Following years of mounting interest in a type of artificial intelligence (AI) called deep learning, the biggest public cloud infrastructure provider, Amazon Web Services (AWS), today announced its first Amazon AI services that make use of deep learning. Deep learning generally involves training artificial neural networks on lots of data, such as photos, and then getting them to make inferences about new data. One of AWS' top competitors, Google Cloud Platform, introduced the Cloud Machine Learning service that can do deep learning earlier this year. In China, the Alibaba public cloud has the DT PAI service available for AI workloads. There is the new Rekognition image recognition service -- presumably drawing on the talent and technology from deep learning startup Orbeus, whose team Amazon hired in the past year.

OZY and Giant Spoon are excited to partner on special live coverage from CES 2017 -- where the most forward-looking technology and media come together. Rather than cover just the latest gadgets, though, we're taking you deeper with key takeaways, little-known rising stars, unconventional trends and, yes, the coolest sh*t from the convention. Apparently, though, his affection is pre-programmed. Robots may be unfeeling servants, but they don't have to be cold and unblinking, says Lau. Which is why she's got her little one here and a fleet of other "unruly robot children" under her wing. Casual and calm during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Lau doesn't seem the type to play God.

He spells out a series of threats that all boil down to poorly constructed cost functions that result in unintended consequences.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been increasingly making headlines recently, although few may be aware of it. The most recent of these was with the announcement of Amazon Go, a concept store in Seattle that is powered by machine learning and AI. Many of us now carry an AI device in our pockets, work with AI on our PCs and even have AI sitting in our living rooms. But randomly ask someone on the street what AI means to them and they're likely to mention robots, and not the technology we use in our daily lives. Less than 20% of consumers feel that they know a lot about AI, with this stat rising to almost 50% when asked if they know a little. What's clear is that mainstream awareness of AI is still limited, so you need to keep this in mind when talking about it.

Without a doubt, 2016 was the year "disruption" became tangible. Events like Brexit and the U.S. election brought home the reality we are living in a fast-changing global society where a sense of anti-establishment and rebellion is accelerating change. This shows no sign of stopping in 2017, with new and existing technologies allowing institutions to ultimately offer more unique banking experiences. From my meetings with decision-making executives at the world's leading banks, here are the top five trends dominating their technology investment discussions: In 2017, several banks will undoubtedly take their first steps toward "conversational commerce," a term coined by Chris Messina of Uber to describe the future of messaging within apps. In 2016, we already saw several leaders like Santander and Bank of America announce their plans for chatbots; however, 2017 is the year when the rebirth of this very old technology will come into its own.

Demandbase, a leader in Account-Based Marketing (ABM), announced DemandGraph, the B2B marketing industry's artificial intelligence driven business graph that captures and monitors in-depth business behavior and relationships across businesses worldwide. According to Forrester Research, the B2B sector represents more than $1 trillion in digital commerce every year, more than double the size of the B2C economy. DemandGraph helps companies unlock the value of this trillion dollar market by reading and understanding billions of web pages on the Internet through Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. DemandGraph enables B2B marketers to understand the entire business network of a company--customers, partners, suppliers, competitors, investments, regulatory filings and more to identify which companies and buying committees are in-market for particular solutions. It also provides a complete 360-degree view of potential and existing customers, which allows companies to better predict potential buyers, personalize campaigns and ultimately close more deals.

We expected to see artificial intelligence (AI), home and vehicle automation, smarter devices, augmented and virtual reality, and IoT to dominate at CES 2017. And truth be told it most certainly is not failing to deliver. In addition to new products in the usual consumer device categories like video game tech, TVs, and audio equipment we're seeing loads of the new trending technologies being showcased and it's clear that Christmas is not over at CES 2017. Everything from smart home bots, hacker-fighting routers and wallpaper TVs to super cool Lego Boost robotic kits that teach kids to code, is being shown off at the popular tech event making it super difficult to choose the coolest of them all. That said, here's a look at some of the top AI enabled tech and gadgets at CES 2017.

As part of my research on the year ahead, I embarked on a series, 20.17 Big Ideas for 2017, to ask a number of my favorite award-winning marketing experts, authors, and other thought leaders-- as well as some of Firebrand Group's own digital strategy and branding experts--to recommend one "Big Idea" that companies can take advantage of to get ahead in 2017. One of the individuals I was fortunate enough to interview for this series was Abby Whitmer, Director of Global Digital Marketing for Mary Kay. Whitmer, a longtime beauty insider, was added to the beauty giant to enhance its digital innovation, so it's no surprise that her big idea for 2017 involves Machine Learning. How are you using machine learning in your day to day? I'm trying to focus on how machine learning can be used now - as opposed to a very pie-in-the-sky, long-term way.

Why work in finance when you could be learning to replicate the brain? If you're a managing director at Goldman Sachs with a reasonable chance of making partner, why would you leave? Most people in finance would be intensely thrilled to get a sniff at a Goldman partnership. Unless, of course, something even better was on offer. For David Ha, former co-head of Japanese rates trading at Goldman Sachs, and a managing director at 32, the better alternative was a residency at Google Brain, Google's 12 month programme in California to jump-start careers in machine learning.

Networked Insights, a Chicago-based company whose tools crawl the social web and analyze data for marketers, has raised $30 million in Series E funding, the company announced Friday. The company sifts through 560 million social media posts from 30 million sources daily, it said on its website. It sorts and analyzes that information for marketers and agencies, and pitches itself as a way for them to create better-targeted and more effective campaigns. Its clients include NBC Universal, media-buying agency GroupM, and American Family Insurance, whose venture arm is an investor. The funding will help Networked Insights invest in deep learning and artificial intelligence capabilities on its platform, Kairos, the company said. It said it would also use the infusion to enter partnerships and pursue acquisitions.