Google's original motto, "Don't Be Evil," will be severely tested in the coming years For many years artificial intelligence has been hyped as the world's next big groundbreaking technology. But till recently, the closest we've got to seeing AI in action was on the big screen. From evil computer HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, to Scarlett Johansson's breathless AI in Her, there's been a rich tradition of artificial intelligence in the movies. Now, thanks to several recent innovations, AI has become a reality in our daily lives. You may not even be aware of it, but whenever you use Google, Facebook, or Amazon Echo, you're using AI.

It turns out, not much. A domain will run you $12/year from Google. Webhosting on Google App Engine or Amazon Web Services is free to start -- they only cost money once you start getting more users. And if you know how to code, that's pretty much it -- $12 per year. But let's say you have no technical background -- not a problem.

In 2005 I attended a high-level symposium that sought a solution for an obstacle that was delaying the discovery of cures for human illnesses. The obstacle is "information overload." Stated simply, there is too much data being published for any single person to read, analyze, and connect it with over ten million existing biomedical papers. The presenters at the 2005 symposium declared there to be enough published data to cure lethal diseases, but no efficient way to tie it together in a meaningful way. I immediately understood what these computer experts were seeking.

It's no surprise that a future with self-driving cars and passengers as co-drivers is fast approaching. Yet while automakers race to be the first to bring a fully autonomous vehicle to the market, there is also a growing focus on the driver. Cars that are 100 percent autonomous (and affordable) are still decades away from hitting the road. In the meantime, semi-autonomous cars must learn to better understand the driver. This can be facilitated using machine learning and computer vision inside the car.

The Microsoft Surface phone has long been rumored, but the recent buzz about the Windows 10 phone indicates it could actually get released this year, probably in October for a price ranging between $699-$1,100. The device is expected to be a part of Microsoft's renewed efforts to target the smartphone market. The company's existing Windows Phone OS based devices have mostly faded into oblivion in comparison to the competition from Android devices and Apple's iPhone. In fact, rumors say that the Windows Phone OS based Lumia range could be scrapped in 2017, according to a WinBeta report from September 2016. So, could Microsoft move out of the smartphone industry?

"My role is working with customers, helping them go through this digital transformation. I spend a lot of time talking to banks, big industries, manufacturers working through how they are integrating and transforming their IT platforms and moving them forward," explained William Morrish, General Manager Product Sales at Interoute, in this SYS-CON.tv Cloud computing is now being embraced by a majority of enterprises of all sizes. Yesterday's debate about public vs. private has transformed into the reality of hybrid cloud: a recent survey shows that 74% of enterprises have a hybrid cloud strategy. Meanwhile, 94% of enterprises are using some form of XaaS - software, platform, and infrastructure as a service.

Chinese ridesharing leader Didi Chuxing has opened a Silicon Valley research hub, where it will join the race with other tech companies for autonomous driving. The Didi Labs centre in Mountain View – which is also the home of Google – will focus on "intelligent driving technologies," according to a statement Wednesday. Building on rich data and fast-evolving AI (artificial intelligence) analytics, we will be working with cities and towns to build intelligent transportation ecosystems for the future," said Didi founder and chairman Cheng Wei. One of the engineers hired for the lab is Charlie Miller, who gained famed two years ago for hacking into a Jeep to show how automobiles can be taken over remotely. "My job is to make sure the assisted driving and autonomous systems developed and used by Didi are resistant to external attacks and threat," Miller, who has been working at Uber, said in a tweet.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning will improve sales and marketing by enabling processes and communication without continuous direction. The addition of voice-first systems could eliminate much of the power of'push marketing'. Marketing and advertising have been around since the dawn of the Sumerian culture over 6,000 years ago. Marketing methods will be fundamentally altered with the rise of artificial intelligence, chatbots and the emergence of voice-first communication systems. Cloud computing provides an exponential increase in processing power, while advanced analytics has provided new ways to move from data to insight.

Plenty of animals communicate with one another, at least in a general way--wolves howl to each other, birds sing and dance to attract mates and big cats mark their territory with urine. But researchers at Tel Aviv University recently discovered that when at least one species communicates, it gets very specific. Egyptian fruit bats, it turns out, aren't just making high pitched squeals when they gather together in their roosts. According to Ramin Skibba at Nature, neuroecologist Yossi Yovel and his colleagues recorded a group of 22 Egyptian fruit bats, Rousettus aegyptiacus, for 75 days. Using a modified machine learning algorithm originally designed for recognizing human voices, they fed 15,000 calls into the software.

Perhaps in the future, artificial intelligence will intervene and write this article. Perhaps in the future, the editorial team will become redundant and ARN will embrace a form a robo-journalism. Perhaps in the future, it even won't matter, because the entire channel will also be unemployed. And what a different world it would be. For the rise of AI - as the world likes to categorise it - is storming along like a tech freight train, charging through barriers and racing towards a new world. Within this new world, will naturally be new ways to engage, conduct business and make money, creating opportunities and challenges for the channel in parallel.