Data science is being transformed. Artificial intelligence, while generating powerful tools for analysis, is only the beginning of a more ambitious phase making AI systems more accurate, less biased, and effective prediction tools. Computing power, driven by Moore's Law, went a long way. Computing power and local processing were the initial bottlenecks, but these have mostly been overcome. The next computing phase, cloud computing (originally, distributed file systems were a form of cloud computing where files weren't located on a specific machine but were on some file server somewhere), puts both data and computing away from the computer user -- your data, processing, and software tools are somewhere else.

An AI identifies a person while they are walking on the street. As the AI market expands and AI use cases permeate every industry, every once in a while I hear the question - when will the AI singularity occur? For those who are not familiar with this term - the AI singularity refers to an event where the AIs in our lives either become self aware, or reach an ability for continuous improvement so powerful that it will evolve beyond our control. While this is a reasonable concern in the future, I argue that there are much more pressing concerns in the present - in particular that AI has reached a Tipping Point. A tipping point is a state where a technology grows and permeates our lives very rapidly, building upon itself.

IBM's virtual health care assistant powered by Watson, which has memorized most of the world's medical journals and texts, is an example of this. Enterprise is already feeling the impact of AI assistants like IBM's Watson health care tool, but Gartner says these systems will become more "conversational." Powered by machine learning and AI, such systems will learn how to adapt to humans and vice versa. Gartner believes five major focal points will enable the new capabilities and business models of digital business, including information systems, customer experience, analytics and intelligence, the IoT, and business ecosystems.

Advanced machine learning, artificial intelligence and data science will be among the top new technologies shaping business trends through 2017 and beyond, according to analyst firm Gartner Inc. The research firm presented its Top Ten Strategic Technology Trends for 2017 at the Gartner Symposium/Itxpo in Orlando, Fl., this week. It said it expects to see "intelligence everywhere" permeate through the enterprise IT landscape in the next three to five years, in the shape of new software-based systems that are programmed to learn and adapt. David Cearley, Gartner vice president and fellow, said these intelligent trends will intertwine to create a "digital mesh" that blurs the boundary between digital and physical workspaces. Gartner predicts AI will become "the next battleground through 2020", and we've already seen the battle lines being drawn with companies like Google, Microsoft and IBM all advancing their own machine learning algorithms via the open-source community, while Salesforce.com Inc. recently introduced its own Einstein platform to underpin its services.