with Amazon's Alexa and other virtual assistants. But Sonos' partners are also rivals, and Sonos' reliance on companies like Amazon, Google, and Apple makes it vulnerable, as it revealed in filing for an initial public offering Friday. To cite one example: Amazon can disable Alexa on Sonos devices any time, with "limited notice," according to the filing.

Google Assistant will soon be able to speak more than 30 languages. The internet giant said Friday its digital assistant software would be available in more than 30 languages by the end of 2018 as it steps up its artificial intelligence efforts against Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri and others. New languages including Danish, Dutch, Hindi and Indonesian, among others, will be coming to Assistant this year, with more on the way throughout the year. Assistant will also become multilingual, 'so families or individuals that speak more than one language can speak naturally,' to the program, Google wrote in a blog post. Google Assistant released its AI software in 2016 and the technology is available on the firm's connected speakers, Android smartphones, TVs, Android Auto and other devices.

Apple and Amazon are fierce competitors, especially now that the iPhone maker has released its own home speaker. However, the companies seem to have been putting their differences aside lately. This year, Amazon and Apple introduced changes that goes beyond their rivalry, with the most recent move announced this week at the Worldwide Developers Conference. The Apple logo is displayed at a store in the central business district of Sydney, April 6, 2017. Apple announced the Amazon video app will finally come to the Apple TV worldwide this year.

Google has joined the war to be your digital butler. Speaking to a packed amphitheater of developers here, Alphabet's flagship company on Wednesday unveiled a hot-rodded personal assistant it says will let people control their homes, book movies, search the internet, ask follow-up questions about an Italian restaurant and sort through dog pictures using voice commands. The salvo places Google in the middle of a contest among technology giants to build an artificial intelligence that hold consumers' hands as they navigate the real world. Perhaps with an eye towards modern politics, Google declined to give its personal aide a gendered name. Its main physical form is a small, white, buttonless speaker called Google Home. It looks similar to Amazon's Echo, its own smart speaker powered by Alexa.

Google has joined the war to be your digital butler. Speaking to a packed amphitheater of developers here, Alphabet's flagship company on Wednesday unveiled a hot-rodded personal assistant it says will let people control their homes, book movies, search the internet, ask follow up questions about an Italian restaurant, and sort through dog pictures using voice commands. The salvo places Google in the middle of a contest among technology giants to build an artificial intelligence that hold consumers' hands as they navigate the real world. Perhaps with an eye towards modern politics, Google declined to give its personal aide a gendered name. Its main physical form is a small, white, buttonless speaker called Google Home. It looks similar to Amazon's Echo, its own smart speaker powered by Alexa.