A Tokyo-based personal insurance company announced it will replace 34 workers in its claims department with an artificial intelligence system based on IBM's infamous Watson. The system "will be tasked with reading medical certificates written by doctors and other documents to collect information necessary for making payouts, such as medical histories, length of hospital stays, and surgical procedure names," according to an English version of an article in the Japanese daily The Mainichi. "Artificial intelligence" is a slippery term that can mean everything from personal assistants like Siri, to the natural language processing done by Google, to systems modeled on the human brain that can teach themselves new skills by processing large amounts of data. In this case, the tasks that will be done by the Watson-esque system that is replacing workers at Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance Co. don't sound much different from a typical computer program: scan for keywords, find values, check lookup tables, input all that information into an algorithm, spit out a recommendation. The final decision will be made by a human employee.

Salesforce ( CRM) continued its stellar performance in 2016, with its top line growing at more than 25% in the first three quarters of the fiscal year and beating market expectations. Additionally, the company's added focus on improving its bottom line started to pay dividends, with its earnings per share for the first nine months growing appreciably from -$0.03 in 2015 to $0.34 in 2016. Moreover, during the year, Salesforce made a number of acquisitions and made a push in the e-commerce and artificial intelligence domains, opening up avenues for further growth. Apart from this, the company also affirmed its goal of $10 billion in revenues, which it expects to achieve by the end of next year. Despite a good performance in the first three quarters of the year, Salesforce's stock is currently trading 12% lower than its price in January, owing to a tougher market environment and relatively soft performance in the second quarter.

Amazon's 2016 has been record breaking on many fronts. The company recorded its sixth consecutive quarterly profit (previously, it mostly hemorrhaged cash). Meanwhile, this year marked Amazon's growing strength in hardware with its hit Echo home automation hub Amazon Echo, and its companion voice assistant Alexa. The company has also become force in entertainment, debuting a line of hit original shows through its Amazon Video Prime service. It's hard to imagine how Amazon could top 2016, but here are some likely moves by the Seattle-based Goliath in 2017: To save money over the past year, Amazon has been seeking to take over more shipping duties from the likes of UPS and FedEx by leasing trucks, planes, and ships.

Internet of Things (IoT) has brought everything connected through internet. Increase application of smart devices are enabling us to collect big data on a regular basis. The data gathered are becoming more complex and uncertain and therefore artificial intelligence (AI) came into picture. AI can efficiently deal with the difficulties created by big data. Artificial Intelligence is basically the simulation of logical human thinking using computer technology.

Whether your IoT service is connecting cars, homes, appliances, wearable, cameras or other devices, one question hangs in the balance - how do you actually make money from this service? The ability to turn your IoT service into profit requires the ability to create a monetization strategy that is flexible, scalable and working for you in real-time. It must be a transparent, smoothly implemented strategy that all stakeholders - from customers to the board - will be able to understand and comprehend. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Michael Beamer, President of goTransverse, discussed how to build a dynamic monetization strategy that effortlessly turns IoT service into a money maker. Speaker Bio Michael Beamer is a 23-year technology and business leader with unique experience running technology teams and solutions in 40 countries around the world.

How does the Google Pixel XL stack up against the Apple iPhone 7 Plus on three main metrics? Note that is not a comprehensive review of all the features on both phones. I will do a comprehensive long-term review later. And for the record (iPhone fans please note), I think both phones are excellent and are two of the best smartphones on the planet. Intelligent Personal Assistant: Google Personal Assistant vs. Siri: The Google Pixel is the first Android phone to use Google Assistant.

As far as artificial intelligence goes, 2016 has been the year of deep learning. Brain-inspired neural networks have received massive amounts of investment in time, resources and funding -- and, boy, has it ever paid off! In a new piece of research -- carried out by investigators at Rutgers University, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Lehigh University, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong -- neural networks have been used to generate high quality images based on nothing more detailed than basic text descriptions. "Generating realistic images from text descriptions has many applications," researcher Han Zhang told Digital Trends. "Previous approaches have difficulty in generating high resolution images, and their synthesized images in many cases lack details and vivid object parts. Our StackGAN for the first time generates 256 x 256 images with photo-realistic details."

Try typing "the machines" into Google and chances are that one of the top results the artificial intelligence-powered search engine will return is the phrase: "The Machines are Coming". After a 2016 filled with high-profile advances in artificial intelligence (AI), leading technologists say this could be a breakout year in the development of intelligent machines that emulate humans. Asia, until now lagging Silicon Valley in AI, will play a bigger role as the field cements itself at the pinnacle of the technology world in 2017, the experts say. AI – technically, a computing field that involves the analysis of large troves of data to predict outcomes and patterns – is as old as modern computers but its esoteric nature means it has long endured caricatures of its actual potential – think for example, the 1960s space age cartoon The Jetsons, which featured a sentient robot maid and automated flying cars (both of which we are still waiting for, even 50 years on). Now, a confluence of factors has given rise to hopes that computers with human-like cognitive ability may soon be a reality.

The State of European Tech report points to the success of tech-based businesses or acquisitions across the continent, but at the core of this success is deep tech. When it comes to advances in AI, machine learning, VR and AR, drones, robotics and 3D printing, Europe is either leading the way, or is on par with the likes of the US. Since the start of 2015, $2.3 billion has been invested into deep tech in Europe and 2016 is on track for $1 billion – four times the amount in 2011. Even Norway, the lowest ranking country of those studied, has received $56 million in the past five years. These figures also don't represent the recent acquisition of Skyscanner by China's Ctrip travel firm.

Ahead of CES 2017 this January, South Korea giant LG is teasing about the products and new technologies it would be showing off at the trade show. Based off of new information concerning the Soul-based electronics company, new AI robots could be unveiled at next month's event including one that would serve as a direct competitor to Amazon's Echo smart speaker. Amazon Echo proved to be a smash hit when it was released. Thus, it is not surprising that other companies have since tried to penetrate the market that Amazon established. Google introduced its voice-activated speaker, called Google Home, this year.