Age of Aritificial Intelligence: How We're Already Living In a Sci-Fi Future

When we talk about artificial intelligence (AI) most people still imagine robots who can talk, act, and behave (to a certain extent) like a human being -- like a C-3PO (Star Wars), sans the metallic look. Or maybe, a supercomputer that can read human behavior so well that it interacts seamlessly with us, while controlling the system -- like Hal 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey) or Auto (Wall-E). While, arguably, we may not be there yet in terms of our command of AI, we are not that far. AI is definitely the direction tech development is taking, as evidenced by most recent trends, including the formation of a partnership by tech giants to push the frontier of AI. While we may not be nearing the Singularity, AI has taken leaps and bounds of improvement over the past few years alone.