Artificial intelligence (AI), technically known as "machine intelligence," is a buzzword in the tech industry today. Businesses are finding innovative ways of mining data to generate insights that help them understand their customers better. In an era in which marketing rules, business leaders see a strong need to personalize marketing content to make it more effective. Step back 10 years, when AI wasn't a buzzword because there wasn't adequate data available to understand people, products, networks and so on. With the explosion in smartphone usage, the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and extensive social media usage, that has changed completely.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, millennials have officially surpassed baby boomers and are now the largest generation in the U.S. Although this is the first time we've officially recognized the demographic shift, companies across the globe have been adjusting to this swing for nearly a decade. With the increasing population of 18-35-year-olds, so too comes the increasing buying power of this critical segment of consumers. For industries focused on customer service, this milestone and the associated implications continue to be verified in the changing demands on customer interactions. An increased reliance on self-service, channels that feature intuitive technology as well as streamlined experiences continue to become increasingly popular.

Finance is integrating artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and predictive analytics at a striking rate for both customer-facing and back-end operations. As PWC has noted, 81% of banking CEOs are concerned about the rate of technological evolution in their industry – and Forbes reports more than $4 billion in newly funded ventures focused on financial services AI applications in the last two years. In one study, 32% of financial services executives were already using AI, and that number will only increase as technologies become more sophisticated. Accenture found that 76% of banking executives intend to deploy AI within the next three years to improve their customer interface. Every day, new technologies are emerging that help companies be more efficient with their operations and deliver a better customer experience.

This article was developed with Kevin Haaland, CTO of The Better Software Company, a SaaS platform to small business and franchise owners. Haaland was formerly the head of IBM's Watson Analytics. From Siri to Alexa, customers are becoming accustomed to AI-powered solutions and soon they will expect the same for their local businesses. Sure, an AI roll-out can be daunting, but by adopting a strategic approach and adding smart software, small businesses will not only be able to differentiate themselves from competitors, but compete with the industry giants as well. While many over complicate the technology, AI's behaviors are predictable – it's merely an advanced system that is trained, not told.

The Perceptor is an artificial–intelligence system designed for your car that is meant to notice your behaviour behind the wheel and adapt the car's …

In the world of global business, it's likely you're going to have to learn how to master the art of digital leadership at some point -- whether that's to manage an entire team of displaced freelancers, to communicate with other offices, or to outsource specific roles. The word virtual sounds pretty scary. Speaking to a friend of mine, he said the idea of a virtual workforce made him feel panicked about "a lack of control", in other words, he envisioned an army of computers taking over every aspect of his life. So let's just make something clear here, the virtual employees that I'm talking about are not robots, they're real people who work remotely. That's something important to bear in mind, as on many levels it's not so different from working with regular employees.

In early May, New York-based tech startup Agolo completed its first seed round of funding, pulling in over $3.5 million in investments from Microsoft Ventures and CRV, with participation from Point72 Ventures and Franklin Templeton. But how did this entrepreneur go from Egypt to snagging such overwhelming corporate interest in the heart of the Big Apple? An interview with Mohamed AlTantawy - Egyptian, AUC graduate, and co-founder of Agolo - reveals how the startup progressed from ideation to actualization. AlTantawy's AI-powered startup provides machine summarisation software that gathers documents from around the web and breaks down key points for the user, eliminating the need to spend hours sifting through information to find the most important details, and works through natural language processing technology. "This is the area of computer science where algorithms try to make sense of human language," the entrepreneur explains.

About 8 months ago I was doing some cooking and had recently purchased an Amazon Echo. I pulled out my phone to Google the safe cooking temperature for pork, something I do literally every time I'm cooking any protein. My Echo is in my kitchen and I saw an opportunity; how nice and easy would it be to just ask Alexa for this information? Amazon had recently opened up the Alexa Skill Developer Kit to the public, so I took a stab at creating a simple skill to fix this problem. I published "Cook Reference" to the Skills store and it was available to the public.

As Dorothy famously said in The Wizard of Oz, there's no place like home. Home is where we go to rest and recharge. We take care of our homes by cleaning and maintaining them, and fixing things that break or go wrong. What if our homes, on top of giving us shelter, could also take care of us in return? According to Chris Arkenberg, this could be the case in the not-so-distant future.

From the moment we humans first imagined having mechanical servants at our beck and call, we've assumed they would be constructed in our own image. Outfitted with arms and legs, heads and torsos, they would perform everyday tasks that we'd otherwise have to do ourselves. Like the indefatigable maid Rosie on "The Jetsons," the officious droid C-3PO in "Star Wars" and the tortured "host" Dolores Abernathy in "Westworld," the robotic helpmates of popular culture have been humanoid in form and function. It's time to rethink our assumptions. A robot invasion of our homes is underway, but the machines -- so-called smart speakers like Amazon Echo, Google Home and the forthcoming Apple HomePod -- look nothing like what we expected.