Artificial intelligence (AI) is finding a home in many applications, from industrial automation to autonomous vehicles. Perhaps its most personal impact, however, is when the AI must interact with humans in providing information and services. For human interaction, the next trend for AI to embrace is the addition of emotional intelligence. When the Amazon Echo first came out in 2014, I viewed it as a perfect example of an IoT device. It required a minimum of onboard hardware capability, achieving most of its impressive capability in understanding and responding to human speech by using cloud-connected resources.

Technology, says Nalbandian, is one of the three pillars that drives Animal Logic – the other two being the group's strong creative department, and its ability to make commercially viable products – and now the technology is driving Animal Logic into a whole new world: artificial intelligence and machine learning. The artificial-intelligence technology, made popular by applications such as Google's Assistant and Amazon's Alexa voice assistants, is already being adopted by the global animation and visual-effects industries to cut out some of the processor-intensive work that computers have to do, and, says Nalbandian, it's going to be adopted at Animal Logic to cut out some of the labour-intensive work that the company's humans have to do, too. In 2018 Animal Logic hired its first chief technology officer, Darin Grant, an industry veteran who was previously in charge of production technology at Steven Spielberg's legendary DreamWorks Animation, and who later went on to work at Google. Speaking from his base in Los Angeles (Animal Logic now has offices in Los Angeles and Toronto, as well as its headquarters at Fox Studios in Sydney), Grant points out that there are computer-related tasks in the animation and visual effects industry that have been moved over to machine learning, simply because the technology is more efficient. Rather than animate characters like i Peter Rabbit /i's Flopsy, Mopsy, Benjamin and Cottontail themselves, Animal Logic's artists may one day be able to teach an AI machine how to do it, leaving the artists free for even more ambitious work.

Editor's Note: This article is part of our 2019 Preview, which looks at the big topics facing the industry next year. The artificial intelligence seeds that were sown this year will start to bear fruit in 2019. Whether it's networks, services, virtualization, or industrial applications, AI is crucial for solving complex problems while enabling new technologies. In order for AI to flourish, there first needs to be underlying machine learning and deeper analytics of data in place, which is well underway this year. AI is key to enabling future services, whether they be 5G, IoT or keeping up with bandwidth demands due to increased video streaming.

According to a recent Spiceworks survey, the number of artificial intelligence projects is going to significantly increase throughout the remainder of 2018 and into 2019. Yet, within some business units, AI remains a mysterious and intimidating technology. So much so that AI is largely ignored by non-IT department decision makers -- even despite knowing it can produce significant strategic and cost saving benefits. With so many business executives taking a negative view of AI, it looks as though it's up to the IT department to help promote AI technologies throughout the entire company. And, what better way to market a new technology than to use it within the IT department itself.

Intelligence is a sometimes effusive concept. In the natural world, for example, intelligence appears in different ways, such as a bat deploying echolocation to navigate in the dark; or an octopus adapting to survive when a predator is nearby. In the silicon world, there are debates as to how "intelligent" machines are, and there are clearly different forms of artificial intelligence are emerging. How do these concepts of natural world intelligence and computer science intelligence inform us about human intelligence. This is something cognitive neuroscientists have been pondering.

To realize the power of artificial intelligence, start with data. Many are talking about artificial intelligence (AI), myself included. AI holds promise for organizations in every industry and every size. Some of the challenge today is how to prepare for AI in the organization and how to plan AI applications when there is a dearth of relevant case studies. The foundation for AI is data.

Toronto, Canada - June 5, 2017 – Maple Leaf Angels (MLA) is proud to announce their members' investment in Canadian start-up Fluent.ai Inc. MLA members participated in a $2.0 million seed funding round involving several other high profile groups including BDC Capital, California's Danhua Capital, 500 Startups Canada and angels from Toronto's Creative Destruction Lab. Graduating from the Montreal incubator TandemLaunch, Fluent.ai is focused on developing highly accurate and flexible voice interfaces for the Internet-of-Things and beyond. "The investors at Maple Leaf Angels quickly recognized the disruptive potential of Fluent.ai's "We are proud to have the involvement of Toronto-based MLA, along with an international group of investors, who believe in the global market opportunity our technology represents".