The advances you hear about most when it comes to AI are the technologies once discussed in science fiction novels: nanobots that root disease out of the body; cars that navigate relentless traffic better than a human driver; scanners that detect potential skin cancer as well as a dermatologist. What you don't hear about nearly as much, however, are the myriad ways that technologies powered by AI are transforming routine processes and common frustrations, and helping businesses handle mundane tasks so employees can focus on more interesting work. There is perhaps no better example of this than content generation software, powered by AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Content generation software is incredibly intuitive and easy to use: most companies can start generating content like BSS reports, e-commerce product descriptions, news content like weather reports, and more within a manner of minutes by inputting basic information via an Excel spreadsheet. The natural language generation (NLG) market includes my company, AX Semantics, as well as other leaders like Arria, Narrative Science, Yseop and Automated Insights.

Unless you've been living under a rock the past 10-plus years, you've likely heard about the enormous difficulties facing the newspaper industry, particularly local journalism, which was once the backbone of communities around the world. The past year resulted in the worst year of job losses at news organizations since 2009 -- the year the recession sent reporters into new careers. Pinnacles of regional journalism -- the place where many reporters spent their entire careers -- are gone. The losses include the fire sale of the entire Knight Ridder chain to McClatchy, the demise of venerable newspapers like The Oakland Tribune in California and more. For years, a website called Newspaper Death Watch tracked each individual newspaper closure.