Artificial intelligence (AI) has come into the mainstream in ways many people don't consciously realize.

A few years ago, Dr. Stephen Hawking opened the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and describedArtificial Intelligence (AI)as "either the best, or the worst, thing ever to happen to humanity." In the race for the next great marketing technology, there is a school of thought that has immediately identified the value of and begun to apply it to develop media strategy. Even more are asking: Can we our way to brand building or driving loyalty? There is a natural tension between and humanity and it centers on empathy. Will a machine appreciate an individual's circumstances, which change continuously and at any moment in time, then apply the appropriate sense of urgency to a problem?

A few years ago, Dr. Stephen Hawking opened the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and described Artificial Intelligence (AI) as "either the best, or the worst, thing ever to happen to humanity." Words like that coming from Hawking hung heavy in the air as they conjured the wildly utopian/dystopian themes that play so well in Hollywood and science fiction. AI is viewed as a dynamic but mostly misunderstood technological breakthrough. In the race for the next great marketing technology, there is a school of thought that has immediately identified the value of AI and begun to apply it to develop media strategy. Even more are asking: Can we AI our way to brand building or driving loyalty?

Can artificial intelligence begin to make a dent in the bloated healthcare system? Here are a few ways you could see that tech first. Healthcare has grown increasingly sophisticated, but will remain perhaps one of the most people-intensive businesses around. Throw lots of ever-changing technology in with large essential workforces and ever-tighter margins, and you have a system that continues to groan under its own weight. Can artificial intelligence begin to make a dent in this bloated system?

For those thinking of law school, keep in mind that technology may revolutionize the profession before you earn that J.D. In the research-driven, labor-intensive legal profession, the age-old question of man vs. machine is being answered as some law firms have begun to use an "artificially intelligent attorney" to research and hash out legal issues – a trend that legal minds predict will displace some human lawyers. Called ROSS, the robot lawyer uses IBM's cognitive computer program Watson to learn from experience to gain speed when answering legal questions, according to its creators. It can read through the entire body of law to return a cited answer, monitor the law to recognize other court decisions that could affect the case at hand, and even glean conclusions from more than one billion legal documents per second, they add. Its creation comes on the heels of a 2014 analysis that predicted artificial intelligence will cause "structural collapse" of law firms by 2030. As for the robo-lawyer, one law professor said the technology will displace some workers.