In this special guest feature, Cecilia Pizzurro, Senior Director, Strategic Data Projects at LOGICnow, discusses the convergence of data/machine learning and cybersecurity, and the idea that these two are playing off of each other in a more meaningful way than ever before. Cecilia leads a team of data scientists and software engineers in Cambridge (US) and Newcastle (UK). These teams use machine learning and big data analytics to find business value in the vast amount of customer data gathered from LOGICnow's products. She was also the co-founder and CTO of the The Dolomite Group, a South American mining consortium, pioneering machine learning and big data analyses to improve mining efficiency and reduce environmental impact in Peru. This company is currently finalizing its acquisition by a Chilean mining company.

Niki, the AI fueled bot, built to make discovery and transactions simple, has launched her chatbot on Messenger. Niki envisions to be the gateway of everything commerce by enabling conversations between brands and consumers. In a single chat interface, she can help you with cab bookings, utility bill payments and mobile recharges, with plans to provide food ordering, flight bookings, hotel reservations and movie ticketing very soon. They are backed by Mr. Ratan Tata and Unilazer Ventures. Having been in development for a year, it has generated significant traction on its Android Application with over 75,000 users.

If you've watched the television series 24 on Netflix, the online streaming service will recommend that you catch up on Homeland, too. Now, a Boston-based technology firm is hoping to bring that same intuitive technology to financial services. Start-up Indico Data Solutions Inc. announced Friday that it is collaborating with John Hancock Financial and the Boston insurer's Canadian parent Manulife Financial Corp. to help financial analysts and portfolio managers cull through thousands of pieces of data and find the most important information. Based on that data, managers at Manulife and John Hancock will be able to make quicker decisions on whether to invest in certain companies and industries or sell their shares. Think of it as Google on steroids.

While humans may be ahead of computers in the ability to create strategy today, we shouldn't be complacent about our dominance. This article is part of an MIT SMR initiative exploring how technology is reshaping the practice of management. Editor's Note: This is the seventh in a special series of commissioned essays MIT Sloan Management Review will be publishing in Frontiers over the Spring and Summer of 2016. Each essay gives the author's response to this question: "Within the next five years, how will technology change the practice of management in a way we have not yet witnessed?" As a society, we are becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea that machines can make decisions and take actions on their own.

Imagine you're a billionaire, with your own film studio. You're sitting there on your golden throne, eating peeled grapes off Channing Tatum's abs. Your assistant has just handed you the script for The Expendables 7 or yet another Spider-Man reboot. Surely, you think yourself, in this data-driven age there has to be a better way. Couldn't we use machine learning to design the optimum new film?

Imagine you're a billionaire, with your own film studio. You're sitting there on your golden throne, eating peeled grapes off Channing Tatum's abs. Your assistant has just handed you the script for The Expendables 7 or yet another Spider-Man reboot. Surely, you think yourself, in this data-driven age there has to be a better way. Couldn't we use machine learning to design the optimum new film?

Starting in the 1980s, technology companies like Apple, Microsoft, and many others presented computer users with the graphical user interface as a means to make technology more user-friendly. The average consumer wasn't going to learn binary code to use a computer, so the great minds at these leading technology companies slapped a screen on technology and offered an interface that provided icons, buttons, toolbars, and other graphical elements so that the computer could be easily consumed by a mass market. Today it's hard to even imagine technological devices without a screen and a graphical presentation -- until now. Early in 2016, we saw the introduction of the first wave of artificial intelligence technology in the form of chatbots. Social media platforms like Facebook allowed developers to create a chatbot for their brand or service so that consumers could carry out some of their daily actions from within their messaging platform.

Line Corp. plans to use part of the 130 billion it garnered from last month's initial public offering to bankroll acquisitions of content and technology, transforming its messaging service into a one-stop shop for Asian social media users. Japan's most popular messaging service is gunning for companies in areas ranging from artificial intelligence chatbots and advertising to video streaming and games, including those with augmented reality features, Chief Executive Officer Takeshi Idezawa said in an interview. The Tokyo-based company has assembled a dedicated team to scope out and review possible targets across the globe. The idea is to build Line into a "smart portal," supplementing its mainstay features of chatting, stickers and games with commercial services such as food delivery, job searches and travel reservations in main markets. "We are very open-minded about the size and geography" of potential acquisitions, Idezawa said.

Despite the slowdown in GDP growth to 6.9 percent in 2015, China is still making aggressive investments to drive the adoption of high technology by local enterprises and organizations, according to Gartner, Inc… The massive consumer base and the number of internet users in China (estimated at 650 million internet and 980 million mobile internet users in 2016) present the most-promising big data opportunities. Led by hyperscale internet companies such as Baidu (internet traffic data), Alibaba (supply chain and transaction data) and Tencent (social data), approximately 25 percent of businesses have been pursuing the value of big data. "The government-sponsored strategy'Internet Plus' is targeted at boosting economic growth through digital transformation," said Jie Zhang, research director at Gartner. "It has issued a detailed action plan for 11 key industries in 2015, mandating the necessity of digital business transformation by leveraging big data and cloud technologies." Venture capitalists have been pouring money into startups focused on AI, which broadly refers to efforts to make computers emulate human cognitive functions such as recognizing speech or images.