It seems every 2017 Event Trends list I read features Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Having followed emerging technology trends over the last year, I think it's likely these five trends are responsible: Trend #1 -- Era of Mobile: Increasingly our population has become mobile-centric. Think about it…when was the last time you went anywhere without your smartphone? Trend #2 -- App Fatigue: While we are spending more time on our smartphones, we are downloading fewer and fewer apps. Trend #3 -- Rise of Messaging Apps: In the last two years, companies have focused on establishing a presence on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram; however, messaging apps including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and Kik have far surpassed those social networks in terms of the number of active users per month.

At the second page, when we click the "Getting Started" button, we will see a sidebar with an upload function asking us to upload a local picture: The default label language turns into Chinese in my computer browser. But it should be English in others.

Amazon launched a new website today to help brands and developers build applications, or skills, for Alexa. In other words, it's a good day to go voice-first. "Customers are interacting with technology in the most natural way possible – by talking," Amazon says. "Now is the time to create engaging experiences for your brand." Amazon's Alexa is a digital assistant that lives in Echo, a home appliance, and increasingly in other objects such as robots, toys, smartphones, and cars. It uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing, along with cloud-based connections to hundreds of devices, to help you get information, control your environment, and simplify your life.

One of the popular uses for machine learning is helping organizations sift through data to find new patterns, giving business executives information that is actionable. CData, a North Carolina-based provider of data access solutions, last week made its first foray into the open-source world with the creation of the CData ODBC Reader for TensorFlow. This experimental project was created to enable people who want to apply machine learning to their data with TensorFlow to pull data from any ODBC-compliant data source, according to Eric Madariaga, CMO of CData. "We're offering a data abstraction layer without the need for big server-side code," he explained. "Users can pick and choose their data sources. We provide the interface between TensorFlow and whatever ODBC data source you plug in."

Marketing is no longer about right-brain versus left-brain. Technology is getting smarter, and consumers are turning to machines to help them make better purchase decisions. As people turn to their devices to make product recommendations and automate their services, one has to wonder: Will brands start marketing to machines versus humans? "Marketing to machines -- that kind of scares me," says Jeff Barnett, CEO of CRM giant Salesforce Commerce Cloud. While the concept may seem a bit dystopian, it's not completely farfetched.

Canada has a rich history of research into artificial intelligence, going back over 40 years. Regarding "AI is the future, and Canada must seize it," originally appearing in the Globe and Mail Report on Business on January 7, 2017. Canada has a rich history of research into artificial intelligence (AI), going back over 40 years. Globally, we punch well above our weight. For example, in the areas of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the Computer Science Rankings site places the University of Alberta third, the University of Toronto seventh, and includes three other Canadian universities in the top 50. Two of machine learning areas that are generating the most excitement today, deep learning (Geoffrey Hinton) and reinforcement learning (Richard Sutton), were pioneered by Canadian academics.

When we think of artificial intelligence, most people think of two specific things: androids, and the future. We think of creations that will look, more or less, like humans, and things which are far off from our modern times. Artificial intelligence (for better or worse) doesn't look like androids that do our laundry or pilot our spaceships (yet) but it is absolutely here – perhaps even the White House is getting involved. The very best businesses and brands are learning how to manipulate artificial intelligence to boost their brands and improve their customer interactions. In Sweden, there is a retail bank called Swedbank which has integrated Nina, an intelligent virtual assistant, into its system.

PRESS RELEASE: Executive Perspectives Live, one of the top online business shows on C-Suite TV, has announced its seventh season premiere episode featuring a one-on-one interview with Tom Edwards, Chief Digital Officer, Agency, Epsilon. Edwards has been with Epsilon, a global leader in creating connections between people and brands, since 2015. Recognized by Ad Age as the #1 World's Largest U.S. Agency from All Discplines and #1 Largest U.S. Mobile Marketing Agency, Epsilon employs over 7,000 associates in 70 offices worldwide. The company is an all-encompassing global marketing company harnessing the power of rich data, groundbreaking technologies, engaging creative and transformative ideas for business results. The Executive Perspectives Live episode was filmed when Edwards sat down with series host Jeffrey Hayzlett at the C-Suite Conference in San Francisco to talk about the future of marketing, the infusion of voice-based technology into consumer products and how brands should shift from social media to social messaging strategies.

Banks and Insurers deal with large amounts of data and are increasingly considering Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to gain actionable insights quickly. SAP aspires to make all its solutions intelligent and help Financial Services customers to leverage their data. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence enables computers to learn from large amounts of data without being explicitly programmed. SAP systems touch more than 70 percent of the world's business transactions. Incorporating Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning into software opens the opportunity to simplify employees' everyday lives and allows them to focus on higher value tasks.

Here is our selection of featured articles and resources posted since Monday.