The voice recognition abilities of the Echo significantly undermined the direction Sonos was headed in; its answer has been to accept that if you can't beat them, you might as well join them. Working closely with Amazon to develop a tie-in with the Echo means that Sonos gets to ride the same wave, while also giving its existing customers the ability to add an Amazon device and immediately have the benefit of voice control for music around the house. As this link is built using the Alexa Voice Service SDK, there is a distinct possibility that future Sonos hardware will come with Alexa built in for an even easier user journey.

In many ways, our current inability to replicate our own brains is not a particularly large concern. For driverless cars, for example, the aim is to create a system that combines pure logical processes with ethical judgements and a protective mentality. Google's self-driving car project proved this in February, when one of its vehicles was responsible for causing a low-speed crash. The error was a typically human one -- assuming that a bus would slow and let it pull out past some sand bags -- and Google's response is to teach the system through deep learning processes that certain vehicles will be less likely to slow down for it.