Semantic technology underpins conversational AI, other big data uses

After a long hibernation, artificial intelligence has awoken and seems energized to finally prove its value to businesses. One of the components underlying AI's resurgence is semantic technology, which helps users understand text, speech and relationships between data elements. And it isn't just AI -- semantic methodologies also support a variety of other applications in big data environments. The buzz: Like AI, semantic technology has hovered on the fringe of mainstream IT consciousness for years. It first came to life in 2001 under the banner of the Semantic Web, a concept based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF), which structures data in graph form.