When artificial intelligence is everywhere, all the time

It's easy to dismiss virtual assistants as parlor tricks, irrelevant gimmicks or even fatally flawed.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella didn't help matters last week when a demo of his company's Cortana virtual assistant failed spectacularly. At Salesforce.com's Dreamforce event in San Francisco, Nadella tried to show off Cortana as a business tool by asking it: "Show me my most at-risk opportunities." Cortana understood the request as: "Show me to buy milk at this opportunity."
The demo failed not b