Washington

THERE'S a high-stakes race under way in Silicon Valley to develop software that makes it easy to weave artificial intelligence technology into almost everything, and Google has sprinted into the lead.

Google computer scientists including Jeff Dean and Greg Corrado built software called TensorFlow, which simplifies the programming of key systems that underpin artificial intelligence. That helps Google make its products smarter and more responsive. It's important for other companies too because the software makes it dramatically easier to create computer programs that learn and improve automatically. What's more, Google gives it away.