Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence

SAN ANTONIO

USAA inked a deal with Austin-based Artificial Technology powered startup CognitiveScale.

The San Antonio-based financial services company is slated to integrate some of the startups artificial intelligence products within the next 10 weeks.

The goal is to generate insights about customers and predict future product and service demands allowing companies to personalize the experience.

CognitiveScale says Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a major force in banks, insurance companies and financial services organizations and is transforming how they "engage customers, deliver investment advice, manage pricing and risk, and assure regulatory compliance.

The San Antonio Business Journal reports that CognitiveScale was built by former IBM engineers who worked on the companys Watson project, which is a supercomputer that uses artificial intelligence and analytical software to answer questions that mimic the cognitive ability of the human brain.

CognitiveScale has received an additional $15 million in venture capital for product development of its augmented intelligence products from USAA and several other venture and capital groups, according to Silicon Hills News.

Some working dads, those who live in states where economic opportunity abounds and quality of life is emphasized, have it better than others.

Texas ranked 38th Best State for Working Dads.

WalletHub says the state slipped for work-life balance. It also had a high percentage of kids living in poverty who had a dad in the home.

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Yahoo sold to Verizon

Yahoo, as we knew it, is no more.

The internet pioneer has officially been sold to Verizon. The $4.5 billion dollar deal closed Tuesday.

Once Google came onto the internet scene with a better algorithm for searching, Yahoo could never compete for eyeballs and advertising.

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Wells Fargo analysts say the shopping mall could look a lot different in 10 years.

Their report says well see more schools, churches and doctors offices at malls instead of stores.

E-commerce is a reason, of course, but the Wells Fargo report also says retailers havent given shoppers a reason to show up.

***

Stocks bounced back to record highs. Tech stocks rebounded and even retailers were higher.

The DOW gained 92 points to 21-thousand 328.

The Federal Reserve wraps up a meeting today and is expected to raise interest rates a quarter point.

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USAA inks deal for artificial intelligence - WOAI

Advanced Analytics and the IoT: Future-proofing your operation

How to Implement AI and Machine Learning

The next wave of IT innovation will be powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. We look at the ways companies can take advantage of it and how to get started.

Amazon Web Services wants to make AI and machine learning available to every organization, even those who don't have expertise in-house. That's a key takeaway from a talk by Jeff Bezos at the Internet Association's latest confab.

Bezos' goal is to make AI and machine learning readily available to all enterprises through AWS -- "even if they don't have the current class of expertise that's required." He acknowledged that "right now, deploying these techniques for your particular institution's problems is difficult. It takes a lot of expertise, and so you have to go compete for the very best PhDs in machine learning and it's difficult for a lot of organizations to win those competitions."

(Thanks to GeekWire's Todd Bishop for surfacing Bezos' talk.)

Also: What it takes to build artificial intelligence skills | Apple's to-do list needs to include a dose of AI | Artificial intelligence and machine learning: How to invest for the enterprise

Bezos noted that AI is changing the nature of enterprise software itself. He sees AI and machine learning as "a horizontal enabling layer" for his businesses, as well as every other business on the planet. Amazon's Alexa and Echo are more visible examples of services that "use a tremendous amount of machine learning, machine vision systems, natural language understanding and a bunch of other techniques."

The real value of AI and machine learning is "actually happening beneath the surface," he continued. "It is things like improved search results. Improved product recommendations for customers. Improved forecasting for inventory management. Literally hundreds of other things beneath the surface."

How impactful will AI and machine learning be on today's and tomorrow's enterprises and the software they use? Louis Columbus recently explored this surging evolution in Forbes, noting that AI is poised to transform enterprise software as we know it. He channels some details from a new proprietary study out of Cowen and Company, which, for starters, finds 81% of IT leaders already have plans to invest in AI.

Areas of the enterprise to be impacted first by AI include digital marketing/marketing automation, salesforce automation, CRM and data analytics, the Cowen study, based on interviews with 146 leading AI researchers, entrepreneurs and VC executives, finds. "The potential exists for enterprise apps to change selling and buying behavior, tailoring specific responses based on real-time data to optimize discounting, pricing, proposal and quoting decisions."

Put another way, AI and machine learning are bringing enterprise software developers and operations teams much, much closer to where the front-line customer action takes place. Other enterprise areas likely to transformed early on include customer self-service, enterprise resource planning, human resource management and e-commerce. (Bezos is already demonstrating how AI is enhancing e-commerce.)

The rise of AI will be seen in the arrival of an "intelligent app stack" that "will gain rapid adoption in enterprises as IT departments shift from system-of-record to system-of-intelligence apps, platforms, and priorities," the Cowen report states. Machine-learning algorithms will become an integral part of enterprise apps from this point forward, capable of providing "predictive insights across a broad base of scenarios encompassing a company's entire value chain."

(Disclosure: I am a regular contributor to Forbes, mentioned in this post.)

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Artificial intelligence is transforming enterprise software in a profound way - ZDNet

(Reuters Health) - Smart search programs can ease the process of systematically reviewing new medical research, a key step in getting the best practices from laboratories to doctors' offices, U.S. researchers say.

The Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) says clinical practice guidelines should be based on a systematic review of the evidence, lead author Dr. Paul Shekelle from RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California, told Reuters Health by email.

We know that clinical practice guidelines go out of date over time, as new evidence accumulates. An impediment to the regular updating of clinical practice guidelines is the time and resources needed to update the systematic review, he said.

Typically, researchers and their assistants perform computer searches to identify anywhere from a few to thousands of new research studies, then they determine which ones are relevant and assemble the information into updated guidelines and recommendations.

Shekelle and colleagues thought machines could do more of the job and do it faster, so they compared machine-learning methods with the standard search methods for identifying new information.

They tested the idea on three health conditions: gout, low bone density and osteoarthritis of the knee. The smart search program learned which key terms to look for by analyzing words from studies that were included in prior reviews on each topic.

In all three cases, computers - provided only with the titles and summaries of articles included in previous reviews - reduced the number of articles researchers had to screen further by 67 to 83 percent, according to the results in Annals of Internal Medicine.

The machine-learning method missed only two articles that humans would have identified, for an overall accuracy of 96 percent. And neither of these articles would have changed the ultimate evidence reviews, Shekelles team concludes.

Machine learning methods are very promising as a way to reduce the amount of time and effort for the literature search, which in turn should make it easier to update the systematic review, which in turn can facilitate keeping clinical practice guidelines up to date, Shekelle said.

The approach would shorten the time from completion of research studies to adoption of effective treatments in clinical practice, said Dr. Alfonso Iorio from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, who coauthored an editorial accompanying the report.

Also, it will allow more efficient update of doctors about what works and what does not, saving lives and dollars, he said by email.

Iorio thinks this method would have the greatest impact in the fields of cardiology, diabetes, respiratory disease and cancer. But any field would benefit, he said.

In the near future, artificial intelligence will also be used to match to individual need with the best available health care intervention - one necessary step to get this is proper classification on existing and newly generated knowledge, Iorio said.

The critical step is training properly the computer systems - we need to ensure research dollars are provided to ensure this training is done by serious and independent researchers and controlled by public institutions.

SOURCE: bit.ly/2rslYlR and bit.ly/2rhBLA0 Annals of Internal Medicine, online June 13, 2017.

LONDON Google is betting on the potential of European biotech companies to deliver life-changing drugs by investing alongside Swiss company Novartis in a new $300 million fund run by leading life sciences investment firm Medicxi.

(Reuters Health) - A growing number of U.S. athletes are getting operations to repair torn knee ligaments, and a new study suggests injury rates are highest and rising fastest among teen girls.

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Artificial intelligence may help doctors keep up with new research - Reuters

The process of developing and getting new crop protection technologies to market can stretch for more than a decade and require hundreds of millions of dollars. To home in on new ones in more timely and efficient ways, Monsanto is turning to artificial intelligence through a collaborative research agreement announced Wednesday.

The biotech giant's partnership with Atomwise, a San Francisco-based company that uses artificial intelligence to accelerate the discovery and development of medicines, will look for crop science applications of the company's AtomNet technology, which a press release said uses "algorithms and supercomputers to analyze millions of molecules for potential crop protection products."

"Instead of the traditional trial-and-error and process of elimination to analyze tens of thousands of molecules, the AtomNet technology aims to streamline the initial phase of discovery by analyzing how different molecules interact with one another," the release stated. "The software teaches itself about molecular interactions by identifying patterns, similar to how artificial intelligence learns to recognize images."

The new partnership marks Atomwise's first involvement with a company in the agriculture industry.

Make it your business. Get twice-daily updates on what the St. Louis business community is talking about.

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Monsanto looks into artificial intelligence technology with new research partnership - STLtoday.com

Gizmodo

'US rethinks Chinese investment in AI start-ups' BBC News The Pentagon has raised concerns about China's access to artificial-intelligence-based technology developed in the US, according to Reuters. The news agency says a leaked report proposes that export controls be updated to stop Chinese organisations ... US Considers Chinese Investment in Artificial Intelligence a National ...Gizmodo US mulls restricting Chinese investments into artificial intelligence companiesSiliconBeat US May Limit Chinese Investment in Artificial IntelligenceDaily Beast The Independent -Daily Pakistan all 14 news articles »

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'US rethinks Chinese investment in AI start-ups' - BBC News

By Phil Stewart | WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON The United States appears poised to heighten scrutiny of Chinese investment in Silicon Valley to better shield sensitive technologies seen as vital to U.S. national security, current and former U.S. officials tell Reuters.

Of particular concern is China's interest in fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, which have increasingly attracted Chinese capital in recent years. The worry is that cutting-edge technologies developed in the United States could be used by China to bolster its military capabilities and perhaps even push it ahead in strategic industries.

The U.S. government is now looking to strengthen the role of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the inter-agency committee that reviews foreign acquisitions of U.S. companies on national security grounds.

An unreleased Pentagon report, viewed by Reuters, warns that China is skirting U.S. oversight and gaining access to sensitive technology through transactions that currently don't trigger CFIUS review. Such deals would include joint ventures, minority stakes and early-stage investments in start-ups.

"We're examining CFIUS to look at the long-term health and security of the U.S. economy, given China's predatory practices" in technology, said a Trump administration official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis weighed into the debate on Tuesday, calling CFIUS "outdated" and telling a Senate hearing: "It needs to be updated to deal with today's situation."

CFIUS is headed by the Treasury Department and includes nine permanent members including representatives from the departments of Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, Commerce, State and Energy. The CFIUS panel is so secretive it normally does not comment after it makes a decision on a deal.

Under former President Barack Obama, CFIUS stopped a series of attempted Chinese acquisitions of high-end chip makers.

Senator John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, is now drafting legislation that would give CFIUS far more power to block some technology investments, a Cornyn aide said.

"Artificial intelligence is one of many leading-edge technologies that China seeks and that has potential military applications," said the Cornyn aide, who declined to be identified.

"These technologies are so new that our export control system has not yet figured out how to cover them, which is part of the reason they are slipping through the gaps in the existing safeguards," the aide said.

The legislation would require CFIUS to heighten scrutiny of buyers hailing from nations identified as potential threats to national security. CFIUS would maintain the list, the aide said, without specifying who would create it.

Cornyn's legislation would not single out specific technologies that would be subject to CFIUS scrutiny. But it would provide a mechanism for the Pentagon to lead that identification effort, with input from the U.S. technology sector, the Commerce Department, and the Energy Department, the aide said.

James Lewis, an expert on military technology at the Center for Security and International Studies, said the U.S. government is playing catch-up.

"The Chinese have found a way around our protections, our safeguards, on technology transfer in foreign investment. And they're using it to pull ahead of us, both economically and militarily," Lewis said.

"I think that's a big deal."

But some industry experts warn that stronger U.S. regulations may not succeed in halting technology transfer and might trigger retaliation by China, with economic repercussions for the United States.

China made the United States the top destination for its foreign direct investment in 2016, with $45.6 billion in completed acquisitions and greenfield investments, according to the Rhodium Group, a research firm. Investment from January to May 2017 totaled $22 billion, which represented a 100 percent increase against the same period last year, it said.

"There will be a significant pushback from the technology industry" if legislation is overly aggressive, Rhodium Group economist Thilo Hanemann said.

AI'S ROLE IN DRONE WARFARE

Concerns about Chinese inroads into advanced technology come as the U.S. military looks to incorporate elements of artificial intelligence and machine learning into its drone program.

Project Maven, as the effort is known, aims to provide some relief to military analysts who are part of the war against Islamic State.

These analysts currently spend long hours staring at big screens reviewing video feeds from drones as part of the hunt for insurgents in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Pentagon is trying to develop algorithms that would sort through the material and alert analysts to important finds, according to Air Force Lieutenant General John N.T. "Jack" Shanahan, director for defense intelligence for warfighting support.

"A lot of times these things are flying around(and)... there's nothing in the scene that's of interest," he told Reuters.

Shanahan said his team is currently trying to teach the system to recognize objects such as trucks and buildings, identify people and, eventually, detect changes in patterns of daily life that could signal significant developments.

"We'll start small, show some wins," he said.

A Pentagon official said the U.S. government is requesting to spend around $30 million on the effort in 2018.

Similar image recognition technology is being developed commercially by firms in Silicon Valley, which could be adapted by adversaries for military reasons.

Shanahan said he' not surprised that Chinese firms are making investments there.

"They know what they're targeting," he said.

Research firm CB Insights says it has tracked 29 investors from mainland China investing in U.S. artificial intelligence companies since the start of 2012.

The risks extend beyond technology transfer.

"When the Chinese make an investment in an early stage company developing advanced technology, there is an opportunity cost to the U.S. since that company is potentially off-limits for purposes of working with (the Department of Defense)," the report said.

CHINESE INVESTMENT

China has made no secret of its ambition to become a major player in artificial intelligence, including through foreign acquisitions.

Chinese search engine giant Baidu Inc (BIDU.O) launched an AI lab in March with China's state planner, the National Development and Reform Commission. In just one recent example, Baidu Inc agreed in April to acquire U.S. computer vision firm xPerception, which makes vision perception software and hardware with applications in robotics and virtual reality.

"China is investing massively in this space," said Peter Singer, an expert on robotic warfare at the New America Foundation.

The draft Pentagon report cautioned that one of the factors hindering U.S. government regulation is that many Chinese investments fall short of outright acquisitions that can trigger a CFIUS review. Export controls were not designed to govern early-stage technology.

It recommended that the Pentagon develop a critical technologies list and restrict Chinese investments on that list. It also proposed enhancing counterintelligence efforts.

The report also signaled the need for measures that fall beyond the scope of the U.S. military. Those include altering immigration policy to allow Chinese graduate students the ability to stay in the United States after completing their studies, instead of taking their know-how back to China.

Venky Ganesan, managing director at Menlo Futures, concurs about the need to keep the best and brightest in the United States.

"The single biggest thing we can do is staple a green card to their diploma so that they stay here and build the technologies here not go back to their countries and compete against us," Ganesan said.

(Editing by Marla Dickerson)

TOKYO/SEOUL A Japanese government-led consortium bidding for Toshiba Corp's chip business will include South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc, sources familiar with the matter said a move likely to add firepower to the group's bid in the hotly contested auction.

Verizon Communications Inc said on Tuesday it closed its $4.48 billion acquisition of Yahoo Inc's core business and that Marissa Mayer, chief executive of the internet company, had resigned.

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US weighs restricting Chinese investment in artificial intelligence - Reuters

Talking about artificial intelligence is in season for Europes corporate executives. Just dont mention its shortcomings.

The C-suite is eager to tout its abilities in riding the 21st-century wave of automation by using sophisticated machine learning or shop-floor robots. Mentions of the phrase artificial intelligence on earnings calls are surging, as Bloomberg Intelligences Michael McDonough hasnoted.

In a world where CEOs get more credit for cutting costs and buying back shares than opening factories or hiring staff, technology-driven efficiency is a carrot to dangle in front of shareholders. Stock-market valuations are stretched and spending opportunities are rarebut processing power is abundant and data storage cheap.

Thats why executives are conjuring up the promise of lower costs, more revenue or something in between. Deutsche Telekom and Royal Bank of Scotland are turning to chatbotsa digital replacement for call centers that could shave billions off costs in the next five years. Frances BNP Paribas and publisher Wolters Kluwer are trying to boost revenue, and are using machines to screen financial markets or customer databases and trigger automatic alerts.

Siemens computers are having a go at running gas turbines more efficiently than humans. And dont forget the blue-collar world: Logistics firms Deutsche Post and DHL are talking up the idea of using robots alongside workers on the warehouse floor.

But theres remarkably little talk of the limits of automation. What is the acceptable failure rate of these projects? Outside of games like Go or poker, just how suited are machines to the corporate world? Are some algorithms too expensive, as Netflix once found out? Theres a risk that disappointing results lead to an exaggerated corporate pullback, as the Harvard Business Review warned in April.

Machines can fail. Chatbots do so very publicly: Microsoft shut down a bot called Tay after pranksters pushed it to make racist, sexist and pornographic remarks. Earlier this year, Facebook went back to the drawing board after its bots hit a failure rate of 70 percent, according to The Information.

Failure is fine, but the acceptable failure rate of an intelligent vehicle or a computer-controlled turbine is probably different to a bum steer on an electricity bill. That can be the difference between an easy path to cost savings and a complex, long-term investment that doesnt work as intended.

Then theres the question of whether machines are always suitable. Machine learning works best in an environment with rules and huge numbers of data points. That might work with cars driving through heavy traffic governed by laws, or with achieving the best price for selling a big block of shares.

It might not work well in deciding where to invest a hedge funds money, for example, or recommending products to customers without much previous data to go on. The minute things get fuzzyeither due to a lack of rules, an unclear evaluation of success or a lack of dataartificial intelligence performs poorly, according to Pictet strategist Edgar van Tuyll.

These limitations mean its not yet clear that the cost of automation will be offset by savings in human capital. Hiring a data scientist can cost more than $200,000, according to Bloomberg News. Flight-bookings company Amadeus has 40 of them. Siemens says it has more than 200 A.I. specialists running various projects. And even Silicon Valley has its grunt workers: Facebook is hiring 3,000 content moderators, on top of 4,500 existing ones. A.I. cheerleader Amazon has 341,000 employeesthree times the number it had in 2012.

There are good reasons to talk about A.I. and boast of its successes. But opening up about failure will help, too.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

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The Limits of Artificial Intelligence - Bloomberg

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

The Optimistic Promise of Artificial Intelligence Wall Street Journal (subscription) Artificial intelligence may be one of the technology world's current obsessions, but many people find it scary, envisioning robots taking over the world. Two top experts in the field Andrew Ng, a Stanford University adjunct professor and former AI ...

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The Optimistic Promise of Artificial Intelligence - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Forbes

Ethics And Artificial Intelligence With IBM Watson's Rob High - Forbes Forbes The future of technology is rooted in artificial intelligence. In order to stay ethical, transparency, proof, and trustworthiness need to be at the root of everything AI ... and more »

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Ethics And Artificial Intelligence With IBM Watson's Rob High - Forbes - Forbes

Artificial intelligence research is still in its infancy, at least as compared to computer science in general, but the concept of unlimited computing resources is accelerating the field.

As someone with nearly unlimited computing resources at his disposal, this is something Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of AI at Amazon Web Services, is watching play out. Last week Sivasubramanian walked GeekWire Cloud Tech Summit attendees through the array of artificial intelligence and machine-learning services that his team has developed for AWS customers and Amazons own internal services as well.

If youve been through a few tech cycles, youve already heard a lot about artificial intelligence. Much has been promised from this research field over several decades, but the enormous amount of data now moving into cloud computing services like AWS and others allows researchers like Sivasubramanian to make real breakthroughs that werent possible when data sets were scattered and siloed.

Many of these algorithms, especially like deep learning neural nets, papers were written about even two decades ago. But what has accelerated adoption of it is that we have specialized compute infrastructure, such as GPUs, specialized CPUs, FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), you name it, he said. The combination of huge data sets and powerful computing engines is making AI concepts previously confined to science fiction a reality.

Take two AWS customers: CSPAN and the sheriffs office of Washington County in Oregon. Using the companys Rekognition image-recognition service, both were able to automate tasks that required painstaking human labor. CSPAN can now automatically identify Congresspeople speaking on the floor of the House or Senate, saving someone from having to manually annotate those videos, and Washington County is using the service to help it process photo tips when it is looking for a person of interest in an investigation.

But its still very early days for AI applications: Sivasubramanian joked that this world is about where the field of databases was when btrees were invented in the early 1970s. Thats about to change, however, as we gain a greater understanding of how AI models work and develop more sophisticated ways of training these systems to accomplish real goals.

Watch the full video of Sivasubramanians GeekWire Cloud Tech Summit talk above, and stay tuned for more highlights from the event in the days ahead.

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Amazon Web Services AI exec: How cloud computing is driving artificial intelligence breakthroughs - GeekWire