2018 will see tech focus on making our devices not just smart, but AI smart

In the coming year, artificial intelligence will make its way from centralized servers to our handheld devices and home gadgets, and will become a dominant force in all areas in which huge amounts of data are used, Israeli experts say. AI, once a matter of data and algorithms fed to machines to make them think like a human, is used today for a wide range of applications, from facial recognition to detection of diseases in medical images to global competitions in games such as chess and Go. Get The Start-Up Israel's Daily Start-Up by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up And as the use of AI and machine learning grows, attention turns to making it cheaper, faster, more ubiquitous and available. "Deep learning will enter all fields," said Eyal Miller, the managing director and CEO of Samsung NEXT Tel Aviv, a local investment arm of the Korean giant Samsung Electronics that opened in Israel in 2016 and has invested in 10 Israeli startups, half of them in the field of AI. "AI was already relevant in last few years of development in subcategories, such as natural language processing (NLP), computer vision (CV), and later in cognition, autonomous-ness and assistance-like interfaces. This trend will intensify and AI will be even more important and dominant across more, if not all, fields in 2018."