5 predictions for artificial intelligence for for the coming year

Artificial intelligence (AI) has officially gone mainstream. Industry research firm Gartner named AI as its number one strategic technology for a second year in a row. The acquisitions race among giants like Google, IBM, Salesforce and Apple to purchase private AI companies keeps heating up -- 2016 alone saw 40 AI-related acquisitions and our own research found that 62% of large enterprises will be using AI-technologies by 2018. Since everyone seems to be talking about AI broadly, we focused our predictions this year on what we see happening with communications and AI. See also: Will artificial intelligence mean the end of cyberthreats?