When it comes to digital assistants like Amazon's Alexa, my four-year-old niece Hannah Metz is an early adopter. Her family has four puck-like Amazon Echo Dot devices plugged in around her house--including one in her bedroom--that she can use to call on Alexa at any moment. "Alexa, play'It's Raining Tacos,'" she commanded on a recent sunny afternoon, and the voice-controlled helper immediately complied, blasting through its speaker a confection of a song with lines like "It's raining tacos from out of the sky" and "Yum, yum, yum, yum, yumidy yum." I think this ability to get music on demand is neat, too, and I didn't want to be rude, so I danced with her. But at the same time I was wondering what it's going to mean for her to grow up with computers as servants.

This year, many of us let a stranger into our homes and ended up loving it. I am, of course, talking about voice-activated artificial-intelligence assistants. The success of Amazon's Alexa, the launch of Google's Home, and Mark Zuckerbrg's public quest to build his own digital butler all demonstrate that conversational interfaces, which we predicted would be a breakthrough technology in 2016, are here to stay. Amazon's Echo smart speaker, which is a conduit for the company's Alexa AI assistant, was officially available to all in the U.S. from 2015. But this year it also went on sale in the U.K. and Germany, and estimates suggest that it sold as many as two million units in the first nine months of 2016.

This year, many of us let a stranger into our homes and ended up loving it. I am, of course, talking about voice-activated artificial-intelligence assistants. The success of Amazon's Alexa, the launch of Google's Home, and Mark Zuckerbrg's public quest to build his own digital butler all demonstrate that conversational interfaces, which we predicted would be a breakthrough technology in 2016, are here to stay. Amazon's Echo smart speaker, which is a conduit for the company's Alexa AI assistant, was officially available to all in the U.S. from 2015. But this year it also went on sale in the U.K. and Germany, and estimates suggest that it sold as many as two million units in the first nine months of 2016.

Today we Google for information, but in the future, we might not need to. Instead we may rely on our butler, namely the intelligent, voice-activated digital assistant on our smart phones, smart watches, or devices like Amazon's Echo and Alphabet's Home. Rather than searching the web, we'll be able to ask our digital assistant how to remove the stain from our shirt. It'll perform other perfunctory tasks, like adding groceries to our shopping list, checking the weather, sending a text, or ordering an Uber. Maurice E. Stucke (@MauriceStucke) is a co-founder of the Konkurrenz Group and a law professor at the University of Tennessee.

Today we Google for information, but in the future, we might not need to. Instead we may rely on our butler, namely the intelligent, voice-activated digital assistant on our smart phones or smart watches, or, like Amazon's Echo and Alphabet's Home. Rather than searching the web, we'll be able to ask our digital assistant how to remove the stain from our shirt. It'll perform other perfunctory tasks, like adding groceries to our shopping list, checking the weather, sending a text, or ordering an Uber. Maurice E. Stucke (@MauriceStucke) is a co-founder of the Konkurrenz Group and a law professor at the University of Tennessee.

One of the first things Genevieve Bell did after bringing home an Amazon Echo was ask the smart speaker to set a timer. After the Echo replied in its soft, reassuring female voice, Bell told the device "thank you." "When was the last time you said'thank you' to Google search?" asked Bell, Intel's longtime cultural anthropologist and corporate strategist. Bell's experience points to both the promise and the peril of Google's new effort to create its own digital butler, simply dubbed "Google assistant," which it hopes will become capable of natural, two-way conversation with people. Several experts in conversational software said Google could make itself an even more intimate part of users' lives by offering this kind of technology.

To make it a bit easier to stay organized, Snips launched a free iOS app on May 17 that is being marketed as a way to "extend your memory." Based on artificial intelligence, Snips can memorize your contacts, calendar and location, conveniently storing them in one place. The app also guarantees to keep all of this personal data private, meaning no one will see it except for you. In the most basic sense, Snips works off of Artificial Memory, which is meant to gain a "deep understanding" of your life. The idea is to give it enough personal data to complete large scale, complex tasks.