Amid the wall-to-wall coverage of the U.S. presidential race, it was easy to miss the Obama administration's release this month of a slim, 48-page report titled "Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence." Yet the subject of the report -- and the changes it foreshadows -- may prove to be as consequential for our society, and our education system, as even the most high-stakes national election. The term "artificial intelligence" means different things to different people, but broadly speaking, it refers to computers and advanced machines that can think, reason and communicate like humans, respond to novel or nuanced situations as a person might, and most critically, learn from experiences as a human would. According to a recent survey, 80 percent of AI researchers believe that computers and advanced machines will eventually achieve levels of artificial intelligence that rival human intelligence. Moreover, half believe that this will happen by the year 2040 -- just one generation from now.

Tom Davenport is the President's Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, cofounder of the International Institute for Analytics, fellow at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and senior advisor to Deloitte Analytics. He teaches analytics/big data in executive programs at Babson, Harvard Business School and School of Public Health, and MIT Sloan School. Davenport pioneered the concept of "competing on analytics" with his best-selling 2006 Harvard Business Review article and 2007 book. His most recent book (with Julia Kirby) is Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines. He wrote or edited 17 other books and over 100 articles for Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, the Financial Times, and many other publications.

As part of a three-week pilot study this quarter, half of the students in STATS 60: "Introduction to Statistical Methods" were assigned a RoboTA, an artificially intelligent robot teaching assistant (TA), to answer their questions by email. Students emailed different addresses based on the TA they were assigned. The emails were then funneled through a program, stripped of any identifying information and relayed to Lucas Janson, the TA for the class. Janson replied to all the emails without knowing whether they were intended for the human TA or the artificial intelligence (AI) TA. This study is double-blind, so neither the students nor the experimenters have information about the other, which helps prevent bias.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence Apps and Platforms Briefing subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here. Apple filed a patent last year to integrate Siri with its iMessage platform for iOS devices, TechCrunch reported. The voice-based virtual assistant would be able to conduct activities like making payments, scheduling appointments, and providing weather updates within a chat in the iMessage application. The patent filing clearly indicates that Apple has been working on bringing chatbots and other messaging app functions to iMessage.

Sundar Pichai is huddling with five Google staffers in a room next to his office that's known--appropriately enough--as "Sundar's Huddle." The employees are members of the Google Photos team, and they're here this morning to update Pichai on something they've been working on for months. The group has barely begun its presentation when Pichai starts peppering them with questions, opinions, and advice. For half an hour, the discussion careens from subject to subject: the power of artificial intelligence, the value of integrating Google Photos with other products such as Google Drive, the importance of creating an emotional bond with the users of an app. After the team shows Pichai a rough cut of a promotional video, his feedback is unguarded and heartfelt: "That's awesome!" Google's bearded, 44-year-old CEO is, unmistakably, in his element. "Nothing makes me happier than a product review in which I can sit with the team and they're showing me something they're building," Pichai had told me a few days earlier. "Being able to react to it and think through, 'When users get this, what will their feedback be?' I'm always on a quest to do that better and do more of it."

There are over 34,000 scholarly, peer-reviewed journals in existence today, collectively publishing some 2.5 million articles every year. It's estimated that a single researcher, depending on their discipline, will read about 270 of them in the same time frame. Scientists will never keep up. They're going to miss key insights. Fortunately, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) tossed them a life preserver.

Artificial intelligence could be a boon to HR leaders. Artificial intelligence is coming to human resources, but it's not going to be as exciting as Hollywood would have us believe. There will be no tiny humanoids roaming the halls offering AI benefits counseling, or shiny silver robots hosting AI yoga classes in the cafeteria. But in the not too distant future, there could be a Siri-like service that can answer employee benefits questions or tells people where the yoga class is, said Anthony Onesto, executive adviser to technology start-ups and vice president of Razor Fish, a digital marketing agency. Onesto is working on a project, currently in beta, called SueAI, an artificially intelligent human resource associate who answers human resource questions for HR leaders and their teams.

There's a moment in the human experience that just shouldn't happen. In fact, there are billions of those moments. The single mother I saw today, with a pain so deep in her eyes that emotion on her face felt like the ocean moved by muted waves rolling toward the shore. A man I've seen on the street a dozen times, yelling uncontrollably at his own mind and this morning surrounded by cops trying to speak to him calmly. A quick moment when my distraction was interrupted by a whole lane of cars slamming on their breaks and nearly crashing and other distracted drivers almost hurting one another.

Machine learning has been one of the most exciting development we have had since the internet and its subsequent spread through smart phones. Andrew Ng likens artificial intelligence (AI: term can be used vice versa with machine learning as of this moment that AI system learns from data, but this hasn't always been the case) to electricity; that AI will be pervasive, everywhere and transformative in the way we do things. Why would it be so transformative to the way we do things? Its simply that before advent of AI, everything we built were not even stupid, they had no thoughts and take no actions, its people who gotta make all the decisions for them. My own first practical exposure to building a practical AI system was when I started working as a wind energy analyst.

Marketing is only helpful when it's meeting a need. It sounds simple, but those needs can be really tough to parse. Like any consumer, my needs evolve every day, if not every minute. I won't stand for poorly targeted ads or messages that are irrelevant to me. I work in marketing technology, and this industry has been talking about data-driven personalization for years.