Thanks to the proliferation of data and advances in computing, the next decade promises to bring huge advances in AI. This week, Google showcased a variety of AI research projects it's pursuing as an "AI first" company. In some cases, such as Google's translation research, the commercial applications for Google already exist. What is AI? Everything you need to know about Artificial Intelligence In all cases, according to Google AI chief Jeff Dean, Google's AI researchers are focused on the bigger picture. "We try to do long-term work, and often that provides an arc of direction, where along the path of an eight- to 10-year journey we throw off useful results [for commercial applications]... and then continue to work on those harder problems," Dean said to reporters at Google's San Francisco office.

Artificial intelligence holds a great deal of promise for medical professionals who want to get the most out of medical imaging. However, when it comes to studying brain tumors, there's an inherent problem with the data: abnormal brain images are, by definition, uncommon. New research from Nvidia aims to solve that. A group of researchers from Nvidia, the Mayo Clinic, and the MGH & BWH Center for Clinical Data Science this weekend are presenting a paper on their work using generative adversarial networks (GANs) to create synthetic brain MRI images. GANs are effectively two AI systems that are pitted against each other -- one that creates synthetic results within a category, and one that identifies the fake results.