How will open source AI change the tech industry?

After years in the labs, artificial intelligence (AI) is being unleashed at last. Google, Microsoft and Facebook have all made their own AI APIs open source in recent months, while IBM has opened Watson (pictured above) for business and Amazon has purchased AI startup Orbeus. These announcements have not drawn much media attention, but are hugely significant. "In the long run, I think we will evolve in computing from a mobile-first world to an AI-first world," says Google CEO Sundar Pichai. What does the appearance of AI bots and machine learning on the open market mean for business, IT, big data, and for sellers of physical hardware? The AI APIs now opening up are essentially free platforms on which companies can build incredibly powerful analytics tools.