In its last financial quarter, it sold $32bn (£25.6bn) That "other" category encompasses everything from crucifixes to sex toys, board games to plyboard, and mousemats printed with the faces of obscure TV and Radio personalities. It has also diversified beyond its simple shopping business: the company will sell you something to be delivered in less than one hour, food from restaurants, and even digital content to be watched on your TV or listened to on your phone. And, of course, it has a hardware business which many other companies would kill for, producing ebook readers and tablets, and single-handedly creating the product category of "smart speaker" with the Echo. But there's another chunk of Amazon that you're less likely to know about.

Information technologies are accelerating at an exponential rate, ushering in the fourth industrial revolution. This is a digital revolution and the pace of change is unprecedented. This revolution incorporates machine learning (think parallel processing and neural networks) and the concept of self-assembly or self-programmability. As technologies continue to advance, they accelerate the progress of other technologies, and so on, and so on. Thanks to parallel processing, big data, cloud technology, and advanced algorithms, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning are becoming more powerful.

They cover more than 70% of the earth's surface and the sheer size of the oceans makes tracking and measuring life under water an enormous task. New advances in satellite observation, open data and machine learning now allow us to process the massive amounts of data being produced. And they could not have come at a better time for protecting life under water, which is United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal No. 14 (SDG14). Last year was particularly challenging for most life underneath our world's oceans. Despite the dearth of bad news for the world's oceans, there is hope that 2017 can turn the tide for life under the sea thanks, in part, to machine learning.

A Northwestern University team developed a new computational model that performs at human levels on a standard intelligence test. This work is an important step toward making artificial intelligence systems that see and understand the world as humans do. "The model performs in the 75th percentile for American adults, making it better than average," said Northwestern Engineering's Ken Forbus. "The problems that are hard for people are also hard for the model, providing additional evidence that its operation is capturing some important properties of human cognition."The The platform has the ability to solve visual problems and understand sketches in order to give immediate, interactive feedback.

Cyber threats are an ever-present danger to global economies and are projected to surpass the trillion dollar mark in damages within the next year. As a result, the cybersecurity industry is investing heavily in machine learning in hopes of providing a more dynamic deterrent. ABI Research forecasts machine learning in cybersecurity will boost big data, intelligence, and analytics spending to $96 billion by 2021. "We are in the midst of an artificial intelligence security revolution," says Dimitrios Pavlakis, Industry Analyst at ABI Research. "This will drive machine learning solutions to soon emerge as the new norm beyond Security Information and Event Management, or SIEM, and ultimately displace a large portion of traditional AV, heuristics, and signature-based systems within the next five years."

Tax experts can find deductions that you might otherwise miss, but they're only human -- they can only find so many potential savings, let alone paint a larger picture of your finances. They're about to get a helping hand, though. IBM is partnering with H&R Block to make Watson a part of the tax filing process at locations across the US starting on February 6th. After you participate in an initial interview, the artificial intelligence will offer suggestions to Tax Pros (read: experts) looking for deductions, and illustrate the bigger picture for you on a dedicated client screen. Ideally, Watson's ability to understand context and intent will turn your statements into tangible data that leads to bigger tax breaks. This doesn't guarantee that Watson will find dramatic savings.

Tax season has finally brought in the ultimate expert: Watson. IBM's supercomputer, which has already applied its endless knowledge to curing cancer, researching ALS and writing songs, will use its talents to process huge amounts of information to do taxes through H&R Block this year. "Tax preparation is a perfect use for Watson. Just like Watson is already revolutionizing other industries like healthcare and education, here H&R Block with Watson is learning to process incredible amounts of information, helping create tailored solutions for H&R Block's customers," David Kenny, IBM's senior vice president for IBM Watson and cloud platform, said in a video announcing the partnership. SEE ALSO: IBM's Watson supercomputer discovers 5 new genes linked to ALS Watson will read the 74,000 pages of federal tax code and process the thousands of yearly changes to tax law to help tax preparers get clients their best result.

Whether you're interested in cognitive computing, artificial intelligence or machine learning, you probably know that the fourth industrial revolution is well underway and accelerating rapidly. The speed of change presents a challenge to developers who want to stay abreast of the latest ideas and approaches. Conferences, workshops and other meetings provide opportunities to learn where the jobs and technology is headed and a chance to learn and practice the skills necessary to keep up. Why you should attend: AI engineers, practitioners, researchers and scientists will discuss the latest developments in the field, while tutorials and workshops will give attendees a chance to hone their skills. Speakers will be drawn from a wide variety of sectors, including Microsoft, MIT, the National Science Foundation and NASA Ames Research Center.

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. Last summer Charles Bombardier unveiled the Solar Express--an imagined vehicle that would ferry cargo and passengers from Earth to Mars in less than two days. The radical notion drew a great deal of buzz--most notably from Buzz Aldrin, who praised the idea and reached out to the Canadian innovator with tips for improving the design.

With cyber criminals constantly adapting to industry defenses, creating new ways to commit cybercrimes, the cybersecurity industry is increasingly looking toward machine learning and artificial intelligence to help provide better deterrents, according to a new study from ABI Research. That increased reliance on automatic, intelligent processes for deterring cyber criminals will result in an increase in big data, intelligence and analytics spending, to the tune of $96 billion by 2021, according to the report. "We are in the midst of an artificial intelligence security revolution," says Dimitrios Pavlakis, industry analyst at ABI Research. "This will drive machine learning solutions to soon emerge as the new norm beyond Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and ultimately displace a large portion of traditional AV, heuristics, and signature-based systems within the next five years." User and Entity Behavioral Analytics (UEBA), and "deep learning" algorithm designs are becoming two of the more prominent technologies in cybersecurity solutions, their research found.