In 2018, blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) continue to be two of the technologies generating the most buzz--and yet, for the former, not all of that buzz was positive. Blockchain, especially cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, were battered heavily this past year. Bitcoin had topped $17,000 early in 2018 and is now worth less than a quarter of that. That is the bad news. The good news, however, is that the trend for AI is much more positive, with the technology gaining significant momentum consistently for the last few years.

Every year we see the same endless product cycles for smartphones. While consumers like seeing phones with new designs, improved cameras and AR/VR capabilities, a silent revolution that has been unfolding since 1959 is now changing the world around us. Machine learning, a field evolved from the study of pattern recognition and computational learning theory in artificial intelligence, has leaped ahead in the last decade. Major improvements to data storage, processing power and accessibility of machine learning tools have served as catalysts of this silent revolution.