What every manager should know about artificial intelligence

For Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and the like, Computex in Taipei this week is the Oscars of the information technology world. There is the flurry of product hype, from virtual reality (VR) headsets to the internet of things (IoT) to artificial intelligence (AI) devices. One big topic that everyone has in mind is: machine learning. The idea of a thinking machine goes back at least as far as 1950, when British computer scientist Alan Turing famously wrote that if a machine was indistinguishable from a human during text-based conversations, then it was "thinking." Naturally, big tech giants such as Google, Facebook, and IBM, have all set up corporate labs to advance machine learning.