Rise of machines will 'lead to more opportunities, rather than less'

Given these rapid advancements, the tech firm is now looking to apply AI to a range of fields. Image recognition, for instance, can be used for diagnosing medical conditions, said Lily Peng, a trained doctor leading the tech firm's efforts in finding health applications. Such technology can help physicians cut down the "time crunching through data," Peng told CNBC. Then doctors can spend far more time "taking care of the patients … [and] understanding what they want to tailor the best treatment for them." When it comes to finance, HSBC has even taken on Google services to fight money laundering and better calculate risk, said Jia Li, head of R&D for machine learning and artificial intelligence at Google.