In artificial intelligence, there has been an explosion of interest for a technique called deep learning. Consequently, some have said that 2015 was a breakthrough year for artificial intelligence. What is clear is that many companies are betting the farm on machine learning with a particular emphasis on deep learning, from Facebook to Google. (Credit: Peter Turney)

We knew that companies like Google and Facebook did a lot of research on machine learning. In 2015, we saw a drive to make this technology as open source. Google published its TensorFlow library which is reportedly both state-of-the-art and just amazing. Facebook published as open source its AI hardware design. Elon Musk and others have funded OpenAI, an organization that aims to produce advanced AI technology and make it available as open source, to ensure that the technology is not locked away by some government or corporation. (Credit: Sidharth Kashyap)