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.

Google Chrome just revamped its app on iOS devices that support 3D Touch with its new update Wednesday. The new update allows users to use 3D touch on the Google Chrome app to open up a menu of options, including "Scan QR Code," voice search, opening an incognito tab and regular tab. Here's how the 3D menu on Google Chrome looks like now: The Scan QR code feature is helpful for users, since it skips the step of downloading a separate app to scan codes. The update also lets users search for "QR" by using Spotlight on iOS. Google Chrome adds "Scan QR Code for iOS app.

Nato must begin to compete on the cyber-battlefield to counter Russian hacking aimed at undermining democracy in the US and western Europe, the British defence secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, has said. In his most hard-hitting comments yet about Russia, he accused it of targeting the US, France, Germany, Holland, Bulgaria and Montenegro, which is due to become a full Nato member this year. Fallon blamed Russia for helping create the age of fake information. "Today we see a country that, in weaponising misinformation, has created what we might now see as the post-truth age. Part of that is the use of cyber-weaponry to disrupt critical infrastructure and disable democratic machinery," he said.

A major challenge for using data to make predictions is distinguishing what is meaningful from noise. The image represents one approach that visually indicates the complexity of the problem by highlighting some links in a network and deleting other possible links, with the hole indicating the more meaningful information. We have tried to predict the future since ancient times when shamans looked for patterns in smoking entrails. As this special section explores, prediction is now a developing science. Essays probe such questions as how to allocate limited resources, whether a country will descend into conflict, and who will likely win an election or publish a high-impact paper, as well as looking at how standards should develop in this emerging field.

If you forget to tag or add a description when uploading a photo or gallery to Facebook, it can be tough to find an image when you need it. Or at least it used to be. The social network revealed today that it built an AI image search system that can "see" things in your photos even when you forget to add the aforementioned identifiers. Facebook says the system uses its Lumos platform to understand the content of photos and videos and quickly sort through the items you've uploaded. This means that if even if you can't remember when a photo was taken, if you remember the content, you might still be able to find it with ease.