Artificial intelligence is about to take off in a big way.

According to a new report by Goldman Sachs, AI is defined as "any intelligence exhibited by machines or software." That can mean machines that learn and improve their operations over time, or that make sense of huge amounts of disparate data.

Though it's been almost 60 years since we first heard of the term AI, Goldman believes that we are "on the cusp of a period of more rapid growth in its use and applications."

The reasons? Cheaper sensors leading to a flood of new data, and rapid improvements in technology that allows computers to understand so-called "unstructured" data like conversations and pictures.

Other industry insiders are confident that AI will continue to evolve at a much higher rate while affecting wage growth in many industries. Ray Kurzweil, the director of engineering at Google, believes that human-level AI is coming by 2029.

So who are the players going to be?

First, several big tech companies have been storing up patents related to the field.

IBM is the leader, with about 500 patents related to artificial intelligence. IBM's super-computer Watson is an example of the shift to AI, as it entered the healthcare sector in 2013 and helped lower the error rate in cancer diagnoses by physicians.

Other big patent players in the space include Microsoft, Google, and SAP.

USPTO

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Who's set to make money from the coming artificial intelligence boom?