Unexpected convergent consequences… this is what happens when eight different exponential technologies all explode onto the scene at once. This blog (the second of seven) is a look at artificial intelligence. Future blogs 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).

Here's the trick: By then, computers will possess emotions and personality. "When I talk about computers reaching human levels of intelligence, I'm not talking about logical intelligence," Kurzweil said at an event in New York on Monday night. "It is being funny, and expressing a loving sentiment... That is the cutting edge of human intelligence." The futurist spoke about AI and the future of technology with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Salesforce.com's automation efforts got a boost Monday with the news it has acquired AI startup MetaMind. Salesforce will integrate MetaMind's technology into its own services for new marketing-automation and personalization capabilities, according to a blog post from MetaMind founder Richard Socher. "We'll extend Salesforce's data science capabilities by embedding deep learning within the Salesforce platform," Socher wrote. Socher's personal Web page now lists his title as chief scientist at the customer relationship management giant. MetaMind's products will be discontinued on May 4 for users of its free versions, and on June 4 for paid users.

SoftBank Group will shortly launch a service that will help clients thwart cyberattacks by using artificial intelligence. The company has established a joint venture in Japan with Cybereason, a U.S. cybersecurity firm based in Boston, in which SoftBank has invested roughly 50 million. The Boston firm will provide the service in Japan through the venture, targeting manufacturers, financial institutions and government-related agencies that handle sensitive information. SoftBank will handle sales, pitching the service to Japanese prospects. The joint venture will provide Japanese-language customer support.

You could argue that this is human malice and that with appropriate safety nets it can be avoided. Reality is quick to prove this notion false as bugs in any piece of software ever developed, leading to vulnerabilities or malfunctions, are discovered every day. But for the sake of continuing this argument let's pretend that humans develop bug-free software, something that eradicates the possibility of hacking and virus spreading. Self-modifying algorithms not only exist but they have been doing useful jobs - with the likes of genetic programming that mimics biology's model of evolution proven to equal or even surpass the human performance.

Scientists can now gather real-time electrical activity from the brain during actions and thoughts, which is helping to pinpoint the exact location of brain lesions caused by strokes, and is leading to promising treatments for epilepsy and even profound paralysis. In the video, Dr Kai Miller, Neurosurgery Resident at Stanford University, described an ingenious experiment designed to link brain activity to perception. In the experiment, several epilepsy patients were shown a series of images, each of which was either a house or a face. Simultaneously, electrical activity on the brain surface was measured by 64 separate brain sensors. The goal is to be able to create a model from the brain sensor data that can accurately predict what the patients is seeing: a face or a house.

If 2015 was the year of Machine Learning, 2016 is going to be the year of Deep Learning, whose popularity has been on a steep incline ever since Google bought DeepMind at the end of 2014. Last year's technical breakthroughs, acquisitions, funding deals and, open source releases have all helped to cement Deep Learning as the hip artificial intelligence. Our CTO, Matt Painter, explains how Deep Learning got its start. How does my brain work? Starting with Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne, scientists began exploring how neurons work in the 1890s by pressing on different parts of the brain to see what would happen.

Are you struggling to find the right resources to guide you in your machine learning journey? Sign-up for the Machine Learning Resource Guide and you'll get a hand-picked list of the best resources for Machine Learning. In addition, you'll get 2-to-3 short, educational emails every week with actionable advice on how to further your study of Machine Learning. Yes, I want the best resources for Machine Learning (free)! I want to get started with Machine Learning Algorithms! Gentle introduction to 10 top machine learning algorithms and 12 tutorials to implement them step-by-step from scratch.

I am a data scientist, big data engineer, and full stack software engineer. For my masters thesis I worked on brain-computer interfaces using near-infrared spectroscopy. These assist non-verbal and non-mobile persons communicate with their family and caregivers. I have worked in online advertising and digital media as both a data scientist and big data engineer, and built various high-throughput web services around said data. I've created new big data pipelines using Hadoop/Pig/MapReduce. I've created machine learning models to predict click-through rate, news feed recommender systems using linear regression, Bayesian Bandits, and collaborative filtering and validated the results using A/B testing.

Salesforce has acquired artificial intelligence startup MetaMind. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Based in Palo Alto, MetaMind -- which was backed by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff -- touts its technology as being enterprise-grade AI. Its work has revolved mainly around deep learning in language and vision-based applications. "With MetaMind and Salesforce coming together, we'll be able to offer customers real AI solutions with breakthrough capabilities that further automate and personalize customer support, marketing automation, and many other business processes," MetaMind cofounder and chief executive Richard Socher wrote in a blog post.