Summary: There are five basic styles of recommenders differentiated mostly by their core algorithms. You need to understand what's going on inside the box in order to know if you're truly optimizing this critical tool. In our first article, "Understanding and Selecting Recommenders" we talked about the broader business considerations and issues for recommenders as a group. In this article we'll cover the five basic types of recommenders and their strengths and weaknesses. Given that Recommenders add 10% to 25% of incremental income to your ecommerce business you need to know exactly how these are working.

From artificial intelligence (AI) that can recognize faces, choose music for you based on your mood, and even drive your car, the technology has come a long way in recent years. Although the concept of intelligent machines has been around since ancient history as part of Greek mythology, only in recent decades has the scientific community made significant advances in practical uses of AI. Consumer applications for AI only took off in the past few years, with the introduction of Amazon's Alexa, the AI that resides in the handy little Bluetooth speaker, Echo. The business world, too, is just starting to explore AI's possible applications in big data analysis for customer relationship management, marketing, and more. Most of the world's tech giants are taking note, exemplified through both internal investments in AI research and development and the acquisition of AI startups.

AI developers are making amazing advances. Witness the excitement around AI's progress in search, cancer diagnosis, genomic medicine, autonomous vehicles, Go, smart homes, machine translation, and even lip reading. Progress in such complex problems raises hopes for the development of general-purpose AI that can be deployed in a wide range of intelligent, open-ended interactions with people like computer interface, customer service, planning and advice. It is easy to imagine an enhanced Apple Siri or Amazon Alexa that engages in conversations with people to answer questions, fulfill commands and even anticipate needs. In fact, unless you watch marketing videos with a very critical eye (like the latest one for Alexa shown below), you might even believe that AI has already reached this point.

AI can improve customer personalization, identify patterns or connections that a human couldn't find, and answer questions about banking relationships in real-time. Firms are already recording amazing success with AI in banking. What is amazing today, however, will be table stakes in the near future. Artificial intelligence (AI) is not new to banking. If we consider that the definition of AI is the ability for machines to interact and learn to do tasks previously done by humans, the history of AI goes back to the 50s in the banking industry.

We're unofficially past the "Happy New Year" stage of 2017; that new year smell has almost entirely worn off, people are back from their sunny vacations in the Caribbean, and many are hard at work. A lot of enterprise tech trends have been predicted to establish themselves this year, but none is as buzzy as artificial intelligence. It has been on the horizon for some time, but 2017 is poised to be the first time that bots at work are natural parts of our everyday workflow. Don't be mistaken, AI has a ways to go, and could accelerate at an unpredictable pace as bots gather more data. But people's hesitancy about committing to bots at work, and questions around the effectiveness of these tools, will gradually melt away.

From artificial intelligence (AI) that can recognize faces, choose music for you based on your mood, and even drive your car, the technology has come a long way in recent years. Although the concept of intelligent machines has been around since ancient history as part of Greek mythology, only in recent decades has the scientific community made significant advances in practical uses of AI. Consumer applications for AI only took off in the past few years, with the introduction of Amazon's Alexa, the AI that resides in the handy little Bluetooth speaker, Echo. The business world, too, is just starting to explore AI's possible applications in big data analysis for customer relationship management, marketing, and more. Most of the world's tech giants are taking note, exemplified through both internal investments in AI research and development and the acquisition of AI startups.

From artificial intelligence (AI) that can recognize faces, choose music for you based on your mood, and even drive your car, the technology has come a long way in recent years. Although the concept of intelligent machines has been around since ancient history as part of Greek mythology, only in recent decades has the scientific community made significant advances in practical uses of AI. Consumer applications for AI only took off in the past few years, with the introduction of Amazon's Alexa, the AI that resides in the handy little Bluetooth speaker, Echo. The business world, too, is just starting to explore AI's possible applications in big data analysis for customer relationship management, marketing, and more. Most of the world's tech giants are taking note, exemplified through both internal investments in AI research and development and the acquisition of AI startups.

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There have been only a handful of gadgets in my life that, upon their arrival, fundamentally altered how I use technology in my life. The Amazon Echo has been one of those products. I've long been a believer in the promise of hands-free computing. The basic concept is promising: Voice control promises the ability to engage with computers while still going about our business as normal. Over the past few years, us humans have become increasingly glued to our screens, even while we're out and about.

A lot can happen in 12 months. Last year, bots exploded into the mainstream, and adoption was rapid. For example, over $1.5 billion was invested in AI startups; Microsoft has over 35,000 bot developers on its platform; The Economist even asked if bots are the new apps. As with any technology that grows so quickly in such a short amount of time, sometimes we need to take a step back. Last year, we saw bots enter the home through the likes of Amazon Echo's Alexa and Google Assistant, and this paved the way for more bots to be introduced to our everyday lives.