Let the AI wars begin (via Passle)

It has been clear for some time that the internet majors are battling for dominance in AI and machine learning. Unusually, it is an area that is of key strategic importance to both consumer and enterprise players. So it is not just Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon but also IBM, SAP and Salesforce that are building teams in this space. It is also a global phenomenon with Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, Softbank and Rakuten investing in the area. This has profound implications for early stage AI businesses.