4 Ways Artificial Intelligence Will Change Just About Everything

It ain't rocket packs, not quite yet, but it does feel like the future. The smartest brands in history: Google anticipating your search bar entries, Facebook putting together a personalized news feed, Amazon knowing every embarrassing detail of your interest in cookbooks and novelty toilet paper, and Netflix inventing a whole new genre based on your viewing preferences ("Nostalgic Hawaiian Sci-Fi Family Cop Documentaries"). All of these technologies are powered by artificial intelligence: systems based on invisible, complex systems that process more data than has ever been produced -- learning from it, responding, and predicting. As a New York Times story reports, interest in AI in the 1980s created a minor boom. Without any viable business uses, though, it led to an "AI winter."