"If a machine can think, it might think more intelligently than we do, and then where should we be? Even if we could keep the machines in a subservient position, for instance by turning off the power at strategic moments, we should, as a species, feel greatly humbled." IBM's artificial intelligence (AI) platform, Watson, is loquacious; it can tell jokes, answer questions and write songs. Google's AI can now read lips better than a professional and can master video games within hours. MIT's AI can predict action on video two seconds before it begins. All seem to propel us closer to Turing's world of machines with more intelligence than humans. If Turing's words now ring true, should we feel humbled or anxious? For many marketers, the anxiety and existential fear has given way to hope and excitement for a new tomorrow. Dome, who works as a marketing consultant and adjunct professor at University of Chicago's Graham School, grows excited as he talks about the possibility of AI: the time it could save marketers, how it can bring companies closer to consumers and its potential to catch customers in stride, saving effort on the business and consumer side.

Emotion-recognition technology is emerging as one of the top AI trends this year, enabling brands to build on consumers' emotions to deliver customised services and products, according to a report publishd by Zenith. According to the report, Artificial Intelligence: Powering the Consumer Journey, the mood-sensing devices that consumers carry in their pockets--smartphones--and the continuous progression of customised triggers enabled by emotion-detection tech will allow brands to make more emotionally relevant recommendations and enhance programmatic advertising. Bentley has used such technology in the Bentley Inspirator, an app that concocts a Bentayga SUV for order based on a consumer's reaction to a film. The report also cites the ability of IOT household devices (such as Amazon's Alexa) to deliver services and recommendations tailored to consumers' emotions. "Human decisions are heavily influenced by emotion," said Hugo Pinto, IBM Interactive Experience's innovation officer, in an interview published in the Zenith report.

The whole technology landscape is changing and is ushering in new ways to put it to use. The way things have been run in the past 20 years no longer holds water and we need to change to adapt and be relevant. At the Bengaluru ITE.BIZ 2016, Bhaskar Ghosh, Group Chief Executive, Accenture Technology Services, shed light on what the next wave in the IT sector would be. "We went through several waves - IT services, e-commerce, cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing. New tech is maturing faster and the time to learn and execute in the market is short. We need to learn to master the speed. Every business is a software business. Even manufacturing is driven by software," he explained.

Carnival will give its cruise ship guests the Ocean Medallion so they can access their personalized cruise experience. Carnival Cruise line is betting that a whole host of intelligent, connected services for guests will turn the cruise experience from a "supposedly fun thing" to a truly personal and compelling vacation. "Our sole purpose is... to make our guests happy, to transport them," Carnival Corporation CEO Arnold Donald said at CES 2017 in Las Vegas Thursday. Donald's speech -- the first keynote address on the first official day of the 50th annual CES -- illustrated how technology has become an integral part of just about every industry, with much of it powered by machine learning. The cruise line is partnering with Accenture to deliver a range of new guest services, including an IoT network, a digital "experience" portal and even a new wearable.

Everyone today talks about AI, big data and machine learning, yet most do not delve into the fundamental properties of how they will operate and how they might be an actual threat to asset managers. Some view technological methods as tools to assist them instead of being such a threat, and it would help provide both perspectives of the argument. Deep learning is a branch of machine learning that uses particular architectures of neural networks. These are artificial networks that attempt to actually replicate how the neural structures in human brains operate. Such methods have successfully been applied to areas such as computer vision – i.e. image processing and classification – as well as speech recognition. The techniques are readily available to any undergraduate student willing to learn the process.

Earlier in this series, we learned how AI (artificial intelligence) is set to change the IT (information technology) environment, and tech players such as IBM (IBM) are leaving no stone unturned to empower themselves in the AI space. As shown in the above chart, more than 40 companies working or related to AI technologies have been acquired so far in 2016. As leading technology players make acquisitions in the AI space, it will gain visibility and spending will be enhanced. Alphabet (GOOG) topped the acquirer list with 11 acquisitions in the AI space in 2016. Oracle, Yahoo, Intel (INTC), Apple (AAPL), and Salesforce are also competing in the acquisition of AI companies.

Indian startup Boltt is claiming to have a fitness tracking system so complete that it'll force you to ditch your Fitbit, Jawbone or Moov system - all through the power of artificial intelligence (AI). The new company is offering a smart show, stride sensor and fitness band that it says will give 24-hour insights into your health and activity - and doing so all for $150 (around £120 / AU$200). Yes, you read that right: a pair of'high performance functional sports shoes', and embedded stride sensor packed with the latest accelerometers and a fitness band that can monitor sleep, automatically detect activity and monitor your heart rate. It's a lofty goal, but the brand has worked with Garmin to improve the stride-tracking accuracy and even offers payment systems through embedded payment technology (essentially, NFC in the band). We've seen all that before, but the really exciting prospect here is'B', Boltt's AI chat-bot system that will interact with you daily as a 24-7 coach to give insights into nutrition, sleep and training.

Chatbots are automated text conversation computer programs that use artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing to talk to customers/users. Want to disappear from a fleeting relationship? Ghostbot is a burner text messaging bot that will ghost you away. Need something to do to pass the time? Send a text to the Casper mattress company's chatbot and talk about anything and everything.

Galileo viewed nature as a book written in the language of mathematics and decipherable through physics. His metaphor may have been a stretch for his milieu, but not for ours. Ours is a world of digits that must be read through computer science. It is a world in which artificial-intelligence (AI) applications perform many tasks better than we can. Like fish in water, digital technologies are our infosphere's true natives, while we analogue organisms try to adapt to a new habitat, one that has come to include a mix of analogue and digital components.

Ten years of Paris hospital admissions data, plus external information including weather, patterns of flu infection and public holidays, was ingested and analyzed by the Trusted Analytics Platform (TAP). Four of the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) are trialing the new predictive system aimed at reducing hospital waiting times. TAP is an open-source analysis platform that uses machine learning to create tools and services across a range of industries. The AP-HP project is the first to use open source time series analysis, and the TAP engineers that worked on the system had to build new sets of code. If the project is successful, plans are to implement the prediction system through the entirety of the 44 hospitals in the AP-HP group.