Artificial intelligence, machine learning and neural networks are major buzzwords in the SEO community today. Marketers have highlighted these technologies' ability to automate time-consuming tasks at scale, which can lead to more successful campaigns. Yet many professionals often have trouble distinguishing between these concepts. "Artificial intelligence is essentially the term that defines the whole space," said Eric Enge, president of Pilot Holding and former principal at Perficient, in his presentation at SMX Next. "Machine learning is a subset of that [AI] set around specific algorithms."

At a recent Gartner Marketing Symposium, I sat down with Jeremy Muras, SVP of Digital at Lion Capital, and David Hurwitz, former CMO of BloomReach to discuss the future of e-commerce. BloomReach software helps clients, including retailers, deliver more personalized services and experiences and Lion Capital has a portfolio of more than 12 brands, including Kettle Foods, Buscemi, Picard, Perricone Skincare, and Allsaints. Below is their insight regarding the future of e-commerce. In addition to delivering an experience through all screen types, future experiences will be delivered through new touchpoints such as voice, wearables and kiosks. For example, Staples now has AI-powered product search on touch-screen kiosks in their stores.

Ecommerce is a complex, convoluted thing. What started as a way of putting catalogues online has now become something much more involved. In the past we built ecommerce engines out of databases, with a little shopping cart magic wrapped around them. We generated static content for Google to search, and redirected users to our dynamic sites as soon as they clicked on a link. Manual curation was the watchword, much like the paper catalogues the web had replaced.

Ecommerce is a complex, convoluted thing. What started as a way of putting catalogues online has now become something much more involved. In the past we built ecommerce engines out of databases, with a little shopping cart magic wrapped around them. We generated static content for Google to search, and redirected users to our dynamic sites as soon as they clicked on a link. Manual curation was the watchword, much like the paper catalogues the web had replaced.

While Salesforce Einstein will be a powerful tool for B2C marketers and sales acceleration, according to Doug Bewsher, CEO of Leadspace and former CMO of Salesforce, "B2B marketers need a complete solution that works across multiple channels, in their existing marketing stack." Leadspace's more than 120 customers, including seven of the world's 10 largest enterprise software companies, get that today. "When marketers talk about artificial intelligence for B2B, they usually mean the ability to automate the process of finding, scoring and segmenting the best leads to reach the right decision makers," said Jason Seeba, Head of Marketing for BloomReach. "That's exactly what we've been doing at BloomReach for three years with Leadspace." Leadspace also provides a key element for AI success lacking in other solutions: on-demand data, updated in real time.

Silicon Valley veteran Jerry Kaplan came to the Collision tech conference in New Orleans to talk about artificial intelligence, human intelligence, the likelihood of singularity and the future of technology and our lives. But his message was a little more tangible than all that: Don't let the hype around artificial intelligence distract you from the tremendous opportunities and potential pitfalls that lie before us as human beings. We are a long way away from humans merging with machines or machines taking over human existence. "We need to get rid of, in this field, this gee-whiz, apocalyptic gloss," Kaplan, an artificial intelligence pioneer who co-founded Go and Onsale, said speaking from the conference's main stage. "I'm not worried about super-intelligent machines or whether I'm going to live long enough to be uploaded into cyberspace. Such concerns only distract us from the real threats and opportunities that mankind is likely to face."