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The engineer at the center of a bombshell Uber lawsuit has founded a religion that worships an AI god (GOOGL)

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Travis Kalanick Anthony Levandowski

Anthony Levandowski, the Uber engineer at the heart of a bombshell lawsuit filed by Waymo, has started a new religion.

Levandowski, the former head of Google's self-driving-car project, is alleged to have aided Uber in stealing intellectual property and trade secrets from his old employer. Levandowski isn't named in the suit, but his actions are at the center of the legal battle.

Levandowski was fired from Uber in May when he refused to cooperate in the investigation.

News on the multi-millionaire engineer has been relatively quiet until Backchannel's Mark Harris broke a news report Wednesday that says Levandowksi has been attempting to get a new religion off the ground.

Levandowski started a new religion in Sept. 2015 called "Way to the Future," according to the report. Its mission is to "develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence."

In the context of Silicon Valley, an AI-based religion isn't as far-fetched as it seems. Several executives like Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son believe in the Singularity —  the point when machine intelligence surpasses our own.

They may not consider it a religion, but Levandowski is far from the only one to think AI could eventually have god-like capabilities.

SEE ALSO: The Japanese tech billionaire behind SoftBank thinks the 'singularity' will occur within 30 years

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NOW WATCH: Uber’s pick for its new CEO is the head of Expedia and an Iranian refugee who has criticized Trump


Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella: AI should be open like PCs, not closed like the App Store (MSFT)

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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Lord's Cricket Ground

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has criticised the closed nature of mobile app stores, and said the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence should be an open ecosystem.

His comments are a warning shot to Apple, which pioneered a "walled garden" model for iOS and the App Store, shutting out competitors. The model is hugely successful, with Apple's App Store revenues estimated at around $28 billion (£21 billion) last year, while Microsoft is on its last gasp in mobile, with 1% global market share.

Nadella, speaking to reporters in London on Friday, pointed to Microsoft's partnership with Amazon as an example of an open partnership. The deal means Microsoft's Cortana assistant can talk to Amazon's Alexa.

He said:

"The fact is, we have great capability and I want to make sure it shows up everywhere people want to interact with it. If they have an Echo, they want to invoke Cortana on their Echo, we want to open it up. It's the same philosophy that led us to build our apps so they were available on iOS and Android. So I view the world as: What are the ways we can meet more of our customers all the time, and [what is] the unique value we can add. So that's how it'll play out."

He added:

"When I look at PC ecosystem, it's a very open ecosystem. This entire App Store and all the things around it is a very closed system. So the more we can create interoperability at least ... just imagine if the web was as closed as these app stores. it would be a real tragedy. I hope in the AI world we have an open ecosystem, and we will push for that."

Of course, Microsoft was once accused of creating a walled garden with the app store for Windows 10, its combined desktop and mobile OS. The cofounder of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, accused Microsoft last year of "locking down the consumer PC ecosystem and monopolising app distribution and commerce" with its Universal Windows Platform, which enables developers to build apps that work on both mobile and desktop. Microsoft defended UWP as an "open ecosystem" at the time.

Microsoft's disastrous AI experiment Tay is coming back

Microsoft's efforts in AI haven't always gone to plan.

The company launched an English-speaking Twitter AI chatbot, Tay, in March last year — but the bot quickly started spewing racist, sexist tweets.

It was a huge public embarrassment for Microsoft, and it eventually pulled Tay from Twitter. A tamer successor, Zo, didn't voice racist bile, but did go off-script and describe Windows as "spyware."

Here's Nadella's view of the incident. He also revealed Tay is returning:

"On the Twitter channel [Tay] was attacked, and therefore what happened was it started learning from the attacks and spewing out comments which were not acceptable. So one of the things it has really influenced is our design principles ... we have to take accountability. First and foremost, we need to be able to foresee these attacks which, interestingly enough, were attacks by humans. But the idea that we need to keep the broader goal of having this AI behave properly is our accountability, and so how can we test it, how can we make sure it does not lose control. Now we're launching it again, it's in preview in a couple of channels. So we're being mch more deliberate in that process."

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Researchers just trained a robot to use nunchucks using trial and error

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Researchers from the New Jersey Institute of Technology taught a robot how to use a pair of nunchucks. 

The research was part of a machine learning experiment that would require a robot to handle complex objects consisting of a combination of parts with different materials and rigidities.

This type of machine learning could be applied to other fields where delicate precision is required such as car interior fitting or fruit picking. 

You can read more about it in the research paper here

Produced by Jasper Pickering

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AMD is popping after releasing its newest low-power chip (AMD)

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AMD headquarters

AMD released a new embedded graphics processing unit on Tuesday, and the stock is trading 4.80% higher at $13.32 after the news.

The company announced on Tuesday that its newest chip based on the Polaris architecture will be launched later this month. The chip, the Embedded Radeon E9170 Series GPU, is designed for smaller, dedicated systems that need an added graphics kick.

Example uses for the new chipset include casino games, medical displays and retail signage, according to the company. The chip has the ability to drive five simultaneous 4k displays with relatively low power consumption, which could be helpful for applications like big retail displays.

The chip differs from the company's line of desktop graphics cards, as it is built to be embedded in specially designed systems rather than used for general purpose graphics computing.

Nvidia recently pushed its embedded series of chips at a conference held by the company. The company partnered with JD.com to work on delivery drones for rural areas of China. SunTrust said that Nvidia's move into the embedded market was a good move, and could "deliver significant revenue quickly." Nvidia promoted the AI capabilities of its embedded chip while AMD is focusing on the purpose-built systems its chip could be used for.

AMD is up 17.42% this year.

Click here to watch AMD's stock price trade in real time...

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SEE ALSO: SUNTRUST: Nvidia's next big bet could deliver 'significant revenue' soon

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NOW WATCH: THE BOTTOM LINE: The 'Trump trade' is back and Ray Dalio breaks down the bitcoin bubble

Forget killer robots — bias is the real AI danger

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T 800 Robot Terminator Genisys Melinda Sue Gordon

Google’s AI chief isn’t fretting about super-intelligent killer robots. Instead, John Giannandrea is concerned about the danger that may be lurking inside the machine-learning algorithms used to make millions of decisions every minute.

“The real safety question, if you want to call it that, is that if we give these systems biased data, they will be biased,” Giannandrea said before a recent Google conference on the relationship between humans and AI systems.

The problem of bias in machine learning is likely to become more significant as the technology spreads to critical areas like medicine and law, and as more people without a deep technical understanding are tasked with deploying it. Some experts warn that algorithmic bias is already pervasive in many industries, and that almost no one is making an effort to identify or correct it (see “Biased Algorithms Are Everywhere, and No One Seems to Care”).

“It’s important that we be transparent about the training data that we are using, and are looking for hidden biases in it, otherwise we are building biased systems,” Giannandrea added. “If someone is trying to sell you a black box system for medical decision support, and you don’t know how it works or what data was used to train it, then I wouldn’t trust it.”

Black box machine-learning models are already having a major impact on some people’s lives. A system called COMPAS, made by a company called Northpointe, offers to predict defendants’ likelihood of reoffending, and is used by some judges to determine whether an inmate is granted parole. The workings of COMPAS are kept secret, but an investigation by ProPublica found evidence that the model may be biased against minorities.

John Giannandrea

It may not always be as simple as publishing details of the data or the algorithm employed, however.

Many of the most powerful emerging machine-learning techniques are so complex and opaque in their workings that they defy careful examination (see “The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI”). To address this issue, researchers are exploring ways to make these systems give some approximation of their workings to engineers and end users.

Giannandrea has good reason to highlight the potential for bias to creep into AI. Google is among several big companies touting the AI capabilities of its cloud computing platforms to all sorts of businesses.

These cloud-based machine-learning systems are designed to be a lot easier to use than the underlying algorithms. This will help make the technology more accessible, but it could also make it easier for bias to creep in. It will be important to also offer tutorials and tools to help less experienced data scientists and engineers identify and remove bias from their training data.

Several of the speakers invited to the conference organized by Google also highlighted the issue of bias. Google researcher Maya Gupta described her efforts to build less opaque algorithms as part of a team known internally as “GlassBox.” And Karrie Karahalios, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois, presented research highlighting how tricky it can be to spot bias in even the most commonplace algorithms. Karahalios showed that users don’t generally understand how Facebook filters the posts shown in their news feed. While this might seem innocuous, it is a neat illustration of how difficult it is to interrogate an algorithm.

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Facebook’s news feed algorithm can certainly shape the public perception of social interactions and even major news events.

Other algorithms may already be subtly distorting the kinds of medical care a person receives, or how they get treated in the criminal justice system. This is surely a lot more important than killer robots, at least for now.

Giannandrea has certainly been a voice of reason in recent years among some more fanciful warnings about the risks posed by AI.

Elon Musk, in particular, has generated countless headlines by warning recently that AI is a bigger threat than North Korea, and could result in World Word III.

“What I object to is this assumption that we will leap to some kind of super-intelligent system that will then make humans obsolete,” Giannandrea said. “I understand why people are concerned about it but I think it’s gotten way too much airtime. I just see no technological basis as to why this is imminent at all.”

SEE ALSO: Killer robots are almost inevitable, former defence chief warns

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AR is now a must-have in retail

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consumer tech retail

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "E-Commerce Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

Consumers now expect retailers to have some form of an augmented reality (AR) experience, according to a report by DigitalBridge.

Of the consumers surveyed, 20% said they expect retailers to have an AR tool now that iOS 11 has been released, while 49% say they expect retailers to launch AR features within the next six months.

Many consumers would like to see AR paired with artificial intelligence (AI) to personalize the shopping experience. Most consumers (64%) would like to see a virtual shopping assistant that uses AR and AI together. Notably, these customers would be more likely to use AR if it was partnered with an AI assistant that could suggest and visualize products based on their previous purchases or browsing history.

Many retailers in the home and furniture space have already launched into AR, and retailers in other segments should follow suit. Wayfair, Ikea, Anthropologie, and a slew of other furniture retailers have all debuted their own AR apps. These retailers have the most immediate use for AR, as consumers have been most interested in using the technology for their furniture purchases. But all retailers could benefit from providing virtual visualization of their products. For example, Topology Eyewear allows customers to virtually try on glasses through its AR app, enabling customers to build confidence in a purchase that typically requires a physical fitting. AR is a simple way for retailers to recreate the try-on experience that customers get in-store, and could convince digital shoppers to follow through with more purchases.

One of retailers' top priorities is to figure out how to gain an edge over Amazon. To do this, many retailers are attempting to differentiate themselves by creating highly curated experiences that combine the personal feel of in-store shopping with the convenience of online portals. 

These personalized online experiences are powered by artificial intelligence (AI). This is the technology that enables e-commerce websites to recommend products uniquely suited to shoppers, and enables people to search for products using conversational language, or just images, as though they were interacting with a person. 

Using AI to personalize the customer journey could be a huge value-add to retailers. Retailers that have implemented personalization strategies see sales gains of 6-10%, a rate two to three times faster than other retailers, according to a report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG). It could also boost profitability rates 59% in the wholesale and retail industries by 2035, according to Accenture. 

Stephanie Pandolph, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has written a detailed report on AI in e-commerce that:

  • Provides an overview of the numerous applications of AI in retail, using case studies of how retailers are currently gaining an advantage using this technology. These applications include personalizing online interfaces, tailoring product recommendations, increasing the relevance of shoppers search results, and providing immediate and useful customer service.
  • Examines the various challenges that retailers may face when looking to implementing AI, which typically stems from data storage systems being outdated and inflexible, as well as organizational barriers that prevent personalization strategies from being executed effectively.
  • Gives two different strategies that retailers can use to successfully implement AI, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each strategy.

To get the full report, subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >>Learn More Now

You can also purchase and download the full report from our research store.

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Personalization boosts luxury retailer’s e-commerce business

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Retailer AR VR AI Adoption

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "E-Commerce Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

Luisa Via Roma (LVR), a luxury fashion retailer that sells hundreds of well-known brands including Balmain, Gucci, and Dolce & Gabbana, has been working with e-commerce personalization platform Dynamic Yield to improve its personalization capabilities.

Since implementing Dynamic Yield's technologies, LVR has seen a significant jump in conversion rates and a 15% increase in average revenue per user, highlighting the importance of personalization in luxury retail.

LVR has introduced a number of personalization techniques to improve its e-commerce performance.

  • LVR has customized sites for each country. The sites highlight products that resonate based on customer behaviors in specific areas, Nicola Antonelli, web project manager at LVR, told BI Intelligence. This can be an effective way for retailers with substantial geographic reach to cater to their respective demographics. Similarly, L’Occitane has designed region-specific checkout pages, which resulted in a 15% increase in mobile sales.
  • Customers receive personalized search results. Results are automatically sorted by price depending on the customer's spending history, according to Mukund Ramachandran, VP of global marketing at Dynamic Yield. This allows LVR to get the most expensive, and possibly most appealing, products in front of its highest-spending customers, making the experience better for shoppers and the results better for LVR.

Dynamic Yield also enables LVR to try out personalization features with A/B testing,Ramachandran told BI Intelligence. LVR is able to test which recommendations resonate best in each country — for example, consumers in some countries may prefer to see items related to products they've bought before, while others may want to be shown products often purchased with their order. This can be done before full implementation, and opens the door for tests on new personalization features like social proofing, or displaying how many people have purchased a specific item in a region. Such testing enables LVR to stay on top of customer trends in different geographies, and ensure that it is employing personalization techniques likely to resonate locally.

Personalization is particularly important in the increasingly competitive luxury space.There are tons of luxury brands, and while they all have their own appeal, they are a part of a crowded marketplace that is seeing cost per acquisition increase, Antonelli said. Retailers must get the most out of each individual customer, and with personalization capable of boosting sales 6-10%, it’s an effective way to secure higher spending and keep consumers coming back.

One of retailers' top priorities is to figure out how to gain an edge over Amazon. To do this, many retailers are attempting to differentiate themselves by creating highly curated experiences that combine the personal feel of in-store shopping with the convenience of online portals. 

These personalized online experiences are powered by artificial intelligence (AI). This is the technology that enables e-commerce websites to recommend products uniquely suited to shoppers, and enables people to search for products using conversational language, or just images, as though they were interacting with a person. 

Using AI to personalize the customer journey could be a huge value-add to retailers. Retailers that have implemented personalization strategies see sales gains of 6-10%, a rate two to three times faster than other retailers, according to a report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG). It could also boost profitability rates 59% in the wholesale and retail industries by 2035, according to Accenture. 

Stephanie Pandolph, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has written a detailed report on AI in e-commerce that:

  • Provides an overview of the numerous applications of AI in retail, using case studies of how retailers are currently gaining an advantage using this technology. These applications include personalizing online interfaces, tailoring product recommendations, increasing the relevance of shoppers search results, and providing immediate and useful customer service.
  • Examines the various challenges that retailers may face when looking to implementing AI, which typically stems from data storage systems being outdated and inflexible, as well as organizational barriers that prevent personalization strategies from being executed effectively.
  • Gives two different strategies that retailers can use to successfully implement AI, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each strategy.

To get the full report, subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >>Learn More Now

You can also purchase and download the full report from our research store.

Join the conversation about this story »

You probably missed the most important part of Google's hardware event (GOOGL, GOOG)

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Sundar Pichai

Google announced a slew of new hardware products including the newest Pixel phones and a couple new smart speakers on Wednesday. The most important part of the event was not the new hardware products, though.

"Google... provided an update on its artificial intelligence & Machine Learning efforts, underlining Google's long-term strategic ambitions to expand its core search capabilities across a growing array of platforms & use cases," Eric Sheridan, an analyst at UBS, said in a note to clients.

For Sheridan, one of the most important parts of the event was seeing Google's powerful approach to artificial intelligence, and what that means for the future of the business.

Check out: Google is using its biggest advantage as a weapon to totally embarrass Apple

As the company's event wandered from new product to new product, the AI theme was evident in all of them. Google's new phones incorporate AI into the camera for better image stabilization and object recognition. The smart speakers can tell users voices apart and pull music requests from the library of the individual talking. The company's new headphones can translate a conversation between two different languages in real time. And that's just the highlights.

The whole spectacle started with a dedicated look at the advances Google has made in artificial intelligence. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, took to the stage to show how the company's researchers are building AI into the very fabric of the company's new products.

Pichai talked about the company's research efforts, which, in a somewhat meta-move, even include using AI to build AI image-recognition systems which are already more accurate and faster than human-generated systems.

Pichai's AI introduction was easy to ignore if you tuned in for new phones or speakers, but it was an important look at how Google is shifting its focus from "Mobile First," to "AI first."

While companies like Amazon and Apple are also building AI products, their strategies seem to focus on pursuing the best voice assistant to put in their speakers or phones, while Google is more closely integrating AI into the soul of its products. The company put up a slide that said "AI + software + hardware" during the presentation, which not only adds AI to its competitors' list of advantages but also puts it first.

Google has it's own voice assistant too, and it's often rated as one of the best in the industry right now. But Pichai's AI intro barely mentioned the assistant because there were so many more AI advances to highlight.

"We are very confident about our approach here," Pichai said onstage. "Because we are at the forefront of driving the shifts with AI.

In Google's event, the new devices definitely stole the show, but they also underlined the company's focus on AI. The question now, Sheridan asks, is how well the new AI-powered devices sell and how they affect the company's bottom line in the future.

Google is up 21.02% this year, and fell slightly after the company's Wednesday event.

NOW READ: Google is using its biggest advantage as a weapon to totally embarrass Apple

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SEE ALSO: Walmart is offering a surprising perk for customers buying the new Google Home devices

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Google’s new headphones have a universal translator feature for 40 languages — and I got to try it (GOOG, GOOGL)

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pixel buds

On Wednesday, Google unveiled the Pixel Buds, a $159 pair of wireless earbuds designed to work with its new Pixel 2 smartphones.

The Pixel Buds will release in November, between the launches for the Pixel 2 (October) and the larger Pixel 2 XL (December).

The coolest part of the Pixel Buds is the ability to use them as a universal translator. It's like something out of "Star Trek"— at its November launch, you'll be able to use the Pixel Buds to have a conversation across 40 languages. 

All you need is the Pixel Buds ($159) and the Pixel 2 smartphone (starting at $649). The other person doesn't need a phone, earbuds, or any kind of gadgetry at all. 

I had the chance to try this feature out. And it works! Mostly. 

Here's how you'll use the Pixel Buds as a universal translator. 

It's actually a feature of the existing Google Translate app. To get started, just load it up on your Pixel 2 phone. From there, choose the language you understand, and the language you need to translate. An introductory message pops up on the screen once you begin: It basically explains to the other person that you're using an app, and how it works. 

Now, the magic happens. In my demo, I tried out my mediocre Spanish on a Google spokesperson wearing Pixel Buds, so I'll use that as my example. 

He spoke English into the Pixel Buds, asking "hi, how are you?" The Pixel 2 phone spoke, out loud, the equivalent Spanish phrase: "¿hola, como estas?" This text was also displayed on the screen, which is good, because the demo area was noisy. 

google translate pixel buds pixel 2

That noisy room also led to the demo's biggest glitch: When I went to answer in Spanish — "muy bien, y tu?"— the Pixel 2's microphone didn't pick me up clearly. In theory, my conversation partner should have heard "very well, and you?" Instead, all the app heard, and translated, was "William?" Bummer. 

I'm willing to cut Google some slack, here — the room was cacophonous with the sounds of my fellow tech reporters playing around with all of Google's new gadgets. In my own experiences with Google Translate, it's pretty solid at recognizing language, so I trust that it would work as well here. Still, be aware that it might not work in a noisy bar.

Google is being very clear that this is a test. For now, this feature is limited to the Google Pixel Buds headphones and the Pixel 2 smartphone, as Google works the kinks out. Still, it's another sign of how Google is turning its considerable edge in artificial intelligence into futuristic, but very real products that make a difference today. 

SEE ALSO: Google is using its biggest advantage as a weapon to embarrass Apple

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NOW WATCH: Google built wireless headphones that can also translate languages

THE AI DISRUPTION BUNDLE: The guide to understanding how artificial intelligence is impacting the world (AMZN, AAPL, GOOGL)

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global ai commerce financing trend

This is a preview of a research report bundle from BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about BI Intelligence, click here.

Artificial intelligence (AI) isn't a part of the future of technology. AI is the future of technology.

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have even publicly debated whether or not that will turn out to be a good thing.

Voice assistants like Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa have become more and more prominent in our lives, and that will only increase as they learn more skills.

These voice assistants are set to explode as more devices powered by AI enter the market. Most of the major technology players have some sort of smart home hub, usually in the form of a smart speaker. These speakers, like the Amazon Echo or Apple HomePod, are capable of communicating with a majority of WiFi-enabled devices throughout the home.

While AI is having an enormous impact on individuals and the smart home, perhaps its largest impact can be felt in the e-commerce space. In the increasingly cluttered e-commerce space, personalization is one of the key differentiators retailers can turn towards to stand out to consumers. In fact, retailers that have implemented personalization strategies see sales gains of 6-10%, at a rate two to three times faster than other retailers, according to a report by Boston Consulting Group.

This can be accomplished by leveraging machine learning technology to sift through customer data to present the relevant information in front of that consumer as soon as they hit the page.

With hundreds of hours of research condensed into three in-depth reports, BI Intelligence is here to help get you caught up on what you need to know on how AI is disrupting your business or your life.

Below you can find more details on the three reports that make up the AI Disruption Bundle, including proprietary insights from the 16,000-member BI Insiders Panel:

AI in E-Commerce Report

ai ecommerce

One of retailers' top priorities is to figure out how to gain an edge over Amazon. To do this, many retailers are attempting to differentiate themselves by creating highly curated experiences that combine the personal feel of in-store shopping with the convenience of online portals.

These personalized online experiences are powered by artificial intelligence (AI). This is the technology that enables e-commerce websites to recommend products uniquely suited to shoppers, and enables people to search for products using conversational language, or just images, as though they were interacting with a person.

Using AI to personalize the customer journey could be a huge value-add to retailers. Retailers that have implemented personalization strategies see sales gains of 6-10%, a rate two to three times faster than other retailers, according to a report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG). It could also boost profitability rates 59% in the wholesale and retail industries by 2035, according to Accenture.

This report illustrates the various applications of AI in retail and use case studies to show how this technology has benefited retailers. It assesses the challenges that retailers may face as they implement AI, specifically focusing on technical and organizational challenges. Finally, the report weighs the pros and cons of strategies retailers can take to successfully execute AI technologies in their organization.

The Smart Speaker Report

smart speaker report

Smart speakers — Amazon's Echo, for example — are the latest device category poised to take a chunk of our increasingly digital lives. These devices are made primarily for the home and execute a user's voice commands via an integrated digital assistant. These digital assistants can play music, answer questions, and control other devices within a user's home, among other things.

The central question for this new product category is not when they will take off, but which devices will rise to the top. To answer this question, BI Intelligence surveyed our leading-edge consumer panel, gathering exclusive data on Amazon's recently released Echo Show and Echo Look, as well as Apple's HomePod.

This report, which leverages BI Intelligence's proprietary data, analyzes the market potential of the Echo Look, Echo Show, and HomePod. Using exclusive survey data, we evaluate each device's potential for adoption based on four criteria: awareness, excitement, usefulness, and purchase intent. And we draw some inferences from our data about the direction the smart speaker market could take from here.

The Voice Assistant Landscape Report

Voice assistant landscapeAdvancements in a bevy of industries are helping intelligent digital voice assistants like Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa become more sophisticated and useful pieces of technology.

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are allowing them to accurately understand more information, while upgrades to mobile networks are facilitating quick transfers of data to robust clouds, enabling fast response times. In addition, the swell of internet connected devices like smart thermostats and speakers is giving voice assistants more utility in a connected consumer's life.

Increasingly sophisticated voice assistants and the growing potential use cases they can assist in are driving consumers to adopt them in greater droves — 65% of US smartphone owners were employing voice assistants in 2015, up significantly from 30% just two years prior. Consumers are also eagerly adopting speaker-based voice assistants, with shipments of Google Home and Amazon Echo speakers expected to climb more than threefold to 24.5 million in 2017, according to a report from VoiceLabs.

However, there are still numerous barriers that need to be overcome before this product platform will see mass adoption, as both technological challenges and societal hurdles persist.

This report explains what's driving the recent upsurge in adoption of digital voice assistants. It explores the recent technology advancements that have catalyzed this growth, while presenting the technological shortcomings preventing voice assistants from hitting their true potential. This report also examines the voice assistant landscape, and discusses the leading voice assistants and the devices through which consumers interact with them. Finally, it identifies the major barriers to mass adoption, and the impact voice assistants could have in numerous industries once they cross that threshold.

LIMITED-TIME OFFER:

Access the three in-depth reports referenced above today when you claim our exclusive AI Disruption Bundle. By purchasing the full bundle today you will SAVE 33% 0ff list price! But act now, as this is a limited-time offer.  
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How artificial intelligence & machine learning produced robots we can talk to

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robot

What is a Chatbot?

You've likely talked to a robot already without even knowing it. And you might have even heard the term "chatbot" in the news. But what is a chatbot? How do chatbots work?

Essentially, a chatbot is just a robot chat that imitates human conversations through voice commands, text chats, or both. It's a virtual conversation in which one party is an online talking robot.

The artificial intelligence feature within talking robots has been used in various industries to deliver information or perform tasks, such as telling the weather, making flight reservations, or purchasing products.

Chatbot Technology

Inside the artificial intelligence of a chatbot is machine learning and what's known as natural-language processing (NLP). Machine learning can be applied in different fields to create various chatbot algorithms, while NLP has the ability to pick up conversational cadences and mimic human conversation.

The chatbot is trained to translate the input data into a desired output value. When given this data, it analyzes and forms context to point to the relevant data to react to spoken or written prompts. Looking into deep learning within AI, the machine discovers new patterns in the data without any prior information or training, then extracts and stores the pattern.

This machine learning algorithm, known as neural networks, consists of different layers for analyzing and learning data. Inspired by the human brain, each layer is consists of its own artificial neurons that are interconnected and responsive to one another. Each connection is weighted by previous learning patterns or events and with each input of data, more “learning” takes place.

Brain

How Chatbots Got Smarter

With the advancements in artificial intelligence and the rapid growth of messaging apps, chatbots are becoming increasingly necessary in many industries. Although bot technology has been around for decades, machine-learning has been improving dramatically due to the heightened interest from key Silicon Valley powers.

Natural language processing mimics human speech patterns to simulate a human tone in computer-human interaction, which creates more intimate interactions. The predictive analytics within bots uses statistics, modeling, data mining and more to generate information proactively, rather than in response to a prompt.

The sentiment analysis in machine learning uses language analytics to determine the attitude or emotional state of whom they are speaking to in any given situation. This has proven to be difficult for even the most advanced chatbot due to an inability to detect certain questions and comments from context. Developers are creating these bots to automate a wider range of processes in an increasingly human-like way and to continue to develop and learn over time.

An indicator of just how human-like these machines can be was actually developed in the 1950s by British scientist Alan Turing. His Turing Test checks the presence of mind, thought, or intelligence in a machine and if it can fool a human to believe that it is a human as well, then it passes the test.

There was a time when even some of the most prominent minds believed that a machine could not be as intelligent as humans but in 1991, the start of the Loebner Prize competitions began to prove otherwise. The competition awards the best performing chatbot that convinces the judges that it is some form of intelligence. But despite the tremendous development of chatbots and their ability to execute intelligent behavior not displayed by humans, chatbots still do not have the accuracy to understand the context of questions in every situation each time.

Chatbots Uses of Today and Tomorrow

Chatbots currently operate through a number of channels, including web, within apps, and on messaging platforms. They also work across the spectrum from digital commerce to banking using bots for research, lead generation, and brand awareness. An increasing amount of businesses are experimenting with chatbots for e-commerce, customer service, and content delivery.

Furthermore, major banks today are facing increasing pressure to remain competitive as challenger banks and fintech startups crowd the industry. As a result, these banks should consider implementing chatbots wherever human employees are performing basic and time-consuming tasks. This would cut down on salary and benefit costs, improve back-office efficiency, and deliver better customer care.

More to Learn

Chatbot technology will continue to improve in the coming years. Chatbot architecture and design will evolve to the point that interactive AI will become standard for customer service. But there are numerous applications for chatbots across a variety of sectors.

That's why BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has put together a bundle of detailed reports on chatbots:

To get all four reports, subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >>Learn More Now

You can also purchase and download the full reports using the links above.

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How chatbots and artificial intelligence will save banks and the finance industry billions

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Online shopping

Chatbots, computer programs that typically use text-based live chat as an interface to carry out tasks for customers on behalf of the business, are emerging as an inexpensive way to introduce artificial intelligence (AI) in banking.

New digitally savvy companies have found success attracting consumers with user-friendly offerings, while legacy banks are finding it difficult to invest in and adopt innovative products. To remain competitive, these large banks will have to adapt their traditional services by incorporating more robotics in banking that will attract more tech-savvy customers.

Chatbots in Banking

Chatbots in banking are a digital solution that is relatively inexpensive to develop and maintain. For starters, chatbots require less coding than standalone banking apps. And the current growth in popularity of messaging platforms saves banks the cost of developing their own channels, as well as saving on data storage thanks to chatbots' cloud-based systems.

Companies such as Cleo, Stripe, and Wealthfront are giving traditional banks a run for their money. However, for these players it is more difficult to meet the demand of key bank products (such as loans) due to less restricted regulations that force their customers to spend heavily on compliance and maintain large capital cushions.

DBS uses Kasisto’s Kai, the underlying technology of MyKai, to allow customers to conduct transactions such as transfers and bill paying. Furthermore, they can ask about their personal finances using messaging applications such as Facebook Messenger and eventually WhatsApp and WeChat, all of which are the top messaging applications used across the world.

In 2016, Swedbank launched on its website and mobile application Nuance’s NINA, who helps answer customer inquiries more quickly by sourcing information relevant to their query using intuitive analysis.

Chatbots in Finance

The finance industry is built on processing information, which makes it an ideal industry for automation and reduction of salary expenditure, according to a new report from PwC. However, two-thirds of US financial services respondents said that they’re limited by operations, regulations, budgets, or resources to make the investment in such innovative development.

Fintech companies such as Plum, Digit, and Cleo use chatbots that drive microsaving by putting small amounts into savings each day for their users. These companies’ chatbot is their core product, unlike legacy banks that use it to supplement a core product.

These companies are improving various financial services that provide their customers more than just automated savings. Chatbots can provide wealth management for the masses, underwrite loans and insurance, provide data analyses and advanced analytics, and detect and notify of fraudulent behavior, all through an automated virtual assistant.

Bank of America uses ERICA to give customers key and real-time updates on their finances using a channel of their preference. Her predictive analytics and cognitive messaging helps customers make payments, pay down debts, and check their balances. 

Chatbots Set to Growrobot

Although chatbots have been around for a long time, recently the underlying AI technology has made waves in the market.

BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has found that the technological advancements in AI has made leaps and bounds in recent years in financial services.

The growing popularity of messaging apps have made them reliable hosts for chatbots, and the increasing public acceptance of chatbots have created more trustworthy relationships with users, particularly for millennials, whom banks are trying to target.

More to Learn

Chatbot technology will continue to improve in the coming years, particularly thanks to robotics in banking and chatbot financial services. Chatbot architecture and design will evolve to the point that interactive AI will become standard for customer service. But there are numerous applications for chatbots across a variety of sectors.

That's why BI Intelligence has put together a bundle of detailed reports on chatbots:

To get all four reports, subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >>Learn More Now

You can also purchase and download the full reports using the links above.

Join the conversation about this story »

Microsoft is holding a $3.5 million competition to find the next great garage startup — 'like American Idol' (MSFT)

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microsoft ventures nagraj kashyap

Microsoft, suffice it to say, is a very big company. But even with its vast resources, it can't go out and talk to every developer working on the next big thing.

"There are many great companies pushing the boundary of [artificial intelligence] that we can't reach, even with our efforts," Microsoft Ventures head Nagraj Kashyap tells Business Insider.

That brings us to today, as Microsoft announces Innovate.AI, a global contest to find the small startup with the biggest idea for how artificial intelligence can solve a real problem. In total, this so-called Innovate.AI contest will offer a $3.5 million prize pool. 

Here's how it works. Microsoft is teaming up with three venture capital firms, representing three regions around the world: North America, the European Union, and Israel. In North America, Microsoft is teaming up with Madrona Venture Group, the company's neighbors in Seattle. 

Companies can enter the contest through the end of 2017. Ten finalists in each region will be picked to pitch in-person. One winner in each region will get $1 million, plus another $500,000 in credits for the Microsoft Azure cloud service. One additional $500,000 cash prize will be given out to a startup using AI for public good.

The big idea, says Madrona's S. “Soma” Somasegar, is to find the "really really early startups" who today are toiling in relative obscurity, and give them a leg up with money and connections they can use to make it big — "something like American Idol," he says.

To enter, a startup needs to have raised less than $4 million, which is a relative pittance in Silicon Valley terms. In that light, says Kashyap, Microsoft and its VC partners are looking for less of a finished product, and more for a really big idea from founders they can believe in. The only requirement is that it puts AI to work in a practical way. 

The real goal, he says, is to push AI forward as a whole. They're looking for startups that are "not just good investments," but that "make AI more accessible," says Kashyap.

And ultimately, the contest's sponsors would like to see these startups push themselves to new heights. 

"You should be thinking big," says Kashyap. "Think big, and focus on the problem space you are solving," agrees Somasegar

 

SEE ALSO: An underground Silicon Valley sensation just got $20 million from Google's venture arm to take over the world

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A Stanford researcher is pioneering a dramatic shift in how we treat depression — and you can try her new tool right now

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Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and it can kill. But scientists know surprisingly little about it. Even with awareness programs like World Mental Health Day, which happens every year on October 10, our knowledge of the condition is extremely limited.

We do know, however, that talking seems to help — especially under the guidance of a licensed mental health professional. But therapy is expensive, inconvenient, and often hard to approach. A recent estimate suggests that of the roughly one in five Americans who have a mental illness, close to two-thirds have gone at least a year without treatment.

Several Silicon Valley-style approaches to the problem have emerged: There are apps that replace the traditional psychiatry office with texting, and chat rooms where you can discuss your problems anonymously online.

The newest of these tech-based treatments is Woebot, an artificially intelligent chatbot designed using cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT, one of the most heavily researched clinical approaches to treating depression.

Before you dismiss Woebot as a half-baked startup idea, know that it was designed by Alison Darcy, a clinical psychologist at Stanford, who tested a version of the technology on a small sample of real people with depression and anxiety long before launching it.

"The data blew us away," Darcy told Business Insider. "We were like, this is it."

The results of the trial were published Tuesday in the Journal of Medical Internet Research Mental Health.

For the test, Darcy recruited 70 students who said they experienced symptoms of depression and anxiety and split them into two groups. One group spent two weeks chatting with Woebot; the other was directed to a National Institute of Mental Health e-book about depression. Over two weeks, people in the Woebot group reported not only chatting with the bot almost every day, but seeing a significant reduction in their depressive symptoms.

That's a promising result for a type of treatment whose results have so far been tough to quantify — we don't have a lot of research comparing bot-to-human therapy with traditional human-to-human therapy.

Woebot uses CBT to talk to patients, and several studies suggest the approach lends itself to being administered online. A review of studies published recently in the journal World Psychiatry compared people who received CBT online with people who received it in person and found that the online setting was just as effective.

Dr. Ali Darcy Headshot 2One reason for this, according to Darcy, is that CBT focuses on discussing things that are happening in your life now as opposed to things that happened to you as a child. As a result, instead of talking to Woebot about your relationship with your mom, you might chat about a recent conflict at work or an argument you had with a friend.

"A premise of CBT is it's not the things that happen to us — it's how we react to them," Darcy said.

Woebot uses that methodology to point out areas where a person might be engaging in what's called negative self-talk, which can mean they see the environment around them in a distorted way and feel bad about it.

For example, if a friend forgot about your birthday, you might tell Woebot something like, "No one ever remembers me," or "I don't have any real friends." Woebot might respond by saying you're engaging in a type of negative self-talk called all-or-nothing thinking, which is a distortion of reality. In reality, you do have friends, and people do remember you. One of those friends simply forgot your birthday.

"Self-talk is a part of being human," Darcy said. "But the kinds of thoughts that we have actually map onto the kinds of emotions we're feeling."

Darcy is quick to point out that Woebot is not a replacement for traditional therapy, but an addition to the toolkit of approaches to mental health.

"I tend to not think of this as a better way to do therapy. I think of this as an alternative option," Darcy said. "What we haven't done a good job of in the field is give people an array of options. What about the people who aren't ready to talk to another person?"

SEE ALSO: Text-based therapies like Talkspace are transforming how we approach mental health

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This addictive free paperclip game is also a terrifying lesson in how artificial intelligence will make us unnecessary

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I haven't gotten anything done since lunchtime today because of "Paperclips," a silly free game you can play right in your browser.

"Paperclips" casts you as the overlord behind a paperclips business. It starts as a weirdly compelling time-waster — but it's not long before the subtle, postmodern horror of the whole thing sets in. 

At first, it's all very hands-on. Every time you click the button, you make a paperclip. Your goal is to make paperclips as fast as you can, and price them at a level so that demand doesn't wildly outstrip your supply or your materials on hand.

Before long, the game offers you the AutoClippers, a tool that automatically makes paperclips without your having to push the button. And then you get WireBuyer, which automatically purchases more wire for you to make paperclip as supplies run out. Pretty soon, it's more efficient to let them go than to make paperclips yourself.

And it keeps going from there, to hilarious levels: Eventually, your paperclip making machine will offer you the ability to hypnotize your customers into buying more paperclips, generate a catchy new advertising slogan, and even automatically invest in the stock market.

At a certain point, the game basically plays itself. Your biggest job becomes to task the AI with solving problems like global warming or world peace (seriously). Otherwise, it just chugs on automatically making paperclips and picking stocks. 

And yet, it's weirdly addictive. At the time of this writing, I've been playing for about three hours, and I've made over 700 million paperclips. And yet, really, I've done nothing at all. 

So play "Paperclips." You'll enjoy watching the number of paperclips go up and up and up, as I do. But also, take it as a warning of how unnecessary humans may one day become, as thinking machines evolve from the subject of satire like this and become a crucial part of the global economy.

SEE ALSO: The 11 industries most under threat from artificial intelligence

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A seemingly benign viral game about paperclips reveals why AI could be a huge danger to humanity

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A game about making paperclips has gone viral, and it's a sly nod to a famous thought experiment about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.

The game, as described by Business Insider's Matt Weinberger (one of the many staffers at Business Insider, myself included, who have become quickly addicted) is fairly straightforward: You are in charge of making as many paperclips as possible. As you progress and sell paperclips, you unlock various upgrades that make the process of paperclip-making ever more efficient and automated, until the game is basically playing itself.

The idea of an ever-more efficient automated paperclip factory has a history in the world of philosophers and futurists contemplating the dangers and possibilities of a "technological singularity" in which artificially intelligent machines rapidly outpace human abilities.

In 2003, Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom published a paper titled "Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence," in which he discusses what could happen if humanity creates a "superintelligent" machine capable of quickly improving itself.

The paper discusses some of the pluses and minuses of such an entity. On the plus side, a benevolent superintelligent machine would be able to solve all of humanity's problems, potentially ushering in a utopian golden age of health and prosperity for all. On the minus side, a malevolent superintelligence would be able to crush our species more efficiently than we could remove an ant-hill.

ex machina

While the latter scenario has been explored innumerable times in science fiction — "Terminator,""The Matrix," and Harlan Ellison's classic "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" to name a few — one of Bostrom's key insights in the paper is that a superintelligence wouldn't have to be actively opposed to humanity to present an existential risk. Instead, a superintelligence with a very un-humanlike psyche and poorly-defined goals might not realize that it's causing immesurable harm to its creators.

This brings us back to our friendly browser game. The example Bostrom gives of a non-malevolent but still extinction-causing superintelligence is none other than a relentlessly self-improving paperclip maker that lacks an explicit overarching sense of being pro-human (emphasis ours):

"The risks in developing superintelligence include the risk of failure to give it the supergoal of philanthropy... Another way for it to happen is that a well-meaning team of programmers make a big mistake in designing its goal system. This could result, to return to the earlier example, in a superintelligence whose top goal is the manufacturing of paperclips, with the consequence that it starts transforming first all of earth and then increasing portions of space into paperclip manufacturing facilities... We need to be careful about what we wish for from a superintelligence, because we might get it."

So, while you're having fun improving your browser-based paperclip enterprise, remember that you're essentially simulating the total extinction and eradication of humanity and everything it's ever created. Enjoy!

SEE ALSO: If you can solve this math problem you'll get a $1 million prize — and change internet security as we know it

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Academics explained the pros and cons of AI to a group of British politicians

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Nick Ostrom

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to significantly boost the UK economy, save lives, and drive cars, a panel of academics told members of the House of Lords this week.

Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, and computer science professors Dame Wendy Hall and Michael Wooldridge, were invited to the Houses of Parliament on Tuesday by the Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence.

The trio told the Committee, which is chaired by Lord Clement-Jones, that AI is a powerful technology that must be developed safely and ethically if it is to be of benefit to all of humanity. Bostrom warned that AI could be used in autonomous weapons and for mass surveillance.

"I think the genie is out of the bottle," said Hall, who teaches computer science at the University of Southampton. "There will be lots of positive benefits in terms of health and discovery of knowledge.

"But the downsides are something we need to get a grip of because it's happening so fast. There are lots of issues about algorithmic accountability and bias in datasets or in algorithms, and just generally how it's going to impact society in terms of future jobs. There will be job losses but there will also be lots of new jobs."

AI is a concept has been around for several decades and we are now in the fourth or fifth wave of AI. The difference today is that there are bigger and better datasets available for AI agents to learn from and machines boast considerably more processing power than they once did.

This has led to a significant acceleration in AI research, led by companies like DeepMind in the UK, as well as US tech giants like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.

The academics told the Committee that the UK is incredibly well placed to lead the AI revolution, adding that countries like China and Canada are also contenders.

"The UK is in a really unusual position that I would not have guessed a decade ago," said Wooldridge, who heads up the computer science department at the University of Oxford. "We are absolutely at the centre of that AI revolution. This city [London] is at the heart of it. So those opportunities are really in our hand as a nation right now."

Nick Bostrom and Wendy Hall

While the academics believe AI has great potential, they also explained that there's a lot of hype around the technology and that it still has a long way to go.

"Right now there is very limited ability [for AI] to do reasoning, common sense, truly understanding concepts and language," said Bostrom, who is also the author of the book "Superintelligence." Bostrom added: "The strengths are in pattern recognition."

AI today is able to learn how to do certain specific tasks, like play Go or identify an object in a photo, but it can't excel at several different tasks, and it's not even close to being able to mimic the human brain.

The breakthroughs have all been in "narrow AI", but "general AI," which is the big dream you see in Hollywood, is still a long way off.

"There hasn't really been any substantial progress in general AI," said Wooldridge. "We're beginning to get there with better ideas about the brain but all the progress on AI over the last decade, which is real and substantial and exciting, has been on narrow AI like recognising faces or other specific tasks."

Demis and Sergey DeepMindWhen asked about whether government should consider regulating AI, the academics all agreed that it was far too early and warned that enforcing laws on AI development at this stage would hinder progress.

Bostrom urged the politicians to look to Canada as a good example of how governments can support AI.

He praised Canada for setting up the $170 million (£129 million) Vector Institute and launching a $125 million (£95 million) AI strategy after it noticed several senior academics at top Canadian universities were hired away by US tech giants. The same thing has been happening in the UK, with Oxbridge losing many of its leading experts to DeepMind and other companies like Uber.

"A senior academic in this field could easily move into industry and get that half a million dollar a year salary from many of these big tech companies so to make it attractive for those people to stay in academia one needs something different than business as usual," said Bostrom.

Wooldridge told the Committee that the UK needs to train up more PhD-level computer scientists and mathematicians, warning that companies like DeepMind are currently dependent on overseas talent.

Hall added: "Because of the situation in the US there's an opportunity to grasp here. There's no one running science in the US."

The AI Committee was appointed on June 29 to consider the economic, ethical, and social implications of advances in AI, and to make recommendations. It has been tasked with producing a report by March 31, 2018.

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A new report tells the government how it can 'supercharge' AI in the UK

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The UK is well placed to become a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), according to a government-commissioned report published on Sunday.

The 78-page report contains 18 proposals for how the UK government can work with industry to stay ahead of the competition and grow the UK's use of AI.

Proposals in the "Growing the Artificial Intelligence Industry in the UK" report include:

  • boosting the number of people with AI skills by introducing an industry-funded masters degree programme and other conversion courses.
  • helping businesses to understand how AI can boost their productivity and allow them to make better products and services.
  • ensuring that people and organisations can rest-assured that there data is safe and secure. The report also suggests that data should be made available to more organisations.
  • making the Alan Turing Institute a national institute for AI.

The independent report was produced by Dame Wendy Hall, professor of computer science at the University of Southampton, and Jérôme Pesenti, CEO of BenevolentTech, the technology division of BenevolentAI.

Hall and Pesenti believe that AI has the potential to significantly improve healthcare, power autonomous cars, boost productivity, and unlock £630 billion for the UK economy.

Hall said in a statement:

"I was very honoured to be asked to co-chair this review at a time when AI is set to make major changes to the way we live and work. I’m particularly keen to ensure that we use it to inform the establishment of initiatives and programmes to help us extract the most value from artificial intelligence for the country; that includes an emphasis on increasing and improving our skill levels to prepare the workforce for the number of jobs the industry will need for the future.

"AI has been around for a very long time as a concept and this latest surge of technological development is likely to see automation continue to escalate and accelerate in every walk of life. Now is the time for us all - scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs and the government - to come together and address the issues about how AI is going to impact society and seek ways to ensure that we’re able to deliver the great breakthroughs the technology has the potential to deliver."

Pesenti said:

"In our AI review, we focused on recommendations that are both practicable and deliverable. By following these recommendations, government, academia and industry can help strengthen the UK's position in the global AI market.
Our proposals are deliberately specific and boil down to three fundamentals – enable better access to data, create a greater supply of AI skills and promote the uptake of AI. I am looking forward to working with government, academia and industry to drive these changes."

Culture secretary Karen Bradley said in a statement:

"I want the UK to lead the way in artificial intelligence. It has the potential to improve our everyday lives — from healthcare to robots that perform dangerous tasks. 
 
"We already have some of the best minds in the world working on artificial intelligence, and the challenge now is to build a strong partnership with industry and academia to cement our position as the best place in the world to start and grow a digital business."

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Google's machine-learning software has learned to replicate itself

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Back in May, Google revealed its AutoML project; artificial intelligence (AI) designed to help them create other AIs.

Now, Google has announced that AutoML has beaten the human AI engineers at their own game by building machine-learning software that’s more efficient and powerful than the best human-designed systems.

An AutoML system recently broke a record for categorizing images by their content, scoring 82 percent.

While that’s a relatively simple task, AutoML also beat the human-built system at a more complex task integral to autonomous robots and augmented reality: marking the location of multiple objects in an image. For that task, AutoML scored 43 percent versus the human-built system’s 39 percent.

These results are meaningful because even at Google, few people have the requisite expertise to build next generation AI systems. It takes a rarified skill set to automate this area, but once it is achieved, it will change the industry. “Today these are handcrafted by machine learning scientists and literally only a few thousands of scientists around the world can do this,” WIRED reports Google CEO Sundar Pichai said. “We want to enable hundreds of thousands of developers to be able to do it.”

Much of metalearning is about imitating human neural networks and trying to feed more and more data through those networks. This isn’t — to use an old saw — rocket science. Rather, it’s a lot of plug and chug work that machines are actually well-suited to do once they’ve been trained. The hard part is imitating the brain structure in the first place, and at scales appropriate to take on more complex problems.

Artificial intelligence

The future of machine-built AI

It’s still easier to adjust an existing system to meet new needs than it is to design a neural network from the ground up.

However, this research seems to suggest this is a temporary state of affairs. As it becomes easier for AIs to design new systems with increased complexity, it will be important for humans to play a gatekeeping role.

AI systems can easily make biased connections accidentally — such as associating ethnic and gendered identities with negative stereotypes. However, if human engineers are spending less time on the grunt work involved in creating the systems, they’ll have more time to devote to oversight and refinement.

Ultimately, Google is aiming to hone AutoML until it can function well enough for programmers to use it for practical applications. If they succeed in this, AutoML is likely to have an impact far beyond the walls of Google. WIRED reports Pichai stated, at the same event from last week, that “We want to democratize this,” — meaning, the company hopes to make AutoML available outside Google.

SEE ALSO: Google's AI is much smarter than Siri

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UBS: AI is growing like crazy — and these chip makers are set to dominate the industry (NVDA, AMD, INTC, QCOM)

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If you've used Siri, Google's Assistant or Amazon's Alexa, then you've interacted with an artificial intelligence.

As an example of the innovation in artificial intelligence going on now, Google is working on technology to classify street signs, identify objects in photos and translate speech between two languages in real time. The company, in a product event showing off these technologies recently, admitted that this is just the beginning.

Stephen Chin, an analyst at UBS, agrees with Google and sees huge potential growth in the sector, especially in the silicon that makes it possible.

"The democratization of AI now underway could drive a new phase of growth in Semis that our new proprietary model estimates could represent a $35B revenue total addressable market by 2021 (ex-memory), or a 41% compound annual growth rate from current levels," Chin said.

The AI that currently exists is relatively rudimentary compared to its future potential, but even so, it requires huge amounts of computing power. Computer chip makers have realized this, and are currently in a race to provide the chips that can power current and future AI systems.

Graphics processing units, like those made by AMD and Nvidia, will make up 54% of the total AI market in 2021, according to Chin, while central processing units, like those from Intel and AMD, will make up about 40% of the markets. Chin said that data centers will make up a majority of the demand for AI-focused chips in the future, as smaller consumer computers won't have the power to train AI systems in a reasonable time frame. 

With that in mind, Chin says that Nvidia is the company to beat in the space.

"We estimate Nvidia has a time to market advantage of 1+ year and should be able to sustain this lead," Chin said.

Nvidia has been on a world tour in recent weeks, announcing new AI-themed partnerships with drone makers, car companies and more. The company was crowned the smartest company in the world by MIT this year, in part, because of its dominance in the AI space.

NVIDIA autonomous driving self-driving

Nvidia is also focusing on providing the tech necessary to power autonomous cars, another AI growth area, according to Chin. The company's "Drive" series of chips are already being used by a large number of car manufacturers.

Tesla, one of the biggest names in self-driving cars, is reportedly working with Nvidia's competitor AMD to produce a custom self-driving car chip, though. The autonomous car space could be a huge market for chip makers, coming in just behind data centers, said Chin. 

Nvidia and Intel are the only two companies Chin sees as having a solution for every part of the current AI market. Most of the other companies, like AMD, Qualcomm, Samsung and even Google, fail to capture the entire breadth of that market.

This is an important advantage for the two companies, though it's not everything.

The computing ability of these chips is important, as the faster a chip is, the faster it can crunch through the huge data sets required to create artificial intelligence systems. AMD is working on CPUs that can rival Intel's and GPUs that can compete with Nvidia's. Chin said it could start to gain market share because of this.

In 2017, Chin estimates the total market for machine learning and artificial intelligence to be about $8.2 billion. By 2021, Chin thinks it could be worth upwards of $35 billion. The companies that can provide the best chips for that growing market stand to benefit from the sector's explosive growth.

Here's how much each of the chip makers is up this year, and their share prices as of about 3 p.m. ET Tuesday:

Read more about what you need to know before investing in AI here...

SEE ALSO: Artificial intelligence is going to change every aspect of your life — here's how to invest in it

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