Well, machine learning and AI, in general, have not evloved significantly over the past few decades, we have however advanced the computational power and have enough data to compute it on to start seeing real benefits. What is most significant is that the focus we have on AI right now is getting financial backing at all stages from startups to large corporates and governments. This, in turn, will be enough to accelerate development of more advanced AI techniques that will evolve/replace ML to make it General/Cross-functional. Very interesting times ahead.
We are soon to launch a new service http://www.loomi.ai which allows you to create and train in minutes your own AI Assistant. Personal AI assistants are projected to be one of the most significant technologies transforming the way people interact with data.