Like it or not, the machines are claiming new territory. And by "machines" I mean artificial intelligence (AI). Our business and personal lives are touched by AI every day. That friendly lady who took your information and looked up your account when you called your insurance company? That helpful service on Netflix that recommends new shows to watch?

While the idea of a robot assistant seems appealing to a wide swath of consumers, the reality may not live up to the anticipation. One of the most well-known artificial intelligence agents, Apple's Siri, is only reportedly used by about 15% of iPhone users. That leaves 85% of iPhone users who don't seem to find value in the robot pal who lives in their pocket. As Siri is a primary selling feature for a flagship product from one of the most renowned technology companies in the world, this begs the question – can anyone really execute an interactive voice recognition-based bot in a useful and meaningful way? (Intelligent Voice) The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas has adopted the use of an artificial intelligence concierge called "Rose" to assist their guests and provide a unique interactive experience. Since Rose's introduction, the hotel has seen a 39% increase in on-site spending and 90% of guests who interacted with Rose reported that they would recommend her.

A US prison was recently able to detect and prevent inmates from carrying out illegal business by using artificial intelligence to analyse calls made into and out of the prison for unusual patterns. All calls that connect on prison phone lines in the US are recorded and monitored, but it is a very time-consuming and boring job to listen endlessly to thousands of hours of conversations between inmates and their families in order to try to work out if anything nefarious is going on. To speed the job up, one prison in the American mid-west is using a machine learning system designed by London-based firm Intelligent Voice to listen to all the audio files and detect odd patterns for humans to take a closer look at, according to New Scientist. When the prison wardens looked at the analysis report created by the software, they discovered that one of the most popular non-trivial phrases being used by inmates was the phrase "three way". Initially the wardens thought that the phrase was some sort of sexual reference, but because the word was used so often in phone calls they investigated further, and realised that the phrase was actually a secret code word.

SAY it out loud and the machines will know. Search engines are moving beyond the web and into the messy real world. Every call into or out of US prisons is recorded. It can be important to know what's being said, because some inmates use phones to conduct illegal business on the outside. But the recordings generate huge quantities of audio that are prohibitively expensive to monitor with human ears.