At the end of 2016, it's hard to escape the cultural influence of artificial intelligence. The biggest company in the world is publicly staking its future on it; Seoul came to a standstill to watch their best Go player lose to it; and millions of people have tuned in to see what HBO think it might mean for the future of humanity. To understand its implications -- and they're big -- it's helpful to understand what it is and how it works. People tend to use machine learning and artificial intelligence as if they're interchangeable, but they're not: rather, machine learning (ML) is one very successful approach to the broader field of artificial intelligence (AI). Artificial intelligence is, essentially, the simulation of intelligence in computers.

No one knows what happened at Atlit-Yam. The ancient village appeared to be thriving until 7000BC. The locals kept cattle, caught fish and stored grain. They had wells for fresh water, stone houses with paved courtyards. Community life played out around an impressive monument: seven half-tonne stones that stood in a semicircular embrace around a spring where people came to drink.

The process used to create a major motion picture hasn't changed much in a century. Someone has an idea that they turn into a screenplay, which is then edited, developed and handed to a director, who brings it to life. The only difference now is that there's plenty more focus-grouping, audience analysis and number crunching to ensure each film is a hit. Except that doesn't really work, since 2016 alone has seen scores of movies unceremoniously crash and burn. But maybe that will change with ScriptBook, an algorithm that its creators say can spot most turkeys before they've even been made.

Arrival Amy Adams stars in this elegant, involving science-fiction drama that is simultaneously old and new, revisiting many alien-invasion conventions but with unexpected intelligence, visual style and heart. The Eagle Huntress A portrait of a 13-year-old Kazakh girl from Mongolia who defies eons of tradition by learning to hunt with fierce golden eagles is a documentary so satisfying it makes you feel good about feeling good. The Edge of Seventeen Hailee Steinfeld gives a superb performance as a high-school misfit in Kelly Fremon Craig's disarmingly smart teen dramedy, the rare coming-of-age picture that feels less like a retread than a renewal. Elle Paul Verhoeven's brilliantly booby-trapped thriller starring Isabelle Huppert is a gripping whodunit, a tour de force of psychological suspense and a wickedly droll comedy of manners. The Handmaiden The most absorbing feature in years from South Korean director Park Chan-wook ("Oldboy") is a teasingly witty and elegant puzzle-box of a thriller about two women (played by Kim Tae-ri and Kim Min-hee) pursuing their destinies in 1930s Japanese-occupied Korea.

Scientists have developed experimental breath analyzers, but most of these devices only focused on a single type of disease, such as cancer. Researchers from the Israel Institute of Technology have created a device that can identify 17 different diseases, including lung cancer or Parkinson's disease. The researchers developed an array of nanoscale sensors to detect the components in breath samples from more than 1,400 patients who were either healthy or had one of 17 different diseases, such as kidney cancer, Parkinson's disease, pulmonary hypertension and other diseases. Each sample was then passed through the breathalyzer, which could detect the types of chemicals and in what quantities. As the researchers report in the journal ACS Nano, the data from the breathalyzer could detect if a person is suffering from diseases almost nine out of ten times.

Working in the field of big data and AI means that I see the leading edge advances that come with it. It also means routinely getting freaked out when you think too closely about the possibilities and implications of those advances and where they might be taking us. Manufacturing are the first places we see robots and automation eliminating human jobs, but it's hard to think of an industry that will be left unaffected as robots and AI become more affordable and widespread. It's estimated that between 35 and 50 percent of jobs that exist today are at risk of being lost to automation. Repetitive, blue collar type jobs might be first, but even professionals -- including paralegals, diagnosticians, and customer service representatives -- will be at risk.

It's hard to bet against the continued rise of automation, robots, and artificial intelligence (AI), all of which are already having major impacts on how we work, learn, shop, and play. But being able to predict that robotics and AI will change our lives is a lot easier than predicting how they will change our lives. In a recent forecast for 2017 and beyond, for instance, analyst firm IDC said we can expect to continue seeing robotic and AI technologies keep growing more affordable, more capable, and easier to use. The Obama White House said it expects the same, but also warns in a new report that "growth will not be costless" and could harm workers lacking the skills to compete in an AI-driven economy. How the incoming administration plans to address such issues is also uncertain. While President-elect Donald Trump's campaign promised to revive U.S. manufacturing and spend $1 trillion on the nation's infrastructure, he has also tapped Hardee's/Carl's Jr. chief Andrew Puzder -- who supports the use of automation to save on employment costs -- as secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor.

Many believe Artificial intelligence is a new concept. But in reality it is something that businesses have been trying to implement in key areas. The role of artificial intelligence is to organize operations and improve automation. Some of the biggest international tech giants such as Google, Apple and Microsoft have made announcements related to artificial intelligence this year. In September, a number of companies, including Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM and Microsoft, also launched a Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society to address opportunities with AI technology .

We have discussed some AI topics in the previous posts, and it should seem now obvious the extraordinary disruptive impact AI had over the past few years. However, what everyone is now thinking of is where AI will be in five years time. I find it useful then to describe a few emerging trends we start seeing today, as well as make few predictions around machine learning future developments. The following proposed list does not want to be either exhaustive or truth-in-stone, but it comes from a series of personal considerations that might be useful when thinking about the impact of AI on our world. Companies like Vicarious or Geometric Intelligence are working toward reducing the data burden needed to train neural networks.

Chatbots are programs that mimic conversation with people using artificial intelligence. With recent advances in AI these have become much more accurate, especially when focused on a specific domain. Combine these advances with the consumer trend towards messaging -- people are now spending more time in messaging apps than in social media -- and it seems we might be about to enter the age of the chatbot. We decided to take a closer look at the top emerging chatbot start-ups in text chat, across a range of industries, and pick out the most promising. You can find out more about the 25 companies below, or discover more chatbot startups on our search engine.