Artificial intelligence, or A.I., has been around since the start of computing and has had many false starts. The reality did not live up to the expectations set by science fiction. Accordingly, for many years, the majority of people’s understanding of A.I. was confined to university laboratories, corporate skunk works, research parks, and that movie with Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law. Attempts to introduce A.I. products and services into the marketplace and for the broader benefits of society were ill-fated. Computing power was insufficient, and the abundance of structured data — let alone a knowledge of what to do with said data — was not yet upon us.

A.I. has been on the cusp of the mainstream for the past 40 years, but 2016 is the year it’s become a buzzword — incorporating machine learning, natural language processing, voice recognition, and data mining, to name a few technologies. Major corporations are now striving to integrate A.I. into their products.

A new machine learning program from Google wrote its own piano song. Advances in natural language processing are developing at such a quick pace that scheduling a meeting most likely involves cc’ing your personal A.I. assistant. IBM Watson, an A.I.-powered computer, is already able to deliver life-saving medical diagnoses in under 10 minutes. Soon, students from NYU Tandon and other research universities will be training it to fight hackers. According to data from CB Insights, over 200 A.I.-focused startups received venture capital funding in the first two quarters of 2016 alone, underscoring the massive amounts of time, resources, and capital being funneled into the space.