Today, bigness means the retailer's machine learning efforts benefit from data generated by people who shop at Walmart every week and activities around the tens of millions of items on its website. "Scarcity of data is what makes artificial intelligence really hard," Mr. King told Ms. Castellanos. "If you have volumes of data like we do, you can really apply it much quicker across the board," he said. Mr. King shared his take on several technologies, some not quite ready for prime time. Overseas traders charged with hacking SEC's public filings site.

A natural reaction today may be to chalk up the sale of a smudgy-looking portrait as the latest sign that AI, no longer satisfied with taking jobs, is now moving on to creating artwork and general AI is here and don't forget Skynet, etc. But leave it to Artnet, an art market website, to provide a clear description of Generative Adversarial Networks, an AI system of algorithms and two neural networks used to generate photorealistic images. It also put artificial intelligence's potential in context for artists and business practitioners alike. "We would do better to stop asking where the boundary line lies between human artists' agency and that of AI toolsets, and instead start asking whether human artists are using AI to plumb greater conceptual and aesthetic depths than researchers or coders," Artnet writes. In art and in business, everyone would be better served if AI was treated as a tool, with benefits and risks noted.

"One problem, say roboticists, is that robots often can't'see' behind leaves or reach behind a tree branch without potentially harming themselves or the fruit they're trying to grab," they report. "Roboticists are trying to solve these problems by enhancing the quality of sensors that allow robots to understand and navigate their surroundings." "RootAI, a Somerville, Mass., startup that is testing a prototype tomato picker, has started talking to seed developers who want to design crops that are more amenable to robotic harvesters." California's Driscoll's Inc., the world's largest berry distributor, is looking at raising its growing beds, making it easier for both robots and humans to pick fruit. HSBC's robot is boosting foot traffic in New York.

How certain one is in the belief that artificial intelligence is set to take over the world may depend on how close their career is positioned vis-à-vis the technology. In Brooklyn on Tuesday at a conference hosted by Ai4 Media., machine learning experts from Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley shared their perspective. CIO Journal's Sara Castellanos was there to take the view from the AI front lines. Great for detecting anomalies, but… Today, snippets of code do much of the job of a trader, as WSJ has previously reported, but when it comes to answering questions that need contextual understanding and financial acumen, AI algorithms are easily fooled, said Ambika Sukla, executive director of machine learning and AI at Morgan Stanley. "It's not clear that these models are learning or just memorizing the data," he said.

Artificial intelligence can't replace your doctor yet but it can help diagnose illness. Pfizer Inc. is expanding its AI-enabled analytics toolset to catch diseases that are easy to miss because they're rare or disguised by other illnesses a patient may have. The cloud-based system, called Virtual Analytics Workbench, brings together physicians notes, lab reports, demographics and other patient particulars, as CIO Journal's Sara Castellanos reports. Health care presents exciting opportunities to apply AI, but we're still far from Dr. McCoy's tricorder instant diagnostic device on Star Trek. One obstacle slowing AI's progress generally is a lack of suitable data with which to train algorithms, according to Kate Crawford, a distinguished research professor at New York University and a principal researcher at Microsoft Research New York, She spoke at the WSJ Future of Everything Festival this week.

China has made known its desire to become an AI powerhouse. Russia's Vladimir Putin last year equated AI dominance with ruling the world. On Thursday, the White House, a little late to the great game, hosted a meeting involving representatives from about 40 companies, including Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. as well as Ford Motor Co. and Walmart Inc., to discuss how the U.S. could maintain its lead in AI. The gathering followed a template for meetings of this type: Support was offered, 'atta-boys' were distributed. Still, the meeting acknowledged that AI, increasingly, has become tied to something larger.

Companies are working hard to figure out how to extract value from artificial intelligence (more on that below). Some promising early efforts can be found in sales, an activity that generates lots of usable data that lends itself to analysis. The sales team at Snowflake Computing Inc. employs an automated, AI-powered chatbot designed to engage with potential buyers by email or text. Each assistant, developed by Conversica, speaks six languages and works around the clock engaging with prospects and turning over the most advanced leads to humans, CIO Journal's Angus Loten reports. Collective (i) use AI to help sales managers assess the odds a deal will produce results.

As the price-performance ratio of artificial intelligence improves, business software companies are building deep learning and other new tools into mainstream products, extending the reach of automation into once-human realms and giving people a powerful decision-support system. Salesforce.com Inc. said it would add an AI-based component called Einstein to its sales software. "The new offering is a set of online AI services designed to automate tasks, predict behavior and spotlight relevant information," the WSJ's Rachael King reports. Other companies from Microsoft Corp. to International Business Machines Corp. are investing heavily into the development of AI-powered platforms for business users. AI is taking off after years of promise, and the market is expected to grow to 16.5 billion in 2019 from 1.6 billion in 2015 with a compound-annual growth rate of 65.2%, the WSJ says.

The sale of artificial intelligence-based platforms to business started off as a multi-million dollar pitch targeted toward the CEO, according to Nova Spivack, the founder and CEO of Bottlenose. The Los Angeles-based startup is looking to automate the application of AI to business intelligence, as well as much of the work of data scientists, currently in scarce supply. That should lower the price, a lot. In recent years, AI-driven applications have been targeted toward the CIO. In the future, Mr. Spivack says, they well may be sold directly to business leaders, and the price will drop to thousands or even hundreds of dollars per user, he told CIO Journal.

The sale of artificial intelligence-based platforms to business started off as a multi-million dollar pitch targeted toward the CEO, according to Nova Spivack, the founder and CEO of Bottlenose. The Los Angeles-based startup is looking to automate the application of AI to business intelligence, as well as much of the work of data scientists, currently in scarce supply. That should lower the price, a lot. In recent years, AI-driven applications have been targeted toward the CIO. In the future, Mr. Spivack says, they well may be sold directly to business leaders, and the price will drop to thousands or even hundreds of dollars per user, he told CIO Journal.