"The mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardise it," said Hal the computer to the astronauts in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The artificial intelligence (AI) race has taken on the portentous public relations spectre of the Soviet-USA race to the moon, or to build the first atomic bomb. Periodic announcements of milestone achievements confuse many because few understand what it means for an algorithm to pass a test reading literature. The dominance of big American tech companies- Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Uber and Google versus the rise of China's biggest tech outfits: Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, has created intense competition for resources and specialists. Yet, what are all of them racing towards?

Farming in Japan is different than the United States. The average Japanese farm is just 4.8 acres, and more than 1.5 million small-scale food producers punctuate Japan's mountainous islands. In contrast, the average US farm size is 434 acres. Japan's distributed model poses an issue: The price of modern, high-efficiency farm equipment demands a large operation to cover costs. One small farm, however, is turning to homebrew artificial intelligence instead of buying the standard machinery.

A real life assistant is expected to be a jack-of-all-trades. Whether finding a room for my meeting (and knowing how important the other meetings are to determine who else I can kick out), or booking me a cab back from my event (and knowing that I'd rather leave early to avoid the rush than see the whole thing but have to hang around afterwards); genuine intelligence is absolutely required, as is flexibility and persistence. Which is why digital assistants have been unmitigated failures. Predictive search makes me feel like I'm living in the future. But it's hard not to feel like we've been sold an over-reaching dream: a digital assistant that can look after my life's admin for me.