Artificial intelligence: A world of knowledge at the touch of our fingertips

AI will become the defining technology of the 21st century and in 30 years from now we will wonder how we ever got along without our seemingly telepathic digital assistants, writes Marc Benioff. OVER the last 30 years, consumers have reaped the benefits of dramatic technological advances. In many countries, most people now have in their pockets a personal computer more powerful than the mainframes of the 1980s. The Atari 800XL computer that I developed games on when I was in high school was powered by a microprocessor with 3,500 transistors; the computer running on my iPhone today has 2bn transistors. Back then, a gigabyte of storage cost 100,000 and was the size of a refrigerator; today it's basically free and is measured in millimetres. Even with these massive gains, we can expect still faster progress as the entire planet -- people and things -- becomes connected.