Even as global businesses continue to embrace big data and data analytics, the challenge many face is: how to derive the most value from the big data. The latter refers to very large sets of data that cannot be handled with traditional methods. With artificial intelligence (AI) & its subset machine learning (ML) becoming mainstream, i.e. moving from the laboratory to the commercial market, one option companies today have to handle their voluminous data is machine learning. Analytics has moved on from the traditional methods to automated solutions for better business intelligence. In fact, it's gone beyond the scope of a standalone human analyst.

The annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is the premier U.S. gathering for artificial intelligence (AI) theoreticians and practitioners. On the commercial side, AAAI is the only event with a comprehensive exhibition that includes most significant U.S. vendors of AI products and services. In 1986 some 5100 people attended AAAI- a very good showing considering that the 1987 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) drew about the same number of people even with its substantial international support. The commercial exhibits at AAAI-86 (110 exhibitors; 80,000 square feet) gave us opportunity to take a snapshot of an industry in transition.