At this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), dozens of companies selling all kinds of products and services are touting their use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI has been hot for a year or two, and it's only getting hotter as it becomes incorporated into increasingly novel products and services. Jetsons-style robot assistants for the home were on display on the show floor, boasting intelligence that helps discover and adapt to the layout of your home, identify your family's habits, recognize faces, learn from conversations, and even control smart-home devices. LG was the biggest name with a new robot, but smaller companies also unveiled compelling options, including Mayfield Robotics' ultra-cute Kuri and Yumii's Cutii companion for the elderly. AI-powered robots that used to be the province of science fiction may soon be common in our homes.

To remain competitive this year and beyond, they'll need to embrace many new realities. Already, retailers are growing more skilled at providing the right customer with the right message -- and offers -- at the right time to generate the best results across sales and distribution channels. Both stores and online shops are growing more empowered with data and a more personalized understanding of customers, gaining better understanding of customer preferences, and better leveraging tools and technologies to become truly customer-centric organizations. And yet, there are still obstacles to address and new paradigms to understand, as these five retail and ecommerce experts attest. "Digitalization is massively changing all businesses in 2017. Retailers, both B2B and B2C, will have to deal with changes in the way their customers buy, communicate and search for information about products. "When organizations think about digitalization, they consider their marketing and sales processes, develop roles, analyze user journeys and optimize web sites.

Over the past decade, B2B marketing has undergone a massive transformation. According to Forrester Research, the entire B2B sector represents more than $1 trillion in digital commerce every year, more than double the size of the B2C economy. Is artificial intelligence the rocket fuel to take us through the next decade of marketing technology? AI is not about inventing a new task or a new way of being intelligent, but simply mimicking human intelligence. Given that it's a machine doing the work, AI can be done at infinite scale since it can read and process billions of data points with perfect memory.

Recent progress in robotics and artificial intelligence has blurred the line between man and machine. After more than 50 years of research, artificial intelligence (AI) systems haven't quite matched their biological analogues, but they're catching up: Uber's self-driving truck drove 2,000 cases of beer over 120 miles, Google knows almost exactly what we're searching for before we've typed it out in full; and many of us speak naturally to assistants waiting in our pockets or our kitchens. This is only the beginning. As technology improves, our worldview must evolve to keep pace. It's time to start talking seriously about ethics in AI.

It looks like the job automation trend is getting to Japan, bringing the country a step closer to a future of layoffs in favor of intelligent machines. Japanese firm Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance Co. is laying off more than 30 of its employees and is replacing them with artificial intelligence (AI) systems that will perform payout calculations for policyholders. For Fukoku Mutual, the move is seen as a practical and beneficial, with expected increase in productivity at 30 percent and a calculated return on investment in less than two years."The "Meanwhile, it's expected that Fukoku Mutual will save about 140 million yen per year by cutting the 34 staff." Understandably, the 34 employees whose jobs are set to be eliminated by March 2017 aren't going to be so happy.

We have all heard the hype surrounding technological advancements in AI, VR, and robotics. These are just a few of the emerging forces that are drastically changing B2C and B2B operations. Digital eminence is a business need. However, these new technologies have also brought an array of challenges. With increasing concern over protecting personal information, trustworthiness is becoming critical with respect to online commerce.

Yesterday, Big Blue released its "IBM 5 in 5," an annual list of innovations that the company predicted will have major impacts on the way we live over the next five years. "With advances in artificial intelligence and nanotechnology, we aim to invent a new generation of scientific instruments that will make the complex invisible systems in our world today visible over the next five years," said Dario Gil, vice president of science and solutions at IBM Research, in a statement. One of the developments identified in the list is the use of deep learning machine intelligence to help clinicians predict and monitor brain and mental health disorders such as psychosis, schizophrenia, mania and depression. The company said its scientists are currently using transcripts and audio recordings of psychiatric interviews to find speech patterns that can indicate such disorders. In addition to giving health professionals unprecedented access to the human mind, artificial intelligence will also play a role in providing a larger window into the world around us.

I would question the question though in this way. Is intelligence something that has "levels"? I tend to think of it more as a tree than a stair-step however. A pear is not "smarter" or "dumber" than a banana. Hard to say whether a squirrel or a squid is smarter.

This year has been rollercoaster crash for many with numerous tragedies and crises occurring all over the world, but it doesn't mean that everything was grim in 2016. Join IBTimes UK as we take a closer look at the many new developments across various fields of technological research, each with the potential to revolutionise human life for the better. This section is devoted to the computer science research into replicating the human mind and helping computers solve complex tasks. For developments concerning the machines themselves, see our articles on robotics. In 2016, computer scientists have begun concentrating more efforts on building deep learning neural networks which are large webs of artificially intelligent classical computers that are trained using computer algorithms to solve complex problems in a similar way to the human central nervous system, and where different layers examine different parts of the problem to combine to produce an answer.

He asks Scott how Audi keeps up. We're now at the forefront of technology and at improving society, Scott says. The fact we can bring this kind of safety onto the road is amazing. Self-driving, he said, gets him out of the bed in the morning, letting the elderly enjoy cars and helping kids get transportation. Says Jen-Hsun: "This is the largest consumer show in the world. It's so fun to be in the middle of technology industry right now. The technology that will reshape how we use tech in the coming years. We can realize now the dreams we've had for years." We want to bring video games to everyone.