Perhaps the biggest moment so far in the machine learning field was when Google's DeepMind AI beat Lee Sedol, an 18-time world Go champion. Go is a highly complex game even for humans, and machines weren't supposed to start winning against professionals for at least another decade. DeepMind winning against a Go world champion sent shockwaves through the technology industry.

Neural networks are artificial intelligence systems that excel at interpreting images. This makes them promising for helping drones and robots navigate, or for analyzing surveillance footage. But they are typically power hungry, which has limited their use so far. Vision processor company Movidius of San Mateo, Calif., hopes to change that with a low-power chip designed to run neural networks. The neural net accelerator, called Fathom, comes on a USB stick, uses only 1 watt of power, and can run most visual neural nets.