Japan lags Silicon Valley in conventional internet services but could become a global leader in the deep-learning technology of artificial intelligence, a leading AI expert has said. Yutaka Matsuo, 41, Project Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo, believes machine learning will revolutionize sectors such as image recognition. "In deep learning, Japan still has a great chance to compete," Matsuo said in an interview. He singled out Sony Corp., Ricoh Co., Olympus Corp. and Canon Inc. as companies that show promise. "Changes happening now are in image processing technology, and Japan has been good at this," he said.

Since the early days of the current Big Data and Data Science movements, many data scientists have been devoted to applications of those data collections and advanced algorithms to solving societal problems. Subsequently, informal groups (e.g., meetups) and entire organizations have coalesced around particular approaches (e.g., data hackathons; and online competitions), or particular societal needs (e.g., DataKind.org; The range and depth of those applications have a tremendous reach: from human health to ocean health, from pet shelters to sheltering persons in need, from healthy lifestyle change to climate change, from smart cities to smart farms, from precision law enforcement to precision medicine, from improving commuter traffic to stopping human trafficking. The world is data now. Data are the new asset to fuel insightful discoveries, smarter decisions, essential innovations, and better outcomes.

It is hard to define what artificial intelligence really is, as even authors on this matter have difficulty discussing it and often fail to reach a consensus. Still, AI is used as an important tool to solve a wide array of problems, and one of its most important fields is machine learning (ML). Its algorithms look for patterns within a data set. These algorithms have been around for a long time, but there was never such a large amount of digital data available to feed these algorithms as today, thanks to three factors: mass computerization, big data and the rise of the internet. These ML algorithms are used and applied in many different areas and fields, such as customer relationship management (CRM) and interaction, or health.

We don't understand AI because we don't understand intelligence

This feature was produced in collaboration between Vox Creative and Pricewaterhouse Coopers. Recode editorial staff was not involved in the creation or production of this content. It seems like every organization today is betting on artificial intelligence (AI). But what's that really mean? We asked those gathered at a recent AI conference to share their definition.

The use of robots is increasingly becoming inevitable in our daily lives. From social and domestic bots like Alexia – Amazon Echo to financial robo-advisors, Robots exist in real life and no longer synonymous with science fiction alone. The nature of work and the role of human in getting work done is constantly being redefined, as we see more machines take on, and even getting better and more efficient that human in routine task execution. Robots are always related with industrial applications, but have gradually crept into our offices, banks, homes, roads, labs and even hospitals. Below is an illustration of broad application of robots.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not something that we will use in the future but something that's being used today by brands across world in their marketing efforts. It's an integral part of marketing efforts for brands to help build a better customer experience. FMCG brands are adopting AI to help recognise customer behavior, provide predictive customer service, integrate it as part of the product offering and in many other ways. A leading FMCG brand used AI technology to help recognise micro facial expressions of joy, anger and surprise in a focus group research for a fragrance to help predict whether the consumer liked the product or not. The AI technology developed by Emotient, a startup recently acquired by Apple was able to more accurately predict preferences of the focus group than surveys. Knorr used cognitive technology, a component of AI in its latest campaign Love at First Taste campaign - "Flavour Profiler".

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We don't understand AI because we don't understand intelligence

John McCarthy, the late computer scientist who first coined the term "artificial intelligence," famously said: "As soon as it works, no one calls it AI any more." What was once cutting-edge AI is now considered standard behavior for computers. As I write this, my computer is continuously performing millions of tasks, caching files, managing RAM and balancing CPU loads. The algorithms behind many of these operations would have been considered AI years ago. Last year, I looked into how well neural networks -- programs that behave like a scaled-down version of your brain's neurons -- are able to write.