Sifting through this year's chat bot and AI predictions, it's clear that conversations have finally shifted from human versus computer, (so last century), to the exponential value of people plus machines. If researchers can be believed, a new breed of chat bots has emerged, smarter than ever, with stronger benefits for companies and their customers. Most noticeable was the cascading impact of AI. We can expect a bit of upheaval market-wide and across workforce practices, all the way down to some groundbreaking opportunities for software developers. Starting at the topmost view, IDC predicted the market for automated customer service agents will total $2.2 billion by next year.