2016: The Rise of the Intelligent (cloud) Machines

Back in those now forgotten days of January, before The Great Inversion of 2016, Zuckerberg was surely kicking his heels when he set himself that "personal challenge" to build a simple AI, which he said would be like: "[l]ike Jarvis from Iron Man - to help run my home and help me with work." Since then, Zuckerberg's challenge has taken on a different, rather more pressing dimension, one which even the deliverance of his actual Jarvis couldn't distract us from: elevating Facebook from the mire of fake news. Whether Zuckerberg was first to the punch or simply the cipher for a trend, he succeed in putting the stamp of AI on 2016 - at least in enterprise circles - and 2016 broadly became the year when anything AI-related could generate headlines. But if your idea for December was for a piece of AI more sophisticated than a voice-activated version of Nest controlling all Zuck's domestic appliances - and not just his central heating - sorry. Like British supporters of the membership of the European Union and those Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton, the year didn't quite go your way.