AI Farming: Bots are now totally capable of growing our food. In fact, it is already happening. We can look forward to a future where we grow potatoes in the Metaverse while bots grow the real deal in the field. What does the future hold for farming? From here, the road ahead is exciting.

What's shiny and new one day can quickly become a relic of the past when the next innovation or iteration comes along. Unfortunately, enterprises don't have the luxury of simply plugging and unplugging technology into their digital ecosystem the way we as consumers unplugged our Sony Walkmans in favor of iPods and iPhones. This is especially true as we look to artificial intelligence (AI). AI has the potential to produce game-changing business outcomes based on data stored in legacy systems--if enterprises can figure out how to make it work. When AI works in an enterprise, it goes beyond generating insights that sit in isolation to actually automating actions based on those insights.

Self-driving cars are set to disrupt transportation as we know it, and the basis for that is Artificial Intelligence (AI). In the age of autonomous vehicles we will tell our car something like "let's go pick up Jane" and the car will use AI to figure out that Jane is the young daughter who needs to be picked up from kindergarten which ends in 15 minutes time, and derive the destination and best route to get there safely and on time, including all real-time driving decisions to follow law and safety of passengers and surrounding (to get a taste of just how complex that is, check out Tesla's autonomous driving experiments). The same concept is now applied in networking to achieve self-driving networks. While traditionally configuring networks has been very complex, laborsome and detail-heavy, new concepts such as Software Defined Networking and Intent-Based Networking arise to enable self-driving networks. In such networks, the operator will only have to provide the "how" (the intent) and let AI figure out the "how".

The telephone remains as the main platform used by consumers to connect with companies they have business with. In fact, a recent research conducted by Forrester revealed that the phone is still the most widely-used customer service channel – with 73% of customers calling into the call center. In a separate study from Arizona State University, the prominence of the telephone was also indicated: Customers are 11 times more driven to use a telephone to complain when they are angry. However, in today's high-touch constantly connected world where information spreads rapidly, the term using a call center in customer service may seem like a thing of the past. These days, a lot of organizations and companies are looking to the next big things in the customer service technology and communication channels – such as the Artificial Intelligence and Bots.

The last quarter of 2016 and the first quarter of 2017 have been a phase dedicated to Artificial Intelligence (AI). All major internet giants are launching voice assistants for the users. By the end of 2017 many, more big brands will come with their own assistants or bots which will not only do task as per the directions but will learn from the user, data and behavior. AI and Bots are the future and the paving stones for a virtual robotic world. Wouldn't it be great if someone reminds you of some important information you are missing or is even capable of doing something on behalf of you?

This sounds like science-fiction, I know, but so did talking to a digital assistant in a powerful pocket-sized touch screen computer fifteen years ago. As the data has shown the current, "warehouse of apps" app model does not work efficiently with human behavior. The 2014 Comscore Mobile App Report shows that 7% of the smartphone using population downloads 50% of the apps. When incorporated into the rest of the population that averages to just one download per user per month. This data is supported by app discovery activity data that reveals a mere 27% of the smartphone using population (millennials) uses the app store to discover apps as shown in the 2015 Comscore Mobile App Report.

IF you were to mention artificial intelligence (AI) or bots in a conversation about science with the average person, they would consider these to be more science fiction than accepted science. The average person would be painfully wrong, as these concepts have seen measured success in the past half-century. However, their expected impact on our lives has not met the demands of the general public who envision more than it is capable of just yet, but the science in support of it grows each day. Artificial intelligence by the cinematic definition is a complete conscious entity unnaturally created through science. Similarly, bots are defined in public opinion by characters such as the Nanny robot in the cartoon The Jetsons. Fundamentally, AI is the creation of a programme or machine that can exhibit a cognitive function or effectively think for itself.