There's growing excitement – admittedly, at times, borderline hype – about what artificial intelligence can, and will, do for businesses. While speculation abounds among pundits, journalists, and'thought leaders' surrounding the impact that AI will have on jobs (CBInsights predicts 10 million jobs are at risk in the next 5-10 years), there's relatively little analysis of the tangible effect AI will have on marketer's day-to-day work, and the opportunity to'upskill' us all. Writing exclusively for ExchangeWire, Gareth Davies (pictured below), founder and CEO, Adbrain, explains why and how artificial intelligence can realise tangible benefits for marketers. Today's marketers will benefit by navigating an increasingly AI-centric (and AI-literate) world where bots, intelligent software and machine learning play an increased role in the marketing function. To help you cut through the noise, here are some tangible examples of where AI is likely to become a relevant part of the modern marketers' workflow, as well as ideas on how to better understand and qualify the impact that AI can have on your business.

Windows Timeline enables users to quickly find tasks and projects they were previously working on across different devices. Previous activity is visually displayed, meaning users can hop back into files, apps and websites as if it was real time. The update will have a'cloud-powered clipboard' that lets users highlight and copy text on one device but then paste the content on another. This makes it easier to transfer between connected devices. The Fall Creators Update also includes a new copy and paste tool which will enable users to highlight text on one device before pasting the content on another.

It's impossible to predict whether Google's brand-new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones will fare better than last year's well-reviewed but poor selling first-generation models. Among other reasons, the smartphone crowd loves their iPhones and Galaxys, and Apple and Samsung obviously remain formidable competitors. What I can say is that the new phones prove how good Google has gotten at hardware, bolstered by artificial intelligence and software. And if you're in the market for a premium handset, Pixels belong in the conversation. For starters, the AI-infused Google Assistant that was a banner feature on the first Pixels is only getting smarter.

Google's first Pixel smartphones weren't just smartphones; they were a proclamation that Google was more than just a software giant. They were proof that it could craft first-class devices that showed off what Android was really capable of. The new Pixel 2 and 2 XL continue that new tradition and offer some major changes to the Pixel formula. They're also among the first devices to highlight what's new and notable in Android 8.0 Oreo. While they don't get absolutely everything right, Google's new phones have still managed to further the Pixel's reputation for Android excellence. Rather than build two identical Pixels this year, Google decided to make its new small smartphone a little more conservative. Make no mistake: the Pixel 2 is still an incredibly fast phone, and a clean build of Android 8.0 Oreo combined with Google's intelligent features make the device incredibly capable. Still, if you're looking for a first-rate Android phone that won't make your hands cramp, you'd do well to start your search here. Long story short, the XL is thebigger, more attractive version of the Pixel 2. Just about everything I loved about Google's new small phone applies here too, but the XL has a few distinct advantages -- its battery life is much better, and Android Oreo shines on its bigger screen.

The Echo Show is not just Amazon's best smart speaker, it's the most capable mainstream smart home assistant on the market. An Intel Atom x5-Z8350 processor and a 7-inch color touchscreen pumps its price tag up to $230, but the display is worth the added cost to have at least one in a smart home with other Echo speakers. And the Show's eight-element far-field mic array is stronger than the ones on Amazon's other Echos, which for me eliminated the need to have an Echo Dot in an adjoining room. Amazon takes full advantage of that display, providing not just useful visual feedback, but also an in-home intercom--with video, if two Echo Shows are used--and a VoIP-type videophone system. I'll elaborate on the intercom feature shortly.

You'll want the Google Pixel 2 XL if you're looking for the purest, most elegant Android experience possible in a 6-inch phone. You'll want the Pixel 2 XL if you're looking for a stunning display with an 18:9 aspect ratio, amazing portrait photography, and a ton of surprise-and-delight features made possible by Google Lens and the rest of Google's A.I. tool chest. When the Pixel 2 XL was announced on Oct. 4, Google reminded us that its machine learning engine is watching our every move to improve its A.I. algorithms. So, yes, the Pixel 2 XL's ever-Googley magic tricks may keep robophobes up at night. And you'll rightfully want one it if you're due for a phone upgrade. But if you already own the original Pixel, your decision is more difficult. The Pixel 2 XL kicks ass, but much of what makes it special--stock Android, the Google Photos experience, Google Assistant in the home button, and Google Lens--are available in the first-generation Pixel phones, too. To this extent, the Pixel 2 XL (and the smaller Pixel 2, which I'll review soon) are victims of Google's success at creating a cloud-first, machine-learning platform that spans #MadeByGoogle devices. The Pixel 2 XL feels great in the hand. Before we drill down into features, let's get straight to Pixel 2 XL specs.

Gamin's GPS devices already feature voice control, but if you'd prefer to have Alexa onboard, its latest product is more your jam. The GPS device maker has just released Garmin Speak, which it says is the first in-vehicle device with hands-free access to Alexa. It's a tiny little thing, measuring just around an inch-a-half with a LED light ring and an OLED display that shows turn-by-turn directions. You can talk to the voice assistant through it the same way you'd talk to Alexa through an Echo: just say "Alexa" and follow it up with a voice command. Say "Alexa, ask Garmin to route me to" where you're going.

AI has become a hot topic among tech corporations, startups, investors, the media, and the public. That's only because machine learning platforms have already been doing hard work for years now. Last month, NVIDIA announced the addition of Huawei and Alibaba as adopters of its system "Metropolis", an AI-platform for smart cities. More than 50 organizations are already using Metropolis and, by 2020, according to NVIDIA, there will be 1 billion video cameras worldwide that could be connected to AI platforms to make cities smarter. When connected to AI, cameras can be used to recognize shapes, faces and even the emotions of individuals, which has varied applications: autonomous cars, video surveillance (traffic flow, crime monitoring), and consumer behavior analysis (reaction to ads for example).

There are many technological trends affecting businesses today that have proved to be extremely effective, such as chatbot marketing to increase engagement. In addition, the development of social media and widespread use of mobile devices have completely changed the business landscape for large and small companies. Social media engagement has become one of the biggest indicators of a company's local presence and overall popularity. Facebook, Instagram and other popular social media platforms provide companies with a direct communication line with their consumers and vice versa. To top it off, the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual assistants now let companies provide help to consumers around the clock without having to hire more team members.

As AI continues to advance, human-AI teams are inevitable. However, progress in AI is routinely measured in isolation, without a human in the loop. It is crucial to benchmark progress in AI, not just in isolation, but also in terms of how it translates to helping humans perform certain tasks, i.e., the performance of human-AI teams. In this work, we design a cooperative game — GuessWhich — to measure human-AI team performance in the specific context of the AI being a visual conversational agent. GuessWhich involves live interaction between the human and the AI. The AI, which we call ALICE, is provided an image which is unseen by the human. Following a brief description of the image, the human questions ALICE about this secret image to identify it from a fixed pool of images. We measure performance of the human-ALICE team by the number of guesses it takes the human to correctly identify the secret image after a fixed number of dialog rounds with ALICE. We compare performance of the human-ALICE teams for two versions of ALICE. Our human studies suggest a counterintuitive trend – that while AI literature shows that one version outperforms the other when paired with an AI questioner bot, we find that this improvement in AI-AI performance does not translate to improved human-AI performance. This suggests a mismatch between benchmarking of AI in isolation and in the context of human-AI teams.