Artificial intelligence (AI) has arrived. We can see the evidence throughout our lives, with the soaring popularity of voice-activated devices in the home, game-playing machines, chatbots, self-driving cars and much more.

Although the underlying technologies have been evolving for many years—decades, in some cases—AI has reached an inflection point in the past year or two where it can offer real value to consumers and businesses alike. Thanks to advancements in natural language processing (NLP), machine learning and improved algorithms that can make sense of massive amounts of data in nanoseconds, AI-enabled applications and devices can perceive, think, and act more like humans than ever before.