You hear a lot these days about the sheer transformative power of AI. There's pure intelligence: DeepMind's algorithms readily beat humans at Go and StarCraft, and DeepStack triumphs over humans at no-limit hold'em poker. Often, these silicon brains generate gameplay strategies that don't resemble anything from a human mind. There's astonishing speed: algorithms routinely surpass radiologists in diagnosing breast cancer, eye disease, and other ailments visible from medical imaging, essentially collapsing decades of expert training down to a few months. Although AI's silent touch is mainly felt today in the technological, financial, and health sectors, its impact across industries is rapidly spreading.

Convergence is accelerating disruption… everywhere! Exponential technologies are colliding into each other, reinventing products, services, and industries. As AI algorithms such as Siri and Alexa can process your voice and output helpful responses, other AIs like Face can recognize faces. And yet others create art from scribbles, or even diagnose medical conditions. Let's dive into AI and convergence.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has flown beneath the radar for the first six decades of its development, and just recently it's exploded into public consciousness, according to Neil Jacobstein. The AI & Robotics co-chair at Singularity University and former CEO of Teknowledge Corporation believes the combination of humans, AI, and good business processes is disrupting the very ground we stand on in financial technology (Fintech) and beyond as we already use machine learning tools to augment the power of the human brain. At Singularity University's Exponential Finance conference today, Jacobstein pointed to examples like Google's AlphaGo wiping the floor with world champion Lee Sedol, and how quickly the world shifted from a state of shock to seizing the scientific opportunity. Soon after seeing its human champion so thoroughly beaten by a machine, South Korea announced a plan to spend $840 million by 2020 to boost AI research and development (R&D), and to create a research institute where six of the country's highest profile tech companies--Samsung, LG, SK Telecom SKT, KT, Naver, and Hyundai--will each invest up to $3 billion in AI R&D. He also mentioned Facebook's DeepText AI language comprehension and categorization, as well as Viv, saying that calling it another personal assistant misses the point.

This editorial introduces the articles published in the AI Magazine special issue on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI), based on a selection of papers that appeared in the IAAI-05 conference, which occurred July 9-13 2005 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. IAAI is the premier venue for learning about AI's impact through deployed applications and emerging AI application technologies. Case studies of deployed applications with measurable benefits arising from the use of AI technology provide clear evidence of the impact and value of AI technology to today's world. The emerging applications track features technologies that are rapidly maturing to the point of application. The six articles selected for this special issue are extended versions of papers that appeared at the conference.

As in past years, papers were solicited in two categories: (1) deployed applications and (2) emerging applications and technologies. Deployed application papers describe systems that have been in use for at least several months by individuals or organizations other than their developers, have measurable benefits, and incorporate AI technologies. Emerging applications are technologies and systems that are close to deployment and clearly show an innovative implementation of AI technologies. These papers are of value not only to other application developers looking for guidance in applying various techniques to their own applications but also to researchers who need to understand the unique technical challenges provided by real-world problems. For IAAI-2002, we received 54 submissions, containing a wealth of outstanding applications and emerging technology papers (15 deployed and 39 emerging).

Artificial Intelligence – Neil Jacobstein recently gave an information-packed talk at the Exponential Manufacturing conference on how artificial intelligence is redefining the future of work, production, supply chain, and design. Singularity University recently held the Exponential Manufacturing Summit with some of the world's brightest executives, entrepreneurs and investors being led through an intensive three-day program in Boston to prepare them for the changes brought forth by unstoppable technological progress. See the full lecture below. At the Summit, Neil Jacobstein chairs the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Track at Singularity University, explored how exponential technologies including artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing, exponential energy, and bio manufacturing are continually redefining the future of work, production, supply chain, and design. "What you'll see when you look behind the scenes of most AI startups and even research labs is an emerging symbiosis between human intelligence and machine intelligence."

Artificial intelligence has already been hailed as the fourth industrial revolution and is poised to shake up the global economy. Baidu's chief scientist, Andrew Ng, and chair of the artificial intelligence and robotics department at Silicon Valley think tank Singularity University, Neil Jacobstein sat down with The Wall Street Journal's Scott Austin to discuss the opportunities and challenges of the technology. Whilst many predict that AI will majorly affect the business world in the future, Ng thinks that we are seeing the effects now. "AI is creating a lot of new opportunities. Just as about 100 years ago electrification changed every single major industry, I think we're in the phase where AI will change pretty much every major industry."

Controlling artificial intelligence devices by voice will come soon said AI expert Neil Jacobstein. Artificial intelligence is set to transform the world, the audience at a Christchurch conference on the future was told. Artificial intelligence (AI) "allows us to expand the range of the possible, to do things we never thought we could do before," said Neil Jacobstein who chairs the artificial intelligence and robotics track at Singularity University, a think tank based in California. "AI is not just "faster, better, cheaper, it's different," he said. Students will soon have personalised one-to-one AI tutors that will follow them through formal education and into adult life, he said.

A top-selling holiday gift was the AI-powered Amazon Echo; IBM Watson was used to diagnose cancer; and Google DeepMind's system AlphaGo cracked the ancient and complex Chinese game Go sooner than expected. And progress continues in 2017. Neil Jacobstein, faculty chair of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at Singularity University, hit the audience at Singularity University's Exponential Manufacturing Summit with some of the more significant updates in AI so far this year. DeepMind, for example, recently outlined a new method called Elastic Weight Consolidation (EWC) to tackle "catastrophic forgetting" in machine learning. The method helps neural networks retain previously learned tasks.

Artificial intelligence has already been hailed as the fourth industrial revolution and is poised to shake up the global economy. Baidu's chief scientist, Andrew Ng, and chair of the artificial intelligence and robotics department at Silicon Valley think tank Singularity University, Neil Jacobstein sat down with The Wall Street Journal's Scott Austin to discuss the opportunities and challenges of the technology. Whilst many predict that AI will majorly affect the business world in the future, Ng thinks that we are seeing the effects now. "AI is creating a lot of new opportunities. Just as about 100 years ago electrification changed every single major industry, I think we're in the phase where AI will change pretty much every major industry." Citing the decades of hype surrounding artificial intelligence Ng said that it's different this time.