Unexpected convergent consequences…this is what happens when eight different exponential technologies all explode onto the scene at once. This post (the second of seven) is a look at artificial intelligence. Future posts will look at other tech areas. An expert might be reasonably good at predicting the growth of a single exponential technology (e.g., the Internet of Things), but try to predict the future when A.I., robotics, VR, synthetic biology and computation are all doubling, morphing and recombining. You have a very exciting (read: unpredictable) future. This year at my Abundance 360 Summit I decided to explore this concept in sessions I called "Convergence Catalyzers." For each technology, I brought in an industry expert to identify their Top 5 Recent Breakthroughs (2012-2015) and their Top 5 Anticipated Breakthroughs (2016-2018). Then, we explored the patterns that emerged. At A360 this year, my expert on AI was Stephen Gold, the CMO and VP of Business Development and Partner Programs at IBM Watson.

The computing industry progresses in two mostly independent cycles: financial and product cycles. There has been a lot of handwringing lately about where we are in the financial cycle. Financial markets get a lot of attention. They tend to fluctuate unpredictably and sometimes wildly. The product cycle by comparison gets relatively little attention, even though it is what actually drives the computing industry forward.

If you close your eyes and imagine a brick wall, you can probably come up with a pretty good mental image. After seeing many such walls, your brain knows what one should look like. A startup in the U.K. is using machine learning to enable computers and smartphones to model visual information in a similar way. A computer could use these visual models for various tasks, from improving video streaming to automatically generating elements of a realistic virtual world. Magic Pony Technology, created by graduates of Imperial College London with expertise in statistics, computer vision, and neuroscience, trains large neural networks to process visual information.

There are companies out there working fast and furious to develop artificial intelligence in computers and what will that mean for our human society? Will developers develop themselves out of a job? Can computer artificial intelligence evoke human emotion and move people to buy products and services? If so, I am out of a job. In all seriousness, it will be interesting to see the applications and if it will be used to assist the human race, or to replace it.

Richard Susskind spoke at a Vanderbilt Law School conference about the impact of technology on the legal profession. You don't have to look far to see how technology has changed the way people live their lives. Many patients check in with WebMD before going to their doctor's office. TurboTax has replaced accountants in some households. A new app even offers repentant churchgoers with a smartphone alternative to the confessional, complete with a drop-down menu of potential sins that need to be forgiven.

Dreyer says training a machine algorithm is similar to teaching a child, in that it requires considerable repetition. For example, by training an artificial neural network with thousands of images of correctly and incorrectly placed central lines, these algorithms can "learn" the difference between the two. While the human brain is optimized for the interpretation of visual data, these cognitive computations can be optimized to quantify nearly any data while eliminating the judgment and fatigue of humans.

The last time Microsoft released a "bot" onto the internet, it quickly became a Donald Trump-supporting, Nazi-sympathising, conspiracy theory-believing racist . It has unveiled a website called CaptionBo t, which uses clever algorithms to recognise images. Users are asked to give a star rating to reflect its accuracy, letting the bot learn from its mistakes and improve its skills. "I can understand the content of any image and I'll try to describe it as well as any human," the bot said. If you look at the tweets above, you'll see what happened to Tay, Microsoft's last creation. It was supposed to be a "chill" machine, but ended up getting tricked into spouting racist rhetoric, praising Hitler and calling for Mexico to build a wall to keep migrants out of the US.

Chinese internet giant Alibaba has built artificial intelligence that it hopes will be able to correctly predict the outcome of reality TV talent show I'm a Singer. According to Tech in Asia, Alibaba's technology uses performance information such as "voice pitch and energy," and maps that against factors such as song choice and real-time audience response. The results will be shown online, pitching the technology, named'Ai', against the judges as the show is aired. The experiment is being held as a "proof-of-concept" for the technology, with Alibaba suggesting that it'll be used for purposes closer to its core business of online retail in the future. It's not the only internet company to be testing new technology on reality TV shows in Asia.

An interesting paper from Clickz, by Martin Talks, a digital innovation and transformation expert, written for C-suite executives, marketers, and advertising teams, presents ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) can be used in marketing. Talks says that when we think of artificial intelligence we often conjure up images of Terminator-like figures attempting to take control of our world. But it's crucial that marketers do not dismiss AI as only for the movies, but rather embracing AI technologies to research markets, deliver ads and make creative assets. Marketers need not fear that AI is purely for the big companies or research organizations. Through collaborative interfaces, AI is now relevant, applicable and achievable for organizations of all sizes.

Of course, some of this is because Facebook was wise enough to seed its SDK to developers months in advance. But it's also because the company laid out its groundwork for bots in Messenger as early as last year. In 2015, Facebook unveiled its Messenger for Businesses program, which would allow consumers like you and me to talk with businesses on Messenger. You could chat with Hyatt to ask for more towels in your room or with Sprint to find out why your network was slow. Of course, you'd be speaking to a customer-support agent rather than a bot, but it was a starting point. On top of that, Facebook has been working with partners like Uber, Lyft and KLM to try out an early version of a bot system where you could request a car or book a flight through Messenger.