Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence

Facebookhas spoken for the first time about the artificialintelligence programmes it uses to deter and remove terrorist propagandaonline after the platform was criticised for not doing enough to tackle extremism.

The social media giantalso revealed it is employing 3,000 extra people this year in order to trawl through posts and remove those that break the law or the sites' community guidelines.

It also plans to boost it's "counter-speech" efforts, to encourage influential voices to condemn and call-out terrorism online to prevent people from being radicalised.

In a landmark post titled "hard questions", Monika Bickert, Director of Global Policy Management, and Brian Fishman, Counterterrorism Policy Manager explained Facebook has been developing artificial intelligence to detect terror videos and messages before they are posted live and preventing them from appearing on the site.

The pair state: "In the wake of recent terror attacks, people have questioned the role of tech companies in fighting terrorism online. We want to answer those questions head on."

Explaining how Facebook works to stop extremist content being posted the post continues: "We are currently focusing our most cutting edge techniques to combat terrorist content about ISIS, Al Qaeda and their affiliates, and we expect to expand to other terrorist organizations in due course.

Read more here:

Facebook using artificial intelligence to combat terrorist propaganda - Telegraph.co.uk

There's a provocative interview with the philosopher Daniel Dennett in Living on Earth.

The topic is Dennett's latest book From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds and his idea that Charles Darwin and Alan Turing can be credited, in a way, with the same discovery: that you don't need comprehension to achieve competence.

Darwin showed how you can get the appearance of purpose and design out of blind processes of natural selection. And Turing, one of the pioneers in the field of computation, offered evidence that any problem precise enough to be computed at all, can be computed by a mechanical device that is, a device without iota of insight or understanding.

But the part of the interview that particularly grabbed my attention comes at the end. Curwood raises the, by now, hoary worry that as AI advances, machines will come to lord over us. This is a staple of science fiction and it has recently become the focus of considerable attention among opinion makers. (Discussion of the so-called "singularity.") Dennett acknowledges that the risk of take-over is a real one. But he says we've misunderstood it: The risk is not that machines will become autonomous and come to rule over us the risk is, rather, that we will come to depend too much on machines.

The big problem AI faces is not the intelligence part, really. It's the autonomy part. Finally, at the end of the day, even the smartest computers are tools, our tools and their intentions are our intentions. Or, to the extent that we can speak of their intentions at all for example of the intention of a self-driving car to avoid an obstacle we have in mind something it was designed to do.

Even the most primitive organism, in contrast, at least seems to have a kind of autonomy. It really has its own interests. Light. Food. Survival. Life.

The danger of our growing dependence on technologies is not really that we are losing our natural autonomy in quite this sense. Our needs are still our needs. But it is a loss of autonomy, none the less. Even auto mechanics these days rely on diagnostic computers and, in the era of self-driving cars, will any of us still know how to drive? Think what would happen if we lost electricity, or if the grid were really and truly hacked? We'd be thrown back into the 19th century, as Dennett says. But in may ways, things would be worse. We'd be thrown back but without the knowledge and know-how that made it possible for our ancestors to thrive in the olden days.

I don't think this fear is unrealistic. But we need to put it in context. The truth is, we've been technological since our dawn as a species. We first find ourselves in the archeological record precisely there where we see a great exposition of tools, technologies, art making and also linguistic practices. In a sense, to be human is to be cyborgian that is, a technological extended version of our merely biological selves. This suggests that at any time in our development, a large-scale breakdown in the technological infrastructure would spell not exactly our doom, but our radical reorganization.

Perhaps what makes our current predicament unprecedented is the fact that we are so densely networked. When the library of Alexandria burned down, books and, indeed, knowledge, were lost. But in a world where libraries are replaced by their online versions, it isn't inconceivable that every library could be, simply, deleted.

What happens to us then?

Read the rest here:

Is The Concern Artificial Intelligence Or Autonomy? - NPR

Facebook on Thursday offered new insight into its efforts to remove terrorism content, a response to political pressure in Europe to militant groups using the social network for propaganda and recruiting.

Facebook has ramped up use of artificial intelligence such as image matching and language understanding to identify and remove content quickly, Monika Bickert, Facebook's director of global policy management, and Brian Fishman, counterterrorism policy manager, explained in a blog post .

Facebook uses artificial intelligence for image matching that allows the company to see if a photo or video being uploaded matches a known photo or video from groups it has defined as terrorist, such as Islamic State, Al Qaeda and their affiliates, the company said.

YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft last year created a common database of digital fingerprints automatically assigned to videos or photos of militant content to help each other identify the same content on their platforms.

Similarly, Facebook now analyses text that has already been removed for praising or supporting militant organisations to develop text-based signals for such propaganda.

"More than half the accounts we remove for terrorism are accounts we find ourselves, that is something that we want to let our community know so they understand we are really committed to making Facebook a hostile environment for terrorists," Bickert said.

Germany, France and Britain, countries where civilians have been killed and wounded in bombings and shootings by Islamist militants in recent years, have pressed Facebook and other social media sites such as Google and Twitter to do more to remove militant content and hate speech.

Government officials have threatened to fine the company and strip the broad legal protections it enjoys against liability for the content posted by its users.

Asked why Facebook was opening up now about policies that it had long declined to discuss, Bickert said recent attacks were naturally starting conversations among people about what they could do to stand up to militancy.

In addition, she said, "we're talking about this is because we are seeing this technology really start to become an important part of how we try to find this content."

Link:

Facebook will use artificial intelligence to detect and remove terrorist content on the social network - Mirror.co.uk

The future of work is now, says Moshe Vardi. The impact of technology on labor has become clearer and clearer by the day.

Machines have already automated millions of routine, working-class jobs in manufacturing. And now, AI is learning to automate non-routine jobs in transportation and logistics, legal writing, financial services, administrative support and health care.

Vardi, a computer science professor at Rice University, recognizes this trend and argues that AI poses a unique threat to human labor.

From the Luddite movement to the rise of the internet, people have worried that advancing technology would destroy jobs. Yet despite painful adjustment periods during these changes, new jobs replaced old ones and most workers found employment. But humans have never competed with machines that can outperform them in almost anything. AI threatens to do this, and many economists worry that society wont be able to adapt.

What people are now realizing is that this formula that technology destroys jobs and creates jobs, even if its basically true, its too simplistic, Vardi explains.

The relationship between technology and labor is more complex: Will technology create enough jobs to replace those it destroys? Will it create them fast enough? And for workers whose skills are no longer needed how will they keep up?

To address these questions and consider policy responses, Vardi will hold a summit in Washington on December 12, 2017. The summit will address six current issues within technology and labor: education and training, community impact, job polarization, contingent labor, shared prosperity and economic concentration.

A 2013 computerization study found that 47 percent of American workers held jobs at high risk of automation in the next decade or two. If this happens, technology must create roughly 100 million jobs.

As the labor market changes, schools must teach students skills for future jobs, while at-risk workers need accessible training for new opportunities. Truck drivers wont transition easily to website design and coding jobs without proper training, for example. Vardi expects that adapting to and training for new jobs will become more challenging as AI automates a greater variety of tasks.

Manufacturing jobs are concentrated in specific regions where employers keep local economies afloat. Over the last 30 years, the loss of 8 million manufacturing jobs has crippled Rust Belt regions in the U.S. both economically and culturally.

Today, the 15 million jobs that involve operating a vehicle are concentrated in certain regions as well. Drivers occupy up to 9 percent of jobs in the Bronx and Queens districts of New York City, up to 7 percent of jobs in select Southern California and Southern Texas districts, and over 4 percent in Wyoming and Idaho. Automation could quickly assume the majority of these jobs, devastating the communities that rely on them.

One in five working class men between ages 25 to 54 without college education are not working, Vardi explains. Typically, when we see these numbers, we hear about some country in some horrible economic crisis like Greece. This is really whats happening in working class America.

Employment is currently growing in high-income cognitive jobs and low-income service jobs, such as elderly assistance and fast-food service, which computers cannot automate yet. But technology is hollowing out the economy by automating middle-skill, working-class jobs first.

Many manufacturing jobs pay $25 per hour with benefits, but these jobs arent easy to come by. Since 2000, when millions of these jobs disappeared, displaced workers have either left the labor force or accepted service jobs that often pay $12 per hour, without benefits.

Truck driving, the most common job in over half of U.S. states, may see a similar fate.

Source: IPUMS-CPS/ University of Minnesota Credit: Quoctrung Bui/NPR

Increasingly, communications technology allows firms to save money by hiring freelancers and independent contractors instead of permanent workers. This has created the gig economy a labor market characterized by short-term contracts and flexible hours at the cost of unstable jobs with fewer benefits. By some estimates, in 2016, one in three workers were employed in the gig economy, but not all by choice. Policymakers must ensure that this new labor market supports its workers.

Automation has decoupled job creation from economic growth, allowing the economy to grow while employment and income shrink, thus increasing inequality. Vardi worries that AI will accelerate these trends. He argues that policies encouraging economic growth must also support economic mobility for the middle class.

Technology creates a winner-takes-all environment, where second best can hardly survive. Bing search is quite similar to Google search, but Google is much more popular than Bing. And do Facebook or Amazon have any legitimate competitors?

Startups and smaller companies struggle to compete with these giants because of data. Having more users allows companies to collect more data, which machine-learning systems then analyze to help companies improve. Vardi thinks that this feedback loop will give big companies long-term market power.

Moreover, Vardi argues that these companies create relatively few jobs. In 1990, Detroits three largest companies were valued at $65 billion with 1.2 million workers. In 2016, Silicon Valleys three largest companies were valued at $1.5 trillion but with only 190,000 workers.

Vardi primarily studies current job automation, but he also worries that AI could eventually leave most humans unemployed. He explains, The hope is that well continue to create jobs for the vast majority of people. But if the situation arises that this is less and less the case, then we need to rethink: how do we make sure that everybody can make a living?

Vardi also anticipates that high unemployment could lead to violence or even uprisings. He refers to Andrew McAfees closing statement at the 2017 Asilomar AI Conference, where McAfee said, If the current trends continue, the people will rise up before the machines do.

This article is part of a Future of Life series on theAI safety research grants, which were funded by generous donations from Elon Musk and the Open Philanthropy Project.

Original post:

Artificial Intelligence And The Future Of Work - HuffPost

Like many artificial intelligence companies in Canada, PeopleAnalytics.ai was happy to see the federal governments launch of its Pan-Canadian Artificial lntelligence Strategy for research and talent as part of the federal budget this year.

The $125-million that the Liberals are committing to the project, to be administered through the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research (CIFAR), is expected to help to attract and retain top academic talent in this country.

With the market for AI-related ideas and products expected to reach $47-billion by 2020, according to CIFAR, the sector has already attracted major investment from Facebook and Google, among others.

For PeopleAnalytics.ai, based out of Torontos MaRS Discovery District, Canada is at a crossroads where it has the ability to define exactly how it wants to mould its focus on AI.

Mark Chaikelson, below, vice-president of product for PeopleAnalytics.ai, says the success of the governments plan, particularly in the AI clusters in Montreal, Toronto-Waterloo and Edmonton, will come down to three things: capital, customers and talent.

(Glenn Lowson/The Globe and Mail)

Ultimately what wraps around that entire thing is policy, he says. What the government is doing is they are stepping in and saying, We are developing policy and we are going to put our money where our mouths are.

Canada has the potential to lead globally in this field.

Recent figures from consulting firm Accenture suggest that just 17 per cent of companies globally are using AI optimally, while most 57 per cent are considered AI observers.

In Canada, the number of funded AI startups grew to 45 from three over the 2010-16 time period, placing it fourth among G20 countries, according to Accentures study. Canada placed fourth in total funded AI startups (45 total) in 2016, versus nine other nations with significant AI infrastructures.

PeopleAnalytics.ai uses AI and language psychology to understand group dynamics and social hierarchies among work forces to cut down on problems such as employee violence and staff turnover.

For the company, like most in the AI field, talent is highly sought-after, and Canada often struggles with retaining home-grown experts and attracting top talent from abroad.

PeopleAnalytics.ai has close ties to the academic community in the university town of Austin, Tex., where it does some of its research, and finding the right talent often requires bringing people in from outside of Canada. As Mr. Chaikelson explains, because of the work it does, PeopleAnalytics.ai is looking for people with very specific technical expertise.

While the company brought a team member from Texas to work in Canada last year, that kind of move hasnt always been so easy to expedite, and in the past has proved insurmountable.

Now, with some of the new policies in the budget that talk about accelerating visas for skilled individuals, thats the type of thing that can really open us up, Mr. Chaikelson says.

On top of talent acquisition, he says Canada needs to continue to provide access to capital for companies like PeopleAnalytics.ai, supporting the private markets by giving them the necessary tax incentives for them to invest funds and invest in programs.

He points to AI programs such as those launched by Royal Bank of Canada, in conjunction with the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, which is increasing spending on developing financial technologies, as leaders in this space.

As a partner with the government in the development of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, CIFAR says the best way to stimulate great innovation in this country is by funding great science.

But according to Alan Bernstein, the chief executive officer of CIFAR, the core of that strategy and program is people, in particular the chairs at the three main centres of AI in this country.

He points to Geoffrey Hinton, whom he calls the godfather of deep learning, as a prime example. A computer science professor who splits his time between the University of Toronto and Google, Dr. Hinton was recently named chief scientific advisor to the new Vector Institute in Toronto, the creation of which is designed to help further Torontos transformation into a global hub for AI.

But while he is happy to see the governments investment in AI, Dr. Bernstein says it is important that Canada take advantage of the current political climate worldwide, where the isolationist attitudes of U.S. President Donald Trump and Britains continuing Brexit steer countries away from immigration, to bring the best talent to Canada.

The rest of the world is sort of shutting its doors, he says. Look at whats happening in the U.S., the U.K. and the rest of the world, so I think this is Canadas moment.

Canadas upswell in the area of AI is certainly getting noticed by Canadas neighbour to the south.

Rajeev Dutt, a Toronto native educated at the University of Toronto, ventured to the state of Washington to work for Microsoft and ended up co-founding his own company, Dimensional Mechanics, which helps make AI accessible to companies without in-house expertise in the area.

While he says Canadas reputation, formed around AI experts such as Dr. Hinton and U of T alumnus Ilya Sutskever at OpenAI and Yoshua Bengio at the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, attracts a lot of talent, newer developments have caused ripples.

I think Canada has made a lot of progress, he says, referring to the investment Canada is making in the AI sector.

He says that one of the privileges of being based in the Seattle area of Washington Dimensional Mechanics is based in Bellevue is that Seattle itself is becoming a hub of activity, and this spills over into surrounding areas, including Vancouver. As a result, he says, there is a significant investment being made by many of the big players, such as Google and Microsoft, in the Vancouver area.

Were a startup but just to get around some of the issues like talent acquisition, we are looking at options in Vancouver, he says.

Like others in his position, he was encouraged to see the latest budget and the investment Canada is making in AI. He believes it adds momentum to the giant pool of talent that is already forming in the country, and that could pay further dividends down the road.

He talks about the economic theory behind co-location, where a lot of companies doing the same thing in one area develop a synergistic connection between one another as talent moves from one company to the next, much like in Californias Silicon Valley.

One of the attractive things in Canada is youre seeing this is actually becoming a bigger component of how companies operate, he says. So it could be sort of a Silicon Valley for AI and I think it will keep attracting talent.

Follow Paul Attfield on Twitter: @paulattfield

Here is the original post:

The core of artificial intelligence is people - The Globe and Mail

New York Times

Facebook Will Use Artificial Intelligence to Find Extremist Posts New York Times Artificial intelligence will largely be used in conjunction with human moderators who review content on a case-by-case basis. But developers hope its use will be expanded over time, said Monika Bickert, the head of global policy management at Facebook. Facebook will use artificial intelligence to fight terrorist contentVICE News Facebook using artificial intelligence to fight terrorismCBS News Facebook using artificial intelligence to combat terrorist propagandaTelegraph.co.uk Fox News -The Denver Post -Washington Post all 62 news articles »

Read more here:

Facebook Will Use Artificial Intelligence to Find Extremist Posts - New York Times

GETTY

In the wake of three deadly terrorist attacks in as many months in the UK, scientists have upped the ante in the war against terror.

A team from Boston University created a computer-simulated human mind which has the ability to see how the impacts of terror on behaviour pan out.

The results found there is an increase of religious ritual behaviour after terror-inspiring events which drove people beyond a threshold of fear.

When the results are placed under further scrutiny, they could help to explain why people commit atrocities in the name of God.

GETTY

Wesley Wildman, a School of Theology professor of philosophy, theology, and ethics at Boston University and who was head of the research team which developed the simulation, said: This is a potential explanatory tool for understanding why people get radicalised, why religious violence is increasing, why were seeing culture wars about religion in our political discourse.

He added: Youve got a big, complicated system in the real world; you try and approach it from the top, from sociology, you can only get so far.

GETTY

You approach it from the bottom, from psychology and neuroscience; you can only get so far.How do you get to the actual system dynamics?

The thing to do is to simulate the complicated social system in a computer so that you can slowly study it.

IG

1 of 10

The computer was developed by Connor Woods, a postdoctoral fellow in religion studies, who was hoping to gain an insight into the ways in which religion affects human behaviour.

The research was given a $2.4 million grant as they hope to figure outthe process of integration and refugee flow and the risks of religious extremist violence, according to Prof Wildman.

Read more:

ISIS to be wiped out by Artificial Intelligence? Major probe into causes of radicalisation - Express.co.uk

A buried line in a new Facebook report about chatbots conversations with one another offers a remarkable glimpse at the future of language.

In the report, researchers at the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research lab describe using machine learning to train their dialog agents to negotiate. (And it turns out bots are actually quite good at dealmaking.) At one point, the researchers write, they had to tweak one of their models because otherwise the bot-to-bot conversation led to divergence from human language as the agents developed their own language for negotiating. They had to use whats called a fixed supervised model instead.

In other words, the model that allowed two bots to have a conversationand use machine learning to constantly iterate strategies for that conversation along the wayled to those bots communicating in their own non-human language. If this doesnt fill you with a sense of wonder and awe about the future of machines and humanity then, I dont know, go watch Blade Runner or something.

The larger point of the report is that bots can be pretty decent negotiatorsthey even use strategies like feigning interest in something valueless, so that it can later appear to compromise by conceding it. But the detail about language is, as one tech entrepreneur put it, a mind-boggling sign of whats to come.

To be clear, Facebooks chatty bots arent evidence of the singularitys arrival. Not even close. But they do demonstrate how machines are redefining peoples understanding of so many realms once believed to be exclusively humanlike language.

Already, theres a good deal of guesswork involved in machine learning research, which often involves feeding a neural net a huge pile of data then examining the output to try to understand how the machine thinks. But the fact that machines will make up their own non-human ways of conversing is an astonishing reminder of just how little we know, even when people are the ones designing these systems.

There remains much potential for future work, Facebooks researchers wrote in their paper, particularly in exploring other reasoning strategies, and in improving the diversity of utterances without diverging from human language.

Read the original here:

An Artificial Intelligence Developed Its Own Non-Human Language - The Atlantic

Artificial intelligence (AI) is by far the technological advance that will have the most significant and far-reaching consequences for how Americans live, work and play in the decades ahead. It will certainly change the world for the better and, unless we begin to act, assuredly for the worse, every aspect of oursociety.

Unfortunately, the country is not engaged in the thoughtful, long-term discussions and debates about how we must prepare to change and adapt to an entirely new era that few even understand.

Artificial intelligence once seemed like an ambitious goal, as distant as the far reaches of space. However, just as technological advances have put men on the moon and stretched our view far beyond the bounds of our solar system, so too have these advances put AI firmly in the realm of possibility if not inevitability.

Now is the time for everyone policymakers, business leaders, labor leaders and educators to engage in a sustained dialogue about the technology and transformations ahead. The philanthropic sector has a pivotal role to play in hosting these conversations, developing research and position papers on various options and engaging the public in helping to understand the opportunities and challenges that are inevitable during times of enormous change.

Silicon Valley Community Foundation, located in the epicenter of global technological innovation, understands the unique role and responsibility that philanthropy can play in bridging technological innovation and the philanthropic sector.

Living in a world with AI computer codes that allow machines to learn and independently reach conclusions that are not preprogrammed is now closer to science fact than science fiction. Just ask the citizens of Pittsburgh, Boston, Phoenix and other cities that are serving as laboratories for driverless cars. Ask patients who have had their cancer treatments guided by IBMs Watson technology. Ask the industries where AI has already redefined which jobs are done by humans versus machines.

Then ask yourself, are we, as a country, prepared for the changes that lay ahead for our workforce?

Conventional wisdom once assumed this technological transformation would largely impact low- and medium-skill jobs. However, recent exponential success in AI shows that even the most skilled jobs, such as financial planners, investment advisors and doctors, will soon be working side-by-side with AI assistants.

How do we help students and workers prepare for a future where at least part of their job may no longer be available? It's often at this juncture where fear starts to set in. Those who are rightly concerned, wrongly suggest that AI is something that should be curtailed or stopped altogether. Such thinking suggests we can freeze the world in time a position that is truly science fiction.

Instead of dodging the question and hoping technological progress will grind to a halt, the only feasible, productive option is to engage the debate. Those willing to join the discussion and shape the future ofthis technology will see that there arent just challenges, but also tremendous opportunities for how society can be immeasurably enhanced by AI and big data.

We owe it to future generations to ask the hard questions and seek the answers together about how the AI revolution can develop toward positive outcomes in all facets of society.

Silicon Valley Community Foundation has been pursuing this course for the last two years, engaging multiple cross-sector leaders in thoughtful conversations around AI and the future of our communities.

From our Innovation Conference, which features more than 800 foundations and individual philanthropists from around the globe, to our recent roundtable discussion in Washington, D.C. that included more than 25 leaders from the tech industry, business councils, education and government, we gather important voices to listen to each others fears and hopes about how to lead these complex issues.

Still, more of these discussions need to happen, and they need to happen fast. As one participant noted, it took 30-40 years after the start of the industrial revolution for government and society to adjust through child labor laws, a two-day weekend and other means. The AI revolution simply wont provide us with that kind of time.

Moving forward, it is absolutely essential for national and local leaders to engage the discussion of what AI will mean for communities across the country and what actions can be taken to maximize the benefits and minimize the disruption of these changes.

Philanthropy through support from foundations like ours must commit to learning and engaging in whatever spaces are needed to help diverse stakeholders understand and develop shared perspectives about what is underway, how to accurately communicate the changes it will portend, and help to develop options to respond.

At a time of divided government and a citizenry deeply concerned about the disappearance of meaningful work, foundations may represent one of the few institutions that can frame and engage on this issue. The time to have these difficult discussions is now.

Emmett D. Carson, Ph.D., is the founding CEO of Silicon Valley Community Foundation, an international leader in the field of philanthropy. Before SVCF, Carson was CEO of The Minneapolis Foundation and, prior to that, oversaw the Ford Foundations U.S. and global grant-making program on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.

See original here:

It's time for an intelligent conversation on artificial intelligence - The Hill (blog)

By Samantha Ehlinger, Staff Writer

Photo: William Luther /San Antonio Express-News

USAA invests in Austin artificial intelligence software firm

Financial services giant USAA is investing in Austin-based artificial intelligence company CognitiveScale which has developed software that can predict what customers want before they even ask for it.

The software company delivers what it calls industry-specific machine intelligence software, which can emulate human learning by pulling in data from different sources, market events and user behavior to foresee what products customers might want, CognitiveScale said Tuesday in a news release.

People talk about artificial intelligence as man-versus-machine, generally speaking, thats been sort of the perception, said Akshay Sabhikhi, CognitiveScales CEO and co-founder. And our view is that there are so many possibilities within an organization where humans are involved, knowledgeable workers are involved, and how could you bring artificial intelligence to them to help improve their productivity?

Nathan McKinley, VP and head of corporate development for USAA, said in an email that the artificial intelligence will help help us replicate USAAs well-known member service over the phone on digital channels, which are an increasingly popular way for members to interact with USAA.

Neither company disclosed the size of USAAs investment.

Indeed, many people worry that artificial intelligence will eventually lead to jobs being automated and then to unemployment. A 2016 White House report said that 83 percent of jobs making less than $20 per hour have a high probability for automation. The report asserts, however, that humans are still smarter than artificial intelligence in many arenas.

Sabhikhi stressed that CognitiveScales offering is focused around making employees smarter and helping companies provide better customer service not slashing jobs.

CognitiveScale offers a software-as-a-service subscription model for customers in financial services, healthcare and retail. It has worked with several large banks, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Macys and Under Armour, among others, Sabhikhi said.

And many of its executives are former International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) employees. Sabhikhi served as the global leader for Smarter Care at IBM, and CognitiveScales Executive Chairman Manoj Saxena was General Manager of IBM Watson. And Founder Chief Technology Officer Matt Sanchez was the leader of IBM Watson Labs and was the first to apply IBM Watson to the financial services and healthcare industries, according to the CognitiveScale website.

Imagine being able to service you with the things that you need preemptively, without you sort of asking for them, just because it knows you, it knows you as a consumer through your journey, and offers recommendations and offers at the right time, he said.

CognitiveScale has now raised $50 million in funding to date, it also announced Tuesday. And $15 million of that total comes from USAA and several other investors Norwest Venture Partners, Intel Capital, Microsoft Ventures and The Westly Group, according to a news release.

The software USAA is installing is similar to what a customers experience on Netflix, or on Amazon.

The plan for now is to start implementing CognitiveScales offering in the banking division of USAA, Sabhikhi said, and its really around servicing their members.

We are taking a very holistic view with USAA to start small, but really think big, he said. Its important that we start small to prove that we can deliver something quick, but the goal with USAA and our vision is really fairly massive, its really to service their 12-to-15 million members that they have, and to bring the benefit of what AI can drive as the next best action and the next best offer, to the consumer.

USAA provides banking, insurance and other financial services to about 12 million customers, who are service members, veterans and their families.

In implementing the new products USAA will have a jump start from CognitiveScales 10-10-10 method, according to the press release, which helps businesses select and model their first cognitive system in 10 hours, configure that system using their own data in 10 days, and deploy it within 10 weeks.

The company has implemented products for more than 25 customers using the strategy, Sabhikhi said.

sehlinger@express-news.net

Twitter: @samehlinger

See more here:

USAA invests in Austin artificial intelligence software firm - mySanAntonio.com