Your business doesn't need to be a billion-dollar, multinational company like Walmart, to make use of Big Data, artificial intelligence, etc. In fact, learning how to use this technology could be a distinctive advantage for a small business too. They assume that Big Data and artificial intelligence is reserved exclusively for large companies. That couldn't be further from the truth. The majority of techniques used in Big Data and the Internet of Things (even some artificial intelligence) don't require a large budget or a huge staff.

If 2017 left you breathless, exhausted by unexpected headlines, then brace yourself. The coming year may bring even more turbulent change, according to the CEOs, academics, economists and other bold thinkers we consulted for our annual peek at the year ahead.

Walmart is looking into a shopping experience that includes no cashiers or lines, similar to Amazon Go, according to a Recode report. The cashier-less service, dubbed Project Kepler, derives from the retailer's startup incubator Store No. 8. A job listing for Project Kepler said the unit is looking for a "computer vision engineer" who will work in creating a "best-in-class consumer experience in the physical retail space." Walmart's service sounds similar to Amazon Go, which was introduced in December 2016. With Amazon Go, customers can use the Amazon Go app while in the store, take the the items they want and leave the store.

There was more discussion than ever in 2017 about robots entering the workforce. Next year will see even more dialogue around this topic, as robotics and AI become more commonplace and at accelerated rates due to machine learning advancements. They are already a part of everyday life in countries like Japan, where humanoid robots are in homes, aiding in healthcare facilities and taking orders at sushi restaurants. But it will take more than just a cute robot to create acceptance. Culturally, robotics adoption has a long way to go in the U.S. to become part of our daily routines, but we're getting closer each day.

Apple's first batch of iMac Pro shipments won't make it on Christmas day, but the devices will surely arrive to customers days before New Year's Day. There's now information on the estimated arrival date of the new macOS computers, and it looks like the devices will reach their destinations late next week. On Thursday, Apple Insider reported that it's now only a matter of days until consumers get their hands on their preordered iMac Pro devices. For the U.S., the first shipments are expected to arrive on Dec. 27, Wednesday. On the other hand, the estimated date of arrival of the shipments in China is on Dec. 28, Thursday.

This article first appeared in the Autumn 2017 issue of The Record. Fashion retailer City Beach, for example, operates an e- commerce outlet and 62 stores across Australia, adding 300-400 new lines to its 60,000-strong product portfolio each week. Meanwhile, US-based homeware and décor brand Pier 1 Imports has an online store, boutiques in Mexico and 1,000 physical stores across North America. But how do these retailers know which products will sell? And how do they choose the optimum product assortment and inventory level to ensure that they can always meet customer demand?

Bengaluru: India's largest online retailer Flipkart is making an ambitious push in the area of artificial intelligence by carving out an internal unit called AIforIndia, which will be overseen by its senior-most business and technology leaders, as it attempts to put machine learning and AI at the core of its business. In an interview, Flipkart co-founder and chairman Sachin Bansal said the e-commerce firm will invest "hundreds of millions of dollars" in the AI initiative over the next few years. Bansal said Flipkart has begun recruiting dozens of AI experts, building infrastructure, striking hardware partnerships and working with top educational institutions, including IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), to make its AI push successful. He also said Flipkart is looking for AI-related acquisitions in India and in the US. In 2015, Flipkart had acquired the F7 Labs in the Silicon Valley to focus on areas such as AI and machine learning.

The AWS Deep Learning AMIs are now available in four new AWS Regions: China (Beijing) operated by Sinnet, Europe (Frankfurt), Asia Pacific (Singapore), and Asia Pacific (Mumbai). The Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) provide provide machine learning practitioners with the infrastructure and tools to accelerate deep to quickly start experimenting with deep learning models. The AMIs come with pre-built packages of popular deep learning frameworks including Apache MXNet and Gluon, TensorFlow, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit, Caffe, Caffe2, Theano, Torch, PyTorch, and Keras. In addition, to expedite development and model training, the AMIs are pre-configured with NVIDIA CUDA and cuDNN drivers, and are optimized for GPU acceleration on Amazon EC2 P2 and P3 instances. Companies are turning to deep learning to tackle a broad range of challenges.

Every Christmas there's one toy that causes holiday mayhem - a must-have that seems almost impossible for desperate parents to get their hands on. But what goes into making a global best-seller? The stakes will be high for parents whose children have Fingerlings on their holiday wish-lists as they head into the final weekend before Christmas. The miniature chirping animatronic monkeys, inspired by the world's smallest primate - the pygmy marmoset - are one of this season's runaway hits and can be tough to find. WowWee, the Hong Kong-based Canadian company behind the robotic toy, says Fingerlings were the brainchild of brand manager Sydney Wiseman, who saw the tiny primates online on a viral social media post and recognised a toy in the making.

As the holiday gift-giving season approaches, retailers are bracing to meet the expectations of increasingly sophisticated online shoppers. Those consumers want their favorite retail sites to recognize them when they log in, know their shopping history, and offer up informed suggestions of products they'll want to buy and promotions they'll find attractive, even as their interests and tastes change over time. Enter artificial intelligence, which promises to give retail marketers easy access to insights previously buried in large volumes of customer information and discernible only to highly trained data scientists. Artificial Intelligence in Oracle's new apps for commerce helps online shoppers customers find just the right gifts during the holiday season, at just the right price. The AI algorithms embedded in Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps for CX – Commerce and Marketing, for example, analyze customer data that retailers have gathered about their own customers as well as data in Oracle Data Cloud, a collection of more than 5 billion consumer and business IDs and 7.5 trillion data points.