Yes, artificial technology is rapidly improving -- and true, AI will invade the legal business before you know it -- but futuristic AI-infused robot lawyers aren't going to replace legal pros anytime soon. AI-based tools and technologies created and customized for legal work are coming for sure, though. AI-enabled software can use pattern recognition and extreme machine learning algorithms to help legal pros work faster. Their capability digest vast amounts of information and interpret it can help you work smarter, too. The time to start thinking about the first wave of AI legal tools is now.

I declare 2016 to be The Year of The Smart Data and Machine Learning! Above is a graphical representation of the Google alerts as such appear in "real-time" for the BigData keywords and Machine Learning keyword (in verity of permutations, i.e. case sensitivity, etc.). In addition to that this graph shows the liner regression of both keyword alerts respectively. While BigData keyword spikes thought a year which I was able to correlate to variety of BigData conferences around the world, Machine Learning hype starts to hit closer to the end of 2015 into 2016 clearly showing the level of interest among consumers as well as the producers of the technology. Great understanding and input is usually well captured in the community of analysts who attempt to not only look at the technology available and emerging, but also the interest in such among the consumer/business community.

Infor has enhanced its Infor EzRMS with an improved forecasting engines. The revenue management solution is designed to maximise income within the hospitality vertical. Its aim is to sell the right product to the right customer at the best time in the appropriate place. The new update enhances the ability for hoteliers to discover who, when and where those ideal moments are. The update enhances the core solution with improved algorithms using dynamic trend modelling and machine learning techniques.

When you think of Facebook, you think of data, but not so much technology. Get ready for an in-depth preview of how Facebook is and is further planning to use artificial intelligence and other key technologies that they see as critical to their future. "Facebook's long-term roadmap is focused on building foundational technologies in three areas: connectivity, artificial intelligence and virtual reality," wrote Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's Chief Technology Officer. "We believe that major research and engineering breakthroughs in each of these areas will help us make more progress toward opening the world to everyone over the next decade." Tying all of these crucial technology projects together is AI.

While his feet may have been in Sydney, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's head was firmly in the clouds. In Australia for a Microsoft Developers conference, Nadella laid out his main theories for the digital future: Mobile-first and cloud-first. SEE ALSO: Inside Microsoft's plan to bring 3D to everyone "We have a distinctive point of view when we say'mobile first,'" he said. With echoes of Mark Zuckerberg's bot evangelism at April's F8, and Nadella's own remarks at the Microsoft's annual developers conference in March, it was a bot-heavy message sent Wednesday. To help build'em, Nadella announced the launch of the Azure Bot Service -- a new public cloud-based bot builder -- that will give everyone access to automated systems that understand conversational language.

General Electric said on Tuesday it has acquired two tech startups to build its artificial intelligence capability, a move that helps it compete with IBM's Watson product. GE ge said the acquisitions of Bit Stew Systems and Wise.io will expand its Predix platform for industrial internet applications, which connects big machines such as power plants and aircraft engines to databases and analytical software. Terms of the deals weren't disclosed. Berkley, California-based Wise.io has advanced machine learning technology that GE sees "as really well-built for the industrial world," Bill Ruh, chief executive officer of GE Digital, GE's software arm, said in an interview. A branch of artificial intelligence, machine learning allows computers to adapt to new data without new programming.

BARCELONA Pioneering computer mouse maker Logitech isn't ready to walk away from the personal computer business just yet, even though its chief executive spends all his time these days thinking how to expand into faster-growing accessory markets.

Researchers from the US have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that surfs the internet, extracts information from the available plain text and organizes it for quantitative analysis in very less time. Recently at the Association for Computational Linguistics' Conference on Empirical Methods on Natural Language Processing, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory won a best-paper award for a new approach to information extraction that turns conventional machine learning on its head. Most machine-learning systems work by combing through training examples and looking for patterns that correspond to classifications provided by human annotators. In their new paper, the MIT researchers trained their system on scanty data -- because in the scenario they're investigating, that's usually all that's available. But then they find the limited information an easy problem to solve.

Google has published numerous experiments with its cloud AI technologies, but'Quick, Draw' is perhaps the most fun one yet. Using the same technology that interprets written symbols in Google Translate, the game attempts to guess what you are drawing. When you start, you are prompted to draw a specific thing, and the game continues making guesses until it wins or time runs out. At the end of six rounds, it provides you with information about all your drawings, including other guesses and what other users provided. It learns from every drawing, so theoretically, it should become smarter over time.

Get yourself ready for the bot invasion. Powered by artificial intelligence and fueled with big data, bots are gearing up to serve people the data, insights, and services they demand. Anybody who's interacted with Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa or Microsoft's Cortana is familiar with the question-and-answer capabilities of bot technology, which uses natural language processing and machine learning to answer questions or provide information via email, social media, messaging platforms, and mobile apps. But the bots you've seen up to this point will pale in comparison to the bots of the future. Consider that, by 2020, the average person will have more conversation with bots than with their spouse, according to Gartner.