2017, The Year AI Went Mainstream PYMNTS.com

Artificial intelligence (AI) was one of 2017's hottest industry buzzwords as many have begun turning to machines to solve problems that are simply too large for humans to calculate. Once upon a time, AI was an academic pursuit -- but now it has become more affordable and attainable to pursue on a smaller scale, opening it up to use by a variety of companies for a variety of purposes. Feedzai recently told PYMNTS that Big Data paved the way for this shift, and that by 2020, U.S. companies could be saving as much as $60 billion thanks to the help of AI and machine learning. Business management consultancy Accenture expects AI to add $8.3 trillion in economic activity for the U.S. by 2035. It's clear that this trend is building some significant momentum in the payments space and adjacent industries.