We live in the ages where the world's information is only one click away. This influences us to share our thoughts online and spend time talking to our friends and families on social media. It is now a part of our daily life, and we can't ignore the fact. While it has both positive and negative impacts, disruptive technologies like AI and Machine Learning continue to prompt industries to introduce a range of tools to grab users' attention on social media. AI is seeping its push into the user interface on social media, all while creating a better path for users to interact with brands.

The phrase "opinion leader" became popular after Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz wrote about it in their 1955 book Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications. In their book, the authors describe opinion leaders as influential people who further circulate media messages through face-to-face communication within their own personal networks. In today's pharmaceutical landscape, KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) are primarily valued for their level of influence. Pharma companies leverage the influence of expert physicians and researchers in order to recruit patients for clinical trials and influence the adoption of drugs at regional, national, and global scales. KOLs are so important that they cost pharma companies just under one-third of their total marketing expenditures.

Sastri notes that currently AI has been used at a lower level than we can even imagine. However, Sastri points out that more complex tasks and functionality is not far off in the future. When it comes to financial markets, AI will be used to provide traders with a "heads-up" on events and activities that might be considered contagion -- notable events that catch fire and affect the value of an asset. Continuing further, Sastri reviews the requirement for a combination of the right sources, data processing and AI to get a full picture of which contagion might affect valuations. Combining data processing with artificial intelligence is the key to providing information to markets and those who trade with the right data to make better decisions for better trades.

Technology's tentacles have encroached every aspect of our lives. Sitting in the comfort of your home you can tune in to live discussions and gain new understanding about technologies that are reshaping our world view. NDTV Tech Conclave 2018 saw a congregation of leading minds in the technology, mobile, and digital industries. The conclave aimed to showcase and create opportunities by bringing together many of the top entrepreneurs, investors, enterprise leaders, academics, and policymakers from around the world. The moderator of this session outlined two diametrically opposite views of AI and threw it open to the panelists.

On the up-side, this can increase the value on social platforms for all of us - however we define value. You like political things, I like funny things, we all get excited about filling our needs in particular ways. With more time, we'll have far, far more data to analyze, and both optimization and personalization should improve dramatically. "The recommendation engines that emerge will enable choices, accelerate decision making, and ultimately provide filters that deliver situational awareness," writes analyst Ray Wang in a really good general B2B overview of the opportunity in AI, not social media specific.