Will this be the year of artificial intelligence, when the technology comes into its own for mainstream business? Please share your insights in our Reader Survey. AI-based tools are pouring into the marketplace, and many well-known names have committed to adding AI solutions to their product mix – General Electric is pushing its AI business called Predix, IBM runs ads featuring its Watson technology talking with Bob Dylan, and just recently CRM giant Saleforce announced it would be adding AI to it products. Its system, called Einstein, promises to provide insights into what sales leads to follow and what products to make next. These moves represent years of development and billions in investment.

Bryan Johnson is the founder and chief executive officer of the neuroprosthesis developer Kernel and the founder of OS Fund and Braintree. Through the past few decades of summer blockbuster movies and Silicon Valley products, artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly familiar and sexy, and imbued with a perversely dystopian allure. What's talked about less, and has also been dwarfed in attention and resources, is human intelligence (HI). In its varied forms -- from the mysterious brains of octopuses and the swarm-minds of ants to Go-playing deep learning machines and driverless-car autopilots -- intelligence is the most powerful and precious resource in existence. Our own minds are the most familiar examples of a phenomenon characterized by a great deal of diversity.

Many people associate artificial intelligence technology with the Terminator's infamous Skynet system that takes over the world and attempts to eliminate mankind. Yet these technologies can provide services that are far more practical and desirable today. Today's IT admins face the challenging task of managing the countless amount of mobile devices that connect to enterprise networks every day. Find out how to eliminate the most common mobile data security pain points and pitfalls in this complimentary best practices guide. This email address is already registered.

Affiliate marketing company Impact Radius has locked its sights on artificial intelligence and machine-learning techniques, with aspirations of integrating the technology into attribution modeling and ad fraud detection to monitor campaigns across devices. Overtime programmatic technology combined with unified measurement and optimization will increasingly automate processes, according to Per Pettersen, CEO and co-founder at Impact Radius. "At this point you're really competing on the merit of margin and lifetime value," he said. When asked how artificial intelligence will change affiliate marketing and search, Pettersen said computers will analyze the data and make specific recommendations. "In theory, as systems get more sophisticated, the technology will make buying decisions," he said, without the marketing having to cap the bid.

It's a Wednesday night in North East London and upstairs at the Vortex Jazz Club the machines are calling the shots. The human spectators are jiggling happily in their seats, and the musicians are undeniably flesh-and-blood, sweating and straining at their instruments. But the music itself is the product of electronic brains -- trained to soak up the music of great artists and strain out new melodies. This is "the first concert consisting almost entirely of music composed by artificial intelligence" says professor Geraint Wiggins of Queen Mary's University at the beginning of the evening. In about a few minutes we'll be listening to Medieval chants, Baroque chorales, and jazz and pop -- all made by artificial intelligence with the help of computer scientists who programmed the evening's "composers."

The White House has issued a report on, and recommendations for, the development of artificial intelligence (AI). "Intelligent computer systems have long been the subject of science fiction," the administration said in releasing the report, as well as a strategic plan for research and development. "Now, we are entering an era in which AI is having broad and deep impacts on our daily lives." "Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence" was released a day before the president is scheduled to speak at the White House Frontiers Conference in Pittsburgh. The science and technology conference is cohosted by Carnegie Melon University and the University of Pittsburgh.

These are our top favorite artificial intelligence movies.

Shootings are an epidemic in the US, but federal funding for research into gun violence has been in a deep freeze since 1996, thanks in part to the NRA-backed Dickey Amendment, which prevents the Center for Disease Control from pursuing research "to advocate or promote gun control." Basically, humans can't get money to research the problem of gun violence in the US. To get around this, some scientists want machines to do the job. On September 25, University of Pennsylvania computer scientists Ellie Pavlick and Chris Callison-Burch unveiled a new, human-annotated database of gun violence incidents in the US at the Bloomberg Data for Good Exchange Conference in New York. The database was created by workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform, and carefully highlights information from thousands of news articles over the course of several years, Pavlick told me in an interview.

What do you do if your autonomous housecleaning robot breaks your stuff while it's cleaning or throws out valuable items along with clutter because it considers those actions shortcuts to its prime directive of efficiency? Those are some of the complex challenges policy officials will have to unravel as artificial intelligence blooms in the U.S. in the coming decades. The issues aren't as trivial as they sound because they are wrapped up in security and safety issues, according to a new White House report. Titled "Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence," the report outlines possible future directions and considerations for AI technology development over the next 50 years. It was released a day ahead of the White House Frontiers Conference in Pittsburgh on Oct. 13 and unveiled in a blog post by Deputy U.S. CTO Ed Felten and Terah Lyons, policy adviser to the U.S. CTO. The report recommends that the White House convene a study of automation and the economy that results in a public report released by the end of the year, according to Felten and Lyons.

While the future of artificial intelligence is probably going to be driven by Silicon Valley, the folks in Washington, DC want their say about how it will work, too. In two official reports today, the White House outlined its strategy for promoting artificial intelligence research and development in the US. While most of the bigger questions were punted to future legislators ("more research is needed" is a key phrase), the executive branch did draw some lines in the sand. And most importantly to the research community, the White House is not pushing for AI to be broadly regulated--instead, the use of the technology will be held to specific standards in the automotive, aviation, and finance industries. Three key guiding philosophies were presented across the reports, titled "Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence" and "National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan": AI needs to augment humanity instead of replacing it, AI needs to be ethical, and there must be an equal opportunity for everyone to develop these systems.