One way to build out a smart home is to buy lots of components--sensors, smart bulbs, security cameras, speakers, and whatnot--and connect them all to a hub that helps them communicate with each other and with you, via your smartphone. But let's be real: That can involve spending a lot of money and investing a lot of time. If your wants and needs are simpler, just a few relatively inexpensive products will deliver most of the conveniences a high-end smart home can deliver, and on a much more modest budget. And if you make sure those smart home products are compatible with each other, you'll build a solid foundation that you can expand over time. The key is knowing which smart home products don't depend on a smart home hub to operate.

Accelerate administrative processes – administrative processes are often mundane tasks such as coordinating meeting requests, booking travel or making notes during meetings. Many of these tasks can be done by a virtual assistant. The more advanced AI will become, the more tasks these virtual assistants can perform. Drive innovation – AI can help advance your R&D activities by providing insights into your customers' (latent) needs, combined with how they use your products. That information can help to speed-up innovation Augment your employees to make them more effective and efficient – AI can provide your employees with the right information at the right moment to make them more efficient and effective, but also exoskeletons can augment your employees to make repetitive hard work easier. Ford has been rolling out exoskeletal technology globally to help employees who perform repetitive overhead tasks. Such AI skeletons can help employees accomplish accuracy and precision even when faced with immense complexity. For example, JP Morgan Chase has implemented chatbots in their IT department to handle 1.7 million requests per year, doing the work of 140 people.

Accelerate administrative processes – administrative processes are often mundane tasks such as coordinating meeting requests, booking travel or making notes during meetings. Many of these tasks can be done by a virtual assistant. The more advanced AI will become, the more tasks these virtual assistants can perform. Drive innovation – AI can help advance your R&D activities by providing insights into your customers' (latent) needs, combined with how they use your products. That information can help to speed-up innovation Augment your employees to make them more effective and efficient – AI can provide your employees with the right information at the right moment to make them more efficient and effective, but also exoskeletons can augment your employees to make repetitive hard work easier. Ford has been rolling out exoskeletal technology globally to help employees who perform repetitive overhead tasks. Such AI skeletons can help employees accomplish accuracy and precision even when faced with immense complexity. For example, JP Morgan Chase has implemented chatbots in their IT department to handle 1.7 million requests per year, doing the work of 140 people.

The recent Google I/O conference saw the internet giant unveil is artificial intelligence intentions. From modest machine learning beginnings, Google has unveiled products that intend to revolutionise our daily lives and bring machine learning into all current applications. As the development of mobile applications hit the tech world by storm a few years ago, now is the time of AI and Google intends to capitalise with a regime change. In addition to improving the functionality of Google Home, Search and Photos, the media giant unveiled a new innovation called Google Lens. Home can recognise voices, Search recognises and recommends search results, and what Google Lens brings to the table, is interpreting the surroundings and taking actions based on that information.

Sameer is overjoyed when his daughter gets admission to a dream university. However, he realises that he has to arrange a fairly large amount of funds quickly. Sameer browses his bank's website aided by a friendly chatbot, calls up the call centre where a virtual assistant arranges for a sales officer to visit him and help apply for a loan on a tablet, and obtain immediate approvals based on an automated credit scoring system. All of Sameer's banking interactions were assisted by Artificial Intelligence (AI) that is empowering banks to make customer lives simpler and easier. AI is not one single application.

We are getting closer and closer to the materialization of a series of technologies which we used to believe are impossible to achieve. We usually think to ourselves, if technology really took over, how would it affect everything around us? Well, technology does have its do's and don'ts. The rapid growth of technology is outstanding and unforeseen. It's about to refashion the market with machines and tools that will bring brisk changes for all marketing companies. Whether it's building your marketing strategy or bringing in more customers, soon these advancements will alter new desires. There are plenty of future technologies, designs, and interfaces that will evolve in coming years and soon we will be able to witness them.

Amazon.com Inc. AMZN 1.24% introduced its Alexa digital assistant seven months after Cortana's launch, but its Echo and sibling devices now control two-thirds of the U.S. smart-speaker market, according to research firm eMarketer. The market share of devices using Cortana isn't large enough to be listed in eMarketer's tally. Microsoft's effort to turn Cortana into a viable competitor, while voice computing is still in its early days, is bigger than just the market for smart speakers that sit on kitchen counters checking the weather. It is an opportunity to lead in the next big advance in computing, in which people use their voices rather than a keyboard and mouse. Companies that master so-called conversational computing will have an edge in the emerging business just as Windows gave Microsoft an advantage in the PC era, analysts say.

For consumers, AI is already available in the form of wearable IoT devices, smart home speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home, and personal digital assistants like Siri, Cortana, and Google Now. These gadgets are already being sold as products, but it's not a stretch to envision them becoming sold as services on a monthly payment model, which would conceivably include regular software updates and functionality improvements.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly getting attention from enterprise decision makers. Given that, it's no surprise that AI use cases are growing. According research conducted by Gartner, smart machines will achieve mainstream adoption by 2021, with 30 percent of large companies using AI. These technologies, which can take the form of cognitive computing, machine learning and deep learning, are now tapping advanced capabilities such as image recognition, speech recognition, the use of smart agents, and predictive analytics to reinvent the way organizations do business. Combined with other digital technologies, including the Internet of Things (IoT), a new era of AI promises to transform business.

Time magazine recently wrote that Artificial Intelligence "is one of the hottest, least understood and most debated tech breakthroughs in modern times." You can understand why too. On one hand, AI is already a part of our daily lives in ways we might not even be aware of (think digital assistants like Apple Siri or Google Assistant, sensor data in cars to assist with driving and parking, traffic cameras, etc.) On the other hand, we've been watching sci-fi movies our whole lives where robots always conquer humanity. Gallop recently found that 73% of Americans expect the increased use of AI will eliminate more jobs than it creates, while 63% predict that new tech and smart machines will widen the gap between rich and poor. Is it any surprise then that the future of AI would be a little intimidating?