These Three Companies Are Tops In Artificial Intelligence

Computer software giants Salesforce.com (CRM) and Microsoft (MSFT) are top software picks to prosper from artificial intelligence -- along with a much smaller company, Hortonworks (HDP) -- according to one Wall Street brokerage. "Microsoft is positioned to be the biggest beneficiary to AI in our coverage due to its cloud-computing infrastructure (Azure)," Barclays analyst Raimo Lenschow said in a note to clients. "Salesforce.com is still in the early stages of rolling out Einstein across its entire product portfolio. Hortonworks, along with its partnership with IBM (IBM), gives customers a path to manage and analyze Big Data." At a basic level, artificial intelligence is the use of computer algorithms to attempt to replicate the human ability to learn, reason and make decisions.