California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed an executive order directing state agencies to examine the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence that can generate text, images and other content. The executive order sets the stage for potential regulation around what's known as generative AI technology, which has already raised concerns about misinformation, plagiarism, bias and child safety. The governor and California lawmakers thus far have been cautious about regulating technology they might not fully understand and hindering business innovations that fuel the state's economy. "We recognize both the potential benefits and risks these tools enable. We're neither frozen by the fears nor hypnotized by the upside," Newsom said in a statement.

Hybrid and multi-cloud environments continued to grow and evolve last year, enabling stunning advances in artificial-intelligence technologies and expanded opportunities for companies to flourish and scale. Simultaneously, US inflation mushroomed to a 40-year peak and rates remain higher than at any time since the early 1980s. More expensive prices across the board have forced tech companies to right-size their spending, an action executives hope ultimately will make services more available to small and midsized businesses. Savvy tech companies will take advantage of the convergence of these trends in 2023. Opportunities exist for budget-conscious leaders in the cloud and AI arenas, cybersecurity enhancement and creativity regarding cloud-resource expenditures.

"Artificial intelligence" is now a household term, whether it's powering driving directions, spotting tumors in cancer patients or driving big discussions over ethics, bias, autonomous weapons or the future of work. But despite the fact that the first neural network was created in the late 1950s, a lot of what I just described has taken place over only about 10 years. In his new book, "Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World," New York Times tech correspondent Cade Metz writes about the history of AI and the corporate forces that have shaped it since the mid-2000s. He told me AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton really rebranded neural networks as "deep learning," and that happened just as a bunch of other factors were coming together. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.

While AI has meaningful implications across each of our lines of business, it has really taken flight this year within our virtual travel payment processing solutions. Last month, we announced WEX's partnership with AI.io to launch Halo Travel, an intelligent, voice-activated chat bot that it created. Halo is powered by our virtual payments technology and by the Priceline Partner Network. Before launch, AI.io put the platform through more than a year of development and testing, including at this year's CES (where it was a resounding success). Now available to anyone with internet access, Halo Travel is the first app to allow people to book hotels and flights strictly through voice--giving them access to the entire Priceline travel inventory, including Booking.com.

Titir Pal, Director, Solutions, Absolutedata AnalyticsBig Data is moving to a new stage of maturity that promises great business impact and industry disruption over the course of the coming decade. As Big Data capabilities mature, organizations are now combining the agility of Big Data processes with the scale of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accelerate the business value and returns. The convergence of Big Data with AI has emerged as the single most important development that is shaping the future of how business extract value from their data and analytics capabilities. The availability of greater volumes and sources of data is enabling capabilities in AI and machine learning. Digital capabilities have moved data from batch to real-time, on-line, always-available access.

Artificial intelligence is like a beautiful suitor who repeatedly brings his admirer to the edge of consummation only to vanish, dashing hopes and leaving an unrequited lover to wonder what might have been. Once again, big shots are hearing the siren song of AI and warn of hazards ahead. Visionary entrepreneur Elon Musk thinks that AI could be more dangerous than nuclear weapons. Physicist Stephen Hawking warns that AI "could spell the end of the human race." Even Bill Gates, who usually obsesses on such prosaic tasks as eliminating malaria, advises careful management of digital forms of "super intelligence."

While "big data" can be a misunderstood buzzword in tech, there's no denying that the recent AI and machine learning push is dependent on the labeling and synthesis of huge amounts of training data. A new trend report by advisory firm Ovum predicts that the big data market--currently at $1.7 billion--will swell to $9.4 billion by 2020. So what do data insiders see happening in the coming year? TechRepublic spoke to several leaders in this field to find out. Here are five big data trends to watch in 2017, from the experts.