Moore's law, which says computing power doubles every two years, is getting harder to achieve on a single chip. Tech industry heavyweights including IBM, NVIDIA, Google and Mellanox are now working together through the OpenPOWER Foundation to enhance speed at the system level by engineering chips, interconnects, accelerators, memory and other components that work together seamlessly. This will help ensure fast and powerful AI systems that support breakthroughs on numerous key fronts. AI's evolution will continue to drive innovation that makes for smarter cities, improved healthcare, and other advances that will continue to improve our lives.

The idea of automated customer service is nothing new – from speech recognition technology on dreaded call center phone lines, to Apple's groundbreaking Siri personal assistant system, AI has been in our lives and in our pockets for a while now. Yet, young as 2016 still is, it's already defined itself as the year of the Chatbot – from Microsoft's experimental and indeed controversial (more on that later) attempt to engage millennials with the creation of'Tay', a chatbot designed to imitate a teenage girl, in March, to April's recent inundation of announcements from companies eager to trial Chatbots, this year could be the year Chatbots go mainstream. But in a world where the search for authenticity seems increasingly futile and more and more of our meaningful interactions take place via a screen, will the public really welcome Bots? Are they even ready for widespread release? And how are businesses going to capitalize on them? Put simply, a Bot is a piece of software which performs automated tasks and simple, time-consuming or repetitive errands, and this is exactly what a ChatBot does – except (you guessed it), it simulates human interaction.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have huge potential to drive a new generation of creative brand experiences. They are at the forefront of a powerful shift that will bring brands closer to consumer expectations, passions and emotions. Assistive and smart technologies are catching up and we're already facing a new world of possibilities. AI and ML can be applied in many ways. The use of machine learning to power business decisions and product recommendations is becoming widespread.

Artificial intelligence, or A.I., has been around since the start of computing and has had many false starts. The reality did not live up to the expectations set by science fiction. Accordingly, for many years, the majority of people's understanding of A.I. was confined to university laboratories, corporate skunk works, research parks, and that movie with Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law. Attempts to introduce A.I. products and services into the marketplace and for the broader benefits of society were ill-fated. Computing power was insufficient, and the abundance of structured data -- let alone a knowledge of what to do with said data -- was not yet upon us.

Former Acorn Computers and Element 14 chief Stan Boland, pictured above, is heading up Five AI, a start-up that is using artificial intelligence and machine learning to create a control system for autonomous vehicles that would ensure they could travel safely in crowded urban environments. "We will offer a complete software solution for driverless cars, from sensor input at one end to object perception and control of the vehicle at the other," he said. "We're using the most recent innovations in computer vision and artificial intelligence which means we're doing things differently from companies like Google and others already making systems for driverless cars." Indeed, most autonomous vehicles currently in development use complex 3D maps to keep track of their surroundings, so having an AI which could fulfill this role would save firms the hefty job of mapping the world's 37.2 million kilometers of road. "There's quite a big gap between what vehicle OEMs can do and the research that's going on in universities," said Boland.

Dear, Wall Street: Silicon Valley is increasingly coming for you. A machine intelligence system, dubbed Emma AI, is starting a fund that hopes to outsmart the humans and computers that make a living trading stocks. It's part of a wave of tech startups aiming advanced machine learning at financial markets. Automation is not new to Wall Street. But Shaunak Khire, Emma's creator, claims his system differs from current finance computing -- high-frequency trading and "quant" data science -- because its system of neural nets takes into account a more complex set of factors affecting stocks, like management changes or monetary policy in Europe, that other programs miss.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) -- the technology that tries to mimic human behaviour and thought processes -- has decisively broken the size barrier. No more is it the preserve of big tech firms, as small and medium outfits and start-ups are increasingly using it to great effect. For instance, last month travel-search marketplace ixigo launched an AI-powered chatbot -- ixibaba -- for its users. The chatbot (an automated response system that gives users the feeling of chatting with another human) helps travellers find the cheapest travel deals, hotels, vacation destinations and things to do in a city. "Now AI is better positioned for an uptake, especially in domain-specific contexts, as a lot of Big Data is available. AI, one part of which is machine learning, is the next big thing," said Aloke Bajpai, co-founder and CEO at ixigo.

Education technology has the power to revolutionize education but with the integration of artificial intelligence, experts believed that it can be more beneficial, particularly in higher education and online learning. In an era where modern technology has become a valuable influence in the lives of humans, it's safe to assume that technology will be able to enhance the learning experience of educators and students, especially in higher education and online learning. As experts combined education technology (EdTech) and artificial intelligence (AI), a powerful tool to potentially transform education has been born. Due to the pervasiveness of technology today, the way students communicate and entertain themselves have changed. But some experts believed that the implementation of education technology alone in schools, colleges and universities across the nation is not enough to revolutionize education.

We've talked before about the prospects of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it will likely disrupt things like we've never seen before with some estimates predicting that up to 80% of all service jobs will be impacted. Healthcare is one area where AI is receiving a good chunk of funding. We looked before at one example of an artificial intelligence company called Enlitic that uses machine learning technology to read X-rays better than your average radiologist who makes 286,000 a year on average. There are actually quite a few artificial intelligence companies in healthcare and CB Insights recently identified 65 of them at various stages of funding. Founded just last year, Chinese company iCarbonX has taken in nearly 200 million in funding from investors that include the 200 billion Chinese internet giant Tencent.

One-to-one customer engagement enabled by machine learning yields a 13 percent reduction in bounce rate and a 33 percent average order value improvement at Marmot. A recent study from Gallup shed light on just how valuable it is to invest in customer engagement. Fully engaged customers, defined as those who have had a measurable reaction, connection, or experience with your brand, represent a 23 percent share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth premium compared to average shoppers. By contrast, the study found that disengaged customers -- those who have no emotional connection to your brand -- represent a 13 percent discount in those same measures. It's no surprise that customer engagement and loyalty applications have been hot in retail, particularly e-commerce, where customer data is easier to gather and easier to analyze than in any other channel.