Most people are familiar with artificial intelligence from interacting with voice assistants like Alexa or Siri, but the technology is becoming increasingly important everywhere from the assembly line to in autonomous vehicles.

Artificial intelligence will be an essential tool in technology going forward, which makes right now a great time to start looking toward the future and scouting which stocks present the best possibility to profit in the coming years.

Alphabet

Alphabet (GOOGL), the parent company to Google, has tons of holdings that make use of artificial intelligence that it has collected over the years.

Back in 2013, Google scooped up DNNresearch, a startup formed out of the University of Toronto that has put in a ton of research on neural networks—systems that simulate reactions the human brain and can be fed new information to expand its understanding and capabilities.

Perhaps one of Alphabet’s most notable investments into artificial intelligence is DeepMind Technologies. Acquired by Google in 2014 , the London-based artificial intelligence firm has made waves on several occasions with AI breakthroughs. DeepMind’s AlphaGo—a program designed to play the popular strategy board game Go—grabbed headlines in 2016 by beating a human professional Go player at the game.

Alphabet’s most promising and practical artificial intelligence project is Waymo, an autonomous car startup founded back in 2009. Alphabet has already put more than four million miles on its self-driving system and the company is expected to be one of the leaders in the technology once it is finally allowed to hit the road without limitations.

IBM

IBM has approached artificial intelligence in a slightly different way than Alphabet. Rather than acquire disparate parts, IBM has created its own proprietary and centralized system known as Watson. While most people are likely familiar with Watson from the AI’s appearance—and victory—on “Jeopardy!”, the super computer has been put to tons of use in recent years.

IBM has made a strong push to get Watson into the healthcare and medical fields, where the artificial intelligence has been used to help doctors determine appropriate treatments and help process research. Watson has proven effective enough in its role that some hospitals have reported the AI increased productivity and saved on costs.

Watson has a reach well beyond the medical realm, too. IBM has licensed out the AI platform to tons of industries to make use of the powerful technology. Watson is the brains behind everything from smart children’s toys to accounting and tax programs to weather forecasting tools. IBM’s goal appears to be to infuse just about everything imaginable with Watson.

Nvidia

Nvidia (NVDA) isn’t known for its artificial intelligence the way Alphabet or IBM are, but the hardware manufacturer has a role to play in the spread of AI. Nvidia makes graphics processors that are typically used for gaming and visual-intensive tasks like photo and video editing—and, more recently, has become a popular choice for cryptocurrency mining .

But Nvidia’s hardware is also valuable for artificial intelligence. The company has created a number of projects that show off its processor capabilities with AI, including research projects that are capable of creating photorealistic images of fake people and change the weather in photos and video.

The projects serve more to show off the power of the processors than anything, but Nvidia is clearly positioning itself to be the maker of processors that power artificial intelligence.

Editor's note: This article reflects the opinions of the author and is not intended to be financial counsel.

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