Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a growing topic in the technology and business world. Perhaps more than our personal lives, AI is entering the business world more and more each day. OneReach, an omnichannel automation service, rounded up 10 of the most interesting stats about AI today, and its future. There was more than 300 million in venture capital invested in AI startups in 2014, a 300% increase over the year before. By the end of 2018, "customer digital assistants" will recognize customers by face and voice across channels and partners.

Recommender systems are among the most fun and profitable applications of data science in the big data world. Training data (corresponding to the historical search, browse, purchase, and customer feedback patterns of your customers) can be converted into golden opportunities for ROI (i.e., Return On Innovation and Investment). The predictive analytics tools of data science yield a bonanza of mechanisms to engage your customers and enrich their customer experience. What better loyalty program can there be if not the one that offers the customer what they want before they ask (and sometimes, even before they think of it for themselves). Yes, we know of some cases that have gone bad (such as the secretly pregnant teen and the targeted coupons that Target sent to her father), and we recognize that there is a fine line between being intimate with your customers versus being intimidating, but usually people do like to receive offers for great products that they love.

What if five years from now robo-advisors are a thing of the past? That would seem counter-intuitive given the current trend and the enthusiasm for it, with technology accelerating as quickly as the many startups competing in FinTech and related verticals, and as the industry for robo-advisors is still in the very early stages of development. How then, could the future of automated financial advice be further transformed, taking on a different dimension that makes the current approach obsolete? By 2020, the market for machine learning will reach 40 billion, according to market research firm IDC. Combine that with the potential for more than 20% of financial services companies to be at risk of losing business to FinTech firms by 2020, according to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) report from earlier this month, and a change in the landscape may be underway, accelerating as approaches to technology cause industries to converge.

Young people in India have traditionally had their marriages arranged by their families but now, armed with smartphones and dating apps, some are taking control of their own love lives. Simon Maybin spoke to three couples who met online. Two pairs of eyes meet surreptitiously, then flit away from each other, their owners hoping no-one has noticed. No Bollywood love song plays - in this real-life romance, the only soundtrack is the unmistakable clackety-clack of a train beetling across eastern India. The eyes belong to 22-year-old Varsha and Rahul who is 27.

For five months in 2011, a robot wheeled around an office building at Carnegie Mellon University delivering bananas, cookies, and other afternoon snacks to workers. With wide-set eyes and a pink mouth, Snackbot had a friendly look, but it was prone to mistakes. Long delays in conversations with workers were common. Sometimes the system running Snackbot froze. Still, the workers became comfortable with Snackbot.

Larry Alton is an independent business consultant specializing in social media trends, business and entrepreneurship. Artificial intelligence (AI) is permeating our lives -- just not in the ways we might have expected from reading sci-fi novels or watching robot apocalypse-themed movies. Instead of having live robots walking around, doing our dishes and engaging us in conversation, AI exists primarily in web and mobile apps designed to help us with small intellectual chores, like finding out when the Civil War began or where the nearest taco restaurant is located. Until recently, most of these AI developments have been designed to make consumer processes easier; for example, digital assistants take on the role of an intermediary search engine to process a vocal request and fetch appropriate results. Now, the trend is starting to shift toward app development -- at least in an early stage.

USA TODAY's Ed Baig tests Amazon Echo's personal digital assistant. It's not an easy product to get and you have to wait for an invitation to buy the product. Find out how Alexa relates to Siri, benefits and flaws. In this March 2, 2016 photo, David Limp, Amazon Senior Vice President of Devices, center, speaks behind an Amazon Echo in San Francisco. Amazon.com is introducing two devices, the Amazon Tap and Echo Dot, that are designed to amplify the role that its voice-controlled assistant Alexa plays in people's homes and lives.

By now you've likely heard the story of Tay, Microsoft's social AI experiment that went from "friendly millennial girl" to genocidal misogynist in less than a day. While Tay promised to learn from her interactions with people online, Microsoft apparently hasn't learned anything from the countless headlines about how Twitter users like to talk to visible women – everything from gleefully anarchic trolling to threats and abuse – otherwise it would have seen this coming. At first, Tay's story seems like a fun one for anyone who's interested in cautionary sci-fi. What does it mean for the future of artificial intelligence if a bot can embody the worst aspects of digital culture after just 16 hours online? If any AI is given the vastness of human creation to study at lightning speed, will it inevitably turn evil?

If you think artificial intelligence is something coming in the future, think again: Most people already use artificial intelligence on a daily basis, even if they do not think of it as such. Artificial intelligence or AI simply refers to machine learning put into action toward a goal. When you ask Siri or Cortana to call work or remind you about a dentist appointment, you are relying on artificial intelligence. See what AI is already doing in the modern economy and how future developments in the field of artificial intelligence might impact your life. While we tend to speak about artificial intelligence as if it were one thing, according to AI expert Nick Bostrom, there are three predominant types or flavours of artificial intelligence: The oracle, the genie, and the sovereign.

The potential for artificial intelligence has, for decades, been mostly relegated to the larger-than-life imaginations of Hollywood directors. From Blade Runner to Terminator, it always seems to take place in some distant and dystopian future. And yet, if there's one thing to be learned from Google's recent acquisition of the artificial intelligence startup DeepMind for a reported 400 million, it's that the heyday for this type of technology is not a century or even decades away. The global market for artificial intelligence was valued at 900 million in 2013, according to the market research firm Research and Markets. Meanwhile, a study out of Oxford University last year found that in the near future artificially intelligent technology could take over nearly half of all U.S. jobs.