'Intelligent apps': Seattle area at forefront of next big thing

Chances are the entity managing your favorite smartphone app or Internet service isn't a person. Algorithms are setting the price of your airline ticket and hailing your Uber driver. And we're only at the beginning of a transition that is going to make the algorithms behind the software people interact with better able to understand and react to humans, technologists at a gathering of Seattle's burgeoning artificial-intelligence industry said Wednesday. "Every application that is going to get built, starting today and into the future, is going to be an intelligent app," said S. "Soma" Somasegar, a venture partner with Madrona Venture Group and a former Microsoft executive. The event, hosted by Somasegar's Seattle-based venture-capital firm, was held to highlight the cluster of companies in the region working on the cutting edge of intelligent software, including in the discipline dubbed machine learning.