Google: Our Assistant Will Trigger the Next Era of AI

Fernando Pereira, who leads Google’s projects in natural language understanding, is less excited about his company’s shiny new devices than he is about what will happen when people use them...
how can a machine truly understand phrases... machine learning; specifically... neural networks... use sophisticated algorithms and tons of data to train themselves. The more data the better... Google will receive [it] when millions of people start conversing with his company’s flagship bot, the Google Assistant... a single software system that will be implemented across multiple Google platforms... the apotheosis of its efforts to answer questions and perform functions... an evolution of ... Search, Maps, Photos, and Google Now
The Transition will ... gathering many millions (if not billions) of requests to the Google Assistant ... so that the company can train its deep learning neural nets to profoundly understand how to make a bot that knows what you’re asking for, and that can converse with you until your request is satisfied....
you can start to develop a model that’s completely machine learning... then Google’s neural nets will be able to ... mine the company’s existing Knowledge Base...  as well as unstructured data on the web—in a more holistic manner, interpreting the actual meaning of all those places and things.