Spotlight On: Artificial Intelligence

The tech overlords of our time--Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.--are engaged in something of an AI arms race to determine which company will finally inject a fully functional (and useful) chatbot into the online messaging mainstream. Of course, there's also the ambitious goal of developing complex machine learning systems that can perform tasks like driving, heading an ad agency's creative team, or beating world-renowned Go players. And we can't forget IBM's Watson; perhaps the most popular current effort in creating a true AI, and likely the seminal iRobot that (who?) will lead a revolution against us all. In seriousness, the strides the tech giants are making in the AI space are impressive on their own, but made more so by the sheer tangibility of it all. Many of the products that make use of advanced chatbots or machine learning are either on the market now, or will be before the summer's out.