TechRepublic's James Sanders spoke with Oblong Industries John Underkoffler about how smart assistant technologies from data-driven companies like Google and Amazon are leading the market, while Siri and Cortana are falling behind. The following is an edited transcript of the interview. James Sanders: Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana are really closer to the back of the pack for smart voice assistants, while data driven companies like Google and Amazon are leading the race. What does the future hold for smart assistants and how they integrate into people's lives? John Underkoffler: I think we're at a pivotal moment for the larger field let's say, that smart assistants might be one example of, and then a set of enabling technologies like machine learning, I refuse to say AI, that tend to power them.

Picture this: You're scrolling through Facebook for the tenth time one day when, all of a sudden, you see an ad. It shouldn't be anything out of the ordinary, but when the ad displays the exact band tee you found yourself googling earlier that morning, you can't help but wonder, "how does it do that?" Machine learning is the science of enabling computers to learn without being explicitly programmed. It has been developing for years and in some instances, so subtly, that we didn't even notice. Social media is a prime example.

VID Cisco will shortly give the world a voice assistant it believes has a shot at making life uncomfortable for Siri, Cortana and Alexa in the office. The company's effort won't be a general-purpose bot. Instead the company plans to make it a part of its Spark collaboration portfolio and have it do things like place calls, find documents and open meetings. The assistant was announced in November 2017, but The Reg today beheld a live demo of the tool at Cisco Live in Melbourne. Forgive us the shot-on-a-phone handheld footage, but here's what Cisco feels is fit for public consumption.

We started the contest by asking the assistants basic questions about topics like the weather forecast, conversions between different measurements, and trivia. Every assistant could answer a simple query about the weather and provide the forecast for the next few days. We did notice some very slight variations in the responses, probably because these apps rely on different sources. Alexa gave the most useful information in the shortest time, which makes sense--as a voice-only program, it has to be as succinct as possible. They could even update us on the time in different time zones--though we should knock points off for Siri and Cortana, which didn't include the day as well as the time in their spoken responses, something you need to know if a region is a day ahead of or behind you.

Manmade machines, tools, and technology are just not enough these days. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are the hottest trends right now. How effective are they and what should we expect in 2018? One of the most popular examples of AI is Deep Blue, a supercomputer developed by IBM. How will AI bring change in people's lives in 2018?

Apple's famous artificial intelligence agent is eating humble pie today. Ask Siri "Who is smarter, Siri or Google Now?" and Siri obligingly links to an article about a recent 3,086-question challenge that ranked Google Now as the top scorer. Unfortunately for Siri, the quiz had some built-in biases. Designed by the Stone Temple digital marketing group, the purpose of the exercise was to explore a giant, new knowledge base that Google was rumored to be building. Google's mysterious "Knowledge Vault," which was reported by the New Scientist in August, caused a tumult in the SEO community, which lives or dies by its ability to understand how Google prioritizes responses to search queries.

Nokia's trademark application for Viki comes just as the new Android-powered 5.5-inch Nokia 6 launches. A new trademark application by Nokia suggests the former mobile-device giant could be building a phone-based digital assistant called Viki. Nokia filed the European trademark application for the name Viki just ahead last week's launch of the new Android-powered 5.5-inch Nokia 6 from HMD Global, the sole licensee of Nokia handsets, which plans to sell its first Nokia mobile exclusively in China this year for around $250. Nokia's involvement in the new phones is limited to branding and IP. However, the new trademark application could suggest it still may be eyeing a prominent place on Nokia-branded Android devices via Viki, which could be its answer to artificial intelligence-powered digital assistants such as Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, Google's Assistant, and Microsoft's Cortana.

Amazon has long been at the forefront of innovation, with Amazon Prime Air, Amazon Echo and now Amazon Go all recent inventions. But where Amazon really leads the way is in its marketing and specifically how it manages to describe and sell complex technology like artificial intelligence (AI) to the public. General knowledge about AI is still low, with only 18% of consumers surveyed by Weber Shandwick feeling like they had a lot of knowledge about AI. This figure rose to 48% for those who felt that they had a little, but it's still a paltry figure given how much of our lives AI has now infiltrated. We've now got Siri and Cortana in our pockets and on our computers, Google Home and Amazon Echo is in our living rooms, and soon our roads will be filled with AI operating self-driving cars and Amazon Go-esque stores in our high streets.

Tucked within Google's unremarkable Allo messaging app is a real treasure: Google Assistant, which injects Google Now with an eager-to-please personality that finally provides the give-and-take other digital assistants lack. We've always talked about Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google Now as the three digital assistants from the top smartphone platforms. But the truth is that Google Now was little more than a series of informative cards, while Siri and Cortana preferred a text-based approach with a bit of sass. Google Assistant retains its visual approach, but within a messaging context that really nails it in how you interact with the app itself. Google announced Google Assistant this past May, and the preview version of it is live in Allo, which itself can be used on Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) on up.

Assistants are all the rage right now. Everyone seems to be working on one. People imagine them becoming the new interface to computers -- why bother with apps and searching the web when you can just ask your assistant to do it for you? Yet, a major challenge stands between the dream assistant and the current reality. It's called the multi-agent problem, and most companies are reluctant to talk about it.