Artificial intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has come a long way in the past few years.  What was once something only witnessed in science fiction has now become very real with AIs playing poker, telling us when to leave for the airport and letting us know what the weather will be like tomorrow.  In the business world, AI has been used to improve cybersecurity and help contact center agents be smarter but it has yet to do is make workers more productive in any significant way but that will change soon.  

It's been a busy year in artificial intelligence. Kicking off with Deep Mind beating a world champion at his own game and reaching an impressive crescendo with a realistic humanoid that wants a baby, this was the year that AI breakthroughs – and our fears about them – went mainstream.

Artificial intelligence (AI), largely manifesting through machine learning algorithms, isn’t just getting better. It isn’t just getting more funding. It’s being incorporated into a more diverse range of applications. Rather than focusing on one goal, like mastering a game or communicating with humans, AI is starting to make an appearance in almost every new platform, app, or device, and that trend is only going to accelerate in 2018. We’re not at techno-pocalypse levels (and AI may never be sophisticated enough for us to reach that point), but by the end of 2018, AI will become even more of a mainstay in all forms of technology.