While our contemporary understanding of AI is eschewing the stereotypes of Sci-Fi and mid-century dystopian dreams, the fact remains that the current environment of rapid technological innovation and collaboration is one that has been in the pipeline for many decades already. The groundwork was laid in the form of ideas which, at the time, sounded far too advanced to prove attainable in such a short span of time. One example of an idea that spans two millennia is autonomous transportation. For many years, we've heard about automobile companies trying to figure out how to replace the human driver with a reactive, anticipatory machine intelligence – one that proves safer, even, than we do. From cars that can communicate with each other, to urbanized cities without traffic lights – all will be made possible with self-driving cars – but will they ever be ubiquitous?

The rapid rise of autonomous products reminds me of my days as Director and Technical Fellow at Motorola during the heyday of the wireless revolution. Years earlier, no one could've predicted that millions of cellphones would quickly saturate the market by the early 2000s, causing a scramble to identify viable applications to keep wireless alive. It's hard to imagine a time when widespread wireless wasn't a sure bet, right? Yet there I was in countless meetings brainstorming ideas to promote wireless acceptance. I remember visiting a Chicago-area hospital where each room was overrun with cables. Answers to the recurring question of "How do we get rid of all these wires?" were met with a healthy dose of optimism and skepticism.

At age 25, Anjney Midha has a stronger resume than some people twice his age. Before graduating from Stanford, he joined the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He led the firm's investment in Magic Leap, the mysterious and much-hyped augmented reality company. Then he ditched venture capital to pursue a dream that had followed him from a technology-free young adulthood on a bird sanctuary in India, to the hyper-connected streets of Singapore, to his days at Stanford. That dream was to share his world--more than he could show in a photo, better than what he could convey with words--with the family and friends he'd left in India.

The evolution of artificial intelligence is empowering technology companies to evolve the user experience. Conversational AI, chatbots, and virtual assistants are a key way that artificial intelligence has been implemented. Michael Tjalve (below left), principal product manager of Conversational AI at Microsoft, spoke to TechX365 about his position, personalization, and the capabilities of AI. Can you tell us a bit about your experience and your position at Microsoft? I work on building new interfaces to technology and to learning.