2017: The year AI bots learn to react to irrational human behaviour?

Artificial intelligence (AI) had a fair bit of air time last year – from tech imitating art in the recreation of Rembrandt's work, to robots outsmarting humans in technical games. Unsurprisingly, some of the biggest names in technology are working hard to establish what AI can do for them, with Facebook, Amazon Google, IBM and Microsoft setting up a partnership to discover just that. So as we settle into 2017, what can we expect from this fascinating field of technology in the next 12 months? The fun projects and headline grabbing tests have done a great job of raising the profile of artificial intelligence, but this year we're going to start seeing some more interesting movement in real-world applications – with gaming, driverless cars and smart cities standing out as three industries that are ready to be boosted by developments in AI. AI in these industries has tended to focus on limited decision trees, which follow'if X then Y' principals.