The beginning of the new year is a good time to reflect on the events of 2016 and on their forebodings for the coming year and beyond.There has no doubt been a great deal of buzz around artificial intelligence (AI) this year. However, it's difficult to sort through what's hype and what's not to determine where these technologies will actually take us in 2017. While we know the trend will continue in some form, what will be new or different next year? Artificial Intelligence is taking the industry by storm, and not just in "Westworld." This has opened the door to solve computational problems on a scale that no human mind could approach – even in a lifetime. The result is that computers are now able to provide responses that aren't dictated by a collection of "if A, then B" rules, offering results that can only be explained by saying that the computer "understands."