To start with looking into AI, there are two different sections of the field. Augmented Intelligence is the supplementation of the human intelligence. The other is Artificial Intelligence, which is the creation of a completely artificially intelligent body. In order to find current stories of things happening in AI I searched for current news stories on the topic.
The U.S. Army was in the news on the topic of AI because they are using AI software in a computer recruiting game. The company, Autodesk built Kynapse software that makes non-player characters in the game more realistic in order to enhance the gaming experience. According to Autodesk in the article in was created so "young Americans can explore the Army from basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and medic training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas to operations in defense of freedom" ("Army"). The game is due out this year. This shows AI being used not only in computer games but also as a recruiting tool by the U.S. Army.
There was a more light-hearted article about IBM's Watson, their question answering system. In order to test its intelligence they decided to make it play Jeopardy. According to the article the reason this was a challenge for the computer because it "needs to not only needs to know history, politics, film, and pop culture, but also how to decipher grammar and construct meaningful sentences." (Grace). In addition to that it also has to be familiar with and understand "things like irony, riddles, double entendres, sarcasm and other features of language" that are often even challenging for human beings to keep track of. The challenge has not taken place yet and there has been no announcement for when it will take place or whether it will be televised. Grace suggested the father of AI, Alan Turing's birthday on June 23 as a possible poetic date.
According to an article the value of the AI market in 2007 was estimated at over 21 billion dollars. Areas where narrow AI is currently being used are "Defense and Intelligence, Space Exploration, Medicine, Science and Math, Business, Finance, Manufacturing, Language and Speech, Entertainment and Sports". (Foreman)