What Were The Most Significant Machine Learning Advances Of 2018?

What were the most significant machine learning/AI advances in 2018? Let's look at all of this in some more detail. If 2017 was probably the cusp of AI fear mongering and hype (as I mentioned in last year's answer), 2018 seems to have been the year where we have started to all cool down a bit. While it is true that some figures have continued to push their message of AI fear, they have probably been too busy with other issues to make of this an important point of their agenda. At the same time, it seems like the press and others have come to peace with the idea that while self-driving cars and similar technologies are coming our way, they won't happen tomorrow.