You own a small insurance company that sells accident protection and marine policies. Your business is growing quickly but faces one key challenge: There's no electric light. Your productivity rises and sets with the sun. Then you get word of a new set of interlocking technologies that promises to transform daily life. It all begins with Thomas Edison's light bulb and the electric current that turns it on, courtesy of a power utility's centrally located generator in New York City.

"How are you doing today?" "What's going on in your world right now?" "How do you feel?" These might seem like simple questions a caring friend would ask. However, in the present day of mental health care, they can also be the start of a conversation with your virtual therapist. Innovative technology is offering new opportunities to millions of Americans affected by different mental health conditions. Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) are bringing psychotherapy to more people who need it.

The United States appears poised to heighten scrutiny of Chinese investment in Silicon Valley to better shield sensitive technologies seen as vital to U.S. national security, current and former U.S. officials tell Reuters. Of particular concern is China's interest in fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, which have increasingly attracted Chinese capital in recent years. The worry is that cutting-edge technologies developed in the United States could be used by China to bolster its military capabilities and perhaps even push it ahead in strategic industries. The U.S. government is now looking to strengthen the role of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the inter-agency committee that reviews foreign acquisitions of U.S. companies on national security grounds. An unreleased Pentagon report, viewed by Reuters, warns that China is skirting U.S. oversight and gaining access to sensitive technology through transactions that currently don't trigger CFIUS review.

The technological ecosystem needed to enable AI has finally formed. And, just like a perfect storm, AI's timeline and path is hard to predict and many business owners don't know whether to closely follow and obsess with it or hope it passes them by altogether. What comprises the ecosystem needed to set the growth curve sharply upwards, as in the classic hockey stick analogy we all know very well? First, vast and rich data sets are forming rapidly. Big data require hefty processing power and storage, which is becoming more cost-effective and accessible every day, even to small companies.

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer science fiction. And like any game-changing technology, AI is not exactly what we expected – at least not yet.

Convolutional encoders for neural MT go as far back as (Kalchbrenner, Blunsom 2013) and convolutional encoders decoders in LM and MT appear first in (Kalchbrenner et al, 2016) and with pooling also in (Bradbury et al, 2016).

There is a critically important dialogue going on across the extended global automotive industry about the future evolution of transportation and mobility. This debate is driven by the convergence of a series of industry-changing forces and mega-trends (see figure 1). Innovative technologies are changing how companies develop and build vehicles. Electric and fuel-cell powertrains tend to offer greater propulsion for lower energy investment at lower emission levels.1 New, lightweight materials enable automakers to reduce vehicle weight without sacrificing passenger safety.2 Further breakthroughs are advancing the introduction of autonomous vehicles; increasingly, daily news reports suggest that driverless cars will soon become a commercial reality.3 We have already seen rapid advances in the "connected car"--innovations that integrate communications technologies and the Internet of Things to provide valuable services to drivers.4

Understanding how different factors affect the supply chain remains a top priority for research firms around the globe. This unwavering drive represents the continued interest in advancing today's capabilities with state-of-the-art technology and adaptability. From artificial intelligence to refocusing on procurement, the state of supply chain continued to explode throughout 2016, and you need to understand why. Artificial intelligence (AI) is among the most well-recognized ideas in science fiction. However, it's true applications are becoming more apparent daily.

Adoption of modern technology like Artificial Intelligence by businesses is low. However, it is anybody's guess that such state-of-the-art technology would only make businesses more user-friendly, simpler and automated. Operational efficiency would improve and business processes would be streamlined. In fact, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is optimizing system-operating models and transforming business processes for enterprises and organizations across the globe. However, according to a recent survey, the number of business units and MSMEs utilizing such modern tech tools, particularly in India, is quite low.

The AI-related stories landing in your Facebook and Twitter feeds are mostly about doomsday Artificial General Intelligence scenarios. While interesting, they distract from the more pressing issue at hand. AI-driven automation will create new jobs and help people to be more productive, but the painful truth is that AI-driven automation of both specific work activities and entire jobs will be incredibly disruptive to hundreds of millions of people around the globe. The McKinsey Global institute and The Obama Whitehouse, respectively, believe that "60% of all occupations have at least 30% of activities that are technically automate-able," and "47% of U.S. jobs are at risk of being replaced by AI technologies" over the next 10–20 years. When a company stands to gain enormous financial benefits from automating a certain work task, and said task is automate-able with current artificial intelligence techniques, you can expect for it to be automated quickly.