While its ubiquitous appearance in marketing copy may have diluted its meaning somewhat, true artificial intelligence is already powering the products, services and customer experiences of some of the tech industry's biggest players. At its heart, artificial intelligence is perfect for several clearly defined use cases. Among them: UX/UI personalization, automated data management and analysis of that data at scale. These applications make AI particularly important to e-commerce and big data companies, along with insurance and fintech companies that can build predictive models on technology that analyzes huge datasets. These engineering leaders are at the forefront of AI's evolution in their respective fields, and they spoke to Built In about the trends they're seeing across the industry.

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State Street Corp., founded in 1792, and artificial intelligence haven't often been mentioned in the same sentence -- until now. The bank on Wednesday unveiled Quantextual Idea Lab, which uses machine learning and natural language processing to help clients better organize and extract information from their reams of research. The web platform is the latest piece of State Street's digital transformation, an effort to make the custody bank into a company that can compete in an era of heightened competition from technology-savvy rivals. Quantextual is part of Project Beacon, a five-year plan aimed at cutting costs, speeding up services, and most ambitiously, turning State Street from a bank that tracks data into one that converts information into insights customers value. "Anyone who doesn't do things faster and better will find himself in a world of hurt," said Jay Hooley, the Boston-based bank's chief executive officer. State Street's technology obsession is hardly unique in finance.

Are the humans of finance an endangered species? People are still the lubricant that oils the wheels of finance, toiling at innumerable tasks--executing and settling trades, writing analysis, monitoring risk. Squeezed by low interest rates, shrinking trading revenue, and nimbler technology-based competitors, banks are racing to remake themselves as digital companies to cut costs and better serve clients. In other words, they're preparing for the day that machines made by men and women take over more of what used to be the sole province of humans: knowledge work. Consider venerable State Street, a 224-year-old custody bank that predates the steam locomotive and caters to institutional investors such as pensions and mutual funds.

What if you couldn't fact check the investment data you wanted to buy, but the data was verified by a cryptographically proven, immutable blockchain? One major bank that is solely responsible for managing an estimated 11% of all the world's financial assets is exploring just such a possibility. Following a State Street report published last week on the long-term value of blockchain and other technologies, the bank's executive vice president of global exchange, Lou Maiuri, elaborated on how his group is experimenting with new ways to capitalize on blockchain tech. In conversation with CoinDesk, Maiuri explained how combining artificial intelligence and blockchain could lead to new revenue streams derived from valuable client data. "Anyone who's not looking at these pools of data will be arbitraged, will lose out."

People are still the lubricant that oils the wheels of finance, toiling at innumerable tasks--executing and settling trades, writing analysis, monitoring risk. Squeezed by low interest rates, shrinking trading revenue, and nimbler technology-based competitors, banks are racing to remake themselves as digital companies to cut costs and better serve clients. In other words, they're preparing for the day that machines made by men and women take over more of what used to be the sole province of humans: knowledge work. Consider venerable State Street, a 224-year-old custody bank that predates the steam locomotive and caters to institutional investors such as pensions and mutual funds. In February, State Street executives told analysts that after spending five years upgrading technology systems, they realized how much more could be done.

U.S. bank regulators struck a major blow against some of the largest banks in the country Wednesday, rejecting the so-called living wills of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America, Wells Fargo, State Street and Bank of New York Mellon. The banks' resolution plans, which outline how systemically important financial institutions would navigate a bankruptcy without splintering the financial system or costing taxpayers, have become a central focus of bank reformers since the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act authorized regulators to judge the submissions. The failing grades at five of the nation's eight largest banks reveal newfound consensus between the two regulators responsible for the assessments, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission, which had diverged in previous rounds of analysis. The stricter judgments released Wednesday are likely to add momentum to advocates of big-bank breakups, such as presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. "No firm yet shows itself capable of being resolved in an orderly fashion through bankruptcy," said FDIC Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig in a statement.