by Jack Clark — Bloomberg Business

The artificial-intelligence industry, a field that conjures up images of humanoid robots and self-aware computer systems, is making a comeback at Silicon Valley companies like Scaled Inference Inc.

Inside a sparsely decorated office at the eight-month-old startup, founder Olcan Sercinoglu is developing an AI system that can help predict events, such as what website you’ll read next. While that’s far from the kind of AI found in science-fiction movies, there’s plenty of interest in this new generation of AI tools, which can help with everything from recognizing speech patterns to sorting through thousands of photos.“There was interest to invest from almost all of the investors that I spoke to,” said Sercinoglu, who raised $13.6 million in funding for his venture in just five months last year after spending 13 years on-and-off at Google Inc. working on AI projects. “Many AI companies have raised significant money without any product plans.”Read more