The latest KPMG analysis revealed that China saw Venture Capital (VC) investments reach US$31 billion in 2016, a 19% tear-on-year growth and a new record high, despite a global slowdown. The consultant predicts that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be an additional focus for investors. However, deal volumes declined 42% to 300 from 513 a year earlier, according to Venture Pulse, KPMG's quarterly global report on VC trends. The strong performance is attributed to a number of mega-deals recorded early in the year. The report highlights that artificial intelligence and cognitive learning are poised to transform almost every aspect of people's lives.

Automation replaced 17,000 people's jobs at one of the world's largest professional services and tech firms Accenture over the last 18 months, but no one actually lost their job. Richard Lumb, CEO of financial services at Accenture told Business Insider at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday that while greater automation and the rapid development and implementation of artificial intelligence and robots certainly can eliminate jobs in the workforce, companies can also make sure those employees do not become displaced. "Over the last 18 months, automation replaced 17,000 jobs in back office processing. But actually, we haven't laid those people off. We are fortunate enough to reskill and reposition them. We took that approach when we were going to bring in greater automation at scale. Not [every company] is going to be able to do that and not every company is able to grow and expand like we do," said Lumb to BI. Accenture is one of the largest professional services companies in the world and as of 2016, has 394,000 employees with clients from 200 cities across 120 countries worldwide.

What could your company accomplish if every customer and employee interaction with technology was an intelligent one? The Accenture Technology Vision 2017 delves into a fascinating trend that's at the heart of my daily responsibilities--and I know of substantial interest to our clients. The AI Is the New UI chapter looks at how artificial intelligence (AI) will quickly become more than an underlying technology capability; it will permeate intelligent enterprises and advance to a fundamental tool for daily engagement with people--both customers and employees. We also describe in the Tech Vision how AI will, in time, become the digital spokesperson for leading enterprises. Customers will experience a company's brand through personalized, 100 percent consistent and natural interactions with AI service agents--and even engage with the brand through other companies' AI interfaces. This post highlights how we see this tech trend unfolding.

Computers cannot think, though increasingly, they can do things only humans were able to do. A product of the field of research known as artificial intelligence, cognitive technologies have been evolving over decades. It is now possible to automate tasks that require human perceptual skills, such as recognizing handwriting or identifying faces, and those that require cognitive skills, such as planning, reasoning from partial or uncertain information, and learning. Technologies able to perform tasks such as these, traditionally assumed to require human intelligence, are known as cognitive technologies. Businesses are taking a new look at them because some have improved dramatically in recent years, with impressive gains in computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, and robotics, among other areas.

Moving beyond a back-end tool for the enterprise, artificial intelligence (AI) is taking on more sophisticated roles within technology interfaces. From autonomous driving vehicles that use computer vision, to live translations made possible by machine learning, AI is making every interface both simple and smart–and setting a high bar for how future experiences will work. AI is poised to act as the face of a company's digital brand and a key differentiator – and become a core competency demanding of C-level investment and strategy.

While it may feel novel to mess around with a customer service chatbot, there may come a day in the future where artificial intelligence, or AI, is the primary way you interact with companies. That's one of the big trends outlined in IT consulting firm Accenture's report, out today, on the technology that will change businesses in the next three years. Once tech like AI filters through the powers that be, it may very well land right in front of you, the consumer. Accenture surveyed more than 5,400 business and IT executives. And yes, AI and other technologies are on their minds.

Accenture thinks that the future of technology is centered around people. It believes that human needs will be the common thread for the rapid advance of technologies such as artificial intelligence. The technology global consulting firm is releasing its annual forecast report, dubbed Technology for People, as part of its annual predictions today. The report states that we are beginning to see the emergence of technology for people, by people -- technology that seamlessly anticipates our needs and delivers hyperpersonalized experiences. "The pace of technology change is breathtaking, bringing about the biggest advancements since the dawn of the Information Age," said Paul Daugherty, Accenture's chief technology and innovation officer, in a statement.

Over 1,000 attendees, 50 speakers and 30 exhibitors; this is a brief summary of what I was lucky enough to take part in during the first AI Europe 2016 conference held in London on the 5 and 6 December. The attendee list boasted the biggest names from the world of artificial intelligence such as Microsoft, Dell, Uber, Samsung and Nvidia, as well as several innovative start-ups, the likes of Blippar and DreamQuark whose innovations are based on machine or deep learning models. Even if we can say with a degree of certainty that further advances in artificial intelligence are yet to come, leading players are in agreement that most AI techniques and technologies are now well-advanced. Therefore, their major preoccupation today is more about the quality of the data sets being used to train and validate their machine and deep learning models. Whether it's Dell or Uber, Microsoft or Blippar, they all have one thing in common: they all agree on the fact that as of now, the quality of the data used in AI for machine learning is of the utmost importance.

Could AI be Society's Secret Weapon for Growth? As we move towards machines that think and learn, society is equal parts excited and terrified. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming the most talked-about and worried-about technology of the modern age. This session explores the growing impact of AI on business and society, and how we can prepare for the opportunities and challenges. What controls will we need to ensure that AI benefits everyone in society?