Alison Treadaway is a director at Striata. She is involved in defining and executing business and marketing strategy, nurturing organizational culture and promoting compliance. Passionate about organizational culture, she is particularly interested in protecting and enhancing Striata's stories, traditions and unique approach to achieving success. To this end, she interviews 90% of approved candidates to ensure that Striata's work ethic and social culture will continue to thrive as the organization globalizes. Alison has 19 years of experience in the ICT sector, having worked at Internet Solutions and Dimension Data prior to joining Striata in 2002.

The use of drones is already growing across various sectors but an Ajman-based start-up -- Deep Aero -- is fuelling an autonomous drone economy driven by artificial intelligence and blockchain. Gurmeet Singh Anand, CEO of Deep Aero, told Gulf News that the use of unmanned aerial vehicles is increasing exponentially. "In the coming future, we will see millions or billions of commercial drones flying in the air. When that happens, there has to be an autonomous system to manage the drone traffic. Otherwise, it will be a nightmare for regulators," he said.

In three years, it has become the must-attend event dedicated to new technologies! From May 24th to May 26th, the VivaTech Summit took up residence at Porte de Versailles in Paris. During the three days, more than 100,000 visitors from all over the world were able to discover the innovations that will shape the world of tomorrow. At the heart of this third edition is artificial intelligence, which is gradually becoming part of our daily lives. The spotlight was also shone on Africa, which had a dedicated pavilion.

Ever since a Dutch cloth merchant accidentally discovered bacteria in 1676, microscopes have been a critical tool for medicine. Today's microscopes are 800,000 times more powerful than the human eye, but they still need a person to scrutinize what's under the lens. That person is usually a pathologist -- and that's a problem. Worldwide, there are too few of these doctors who interpret lab tests to diagnose, monitor and treat disease. Now SigTuple, a member of our Inception startup incubator program, is testing an AI microscope that could help address the pathologist shortage.

Robotics, AI, and Big Data provide great opportunities for start-ups and agile SMEs, right? According to research the World Economic Forum did with Accenture, the bulk of gains goes to the 20% industry leaders in each industry. Without broader implementation of these new technologies, "an'industry inequality' could emerge, creating a small group of highly productive industry leaders and leaving the rest of the economy behind", with small and medium enterprises in particular at risk. Pepper, a humanoid robot manufactured by SoftBank Robotics, is pictured at the SoftBank Robotics exhibition stand during the VivaTech trade fair (Viva Technology), on May 25, 2018 in Paris. That would be problematic, because these small and medium enterprises that operate at the regional and national level serve as backbones of an economy in many countries.

Following the launch (May 16th) of the FIBR report, "Artificial Intelligence: Practical Superpowers," we are hosting a follow-up webinar to present the paper and its insights. As one of the first reports that looks at AI applied to financial services in Africa, this webinar is for fintech companies and FSPs in Africa, that might be interested or looking to move into AI. By presenting insights from the report and having a panel discussion, we seek to create awareness around the real-use cases of AI for FSPs that can augment the ability of companies to do business better. Panelists: Matt Grasser, Deputy Director of Inclusive Fintech BFA Qiuyan Xu, Chief Data Scientist Cignifi Andrea Ottina, Chief Business Development Officer Access Tanzania Sheel Mohot, Partner 500 startups Moderated by Jane del Ser, Insights & Influence at BFA Related content: Read the report - http://bfa.works/ai-launch An Experimental Gallery of AI Applications for MSMEs and PAYGo - FIBR.AI FIBR stands for Financial Inclusion on Business Runways and aims to learn how to transform emerging business data about low-income individuals and link them to inclusive financial services to deepen financial inclusion and its impact.

At its F8 developer conference, Facebook announced Facebook Dating, an in-app feature that will spice up the social media platform with some romance, meaningful romance--or so Facebook hopes. The feature bears striking similarity to the dating app Hinge, which allows users to scroll through detailed profiles and start conversations not by merely saying hello but by commenting on a specific profile item. For example, you can click on a picture of a crush's trip to Morocco and mention that you've been there, too. You can also simply "like" an image, video, or question response to signify your interest. So far, Hinge's creators have played off the similarities as a compliment, and there's not much else they can do about it anyway.

Catching a wildlife poacher in the act is a tricky business. Just ask the officials and groups who have spent decades and millions of dollars searching for criminal animal hunters and traders operating covertly from South Africa to China. Their work is complicated by several factors, from government corruption that foils anti-poaching efforts to extreme poverty that draws people into the industry in the first place. Poachers tend to go about their illicit business under cover of night, and it's hard to find people among millions of square miles of pitch-black forest. "Eighty percent of poaching happens under the cover of darkness."

According to the 2018 Global Retail Banking Report from The Economist Intelligence Unit and Temenos, global banking organizations are focusing on advanced technologies, customer experience and security of data in their efforts to keep pace with consumer expectations. At the same time, many have conceded the battle for payments to fintech and big tech organizations. Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!As the banking industry continues to move more transactions to digital channels and adjusts the technology used in back-office operations, costs are being reduced, productivity is increasing and response to risk and compliance needs are improving. As a result, and for the first time in its five-year history, the annual Economist Intelligence Unit survey on the future of retail banking, conducted for Temenos, shows that global bank executives are now more concerned with technology-driven trends than they are by regulation. About 58% of respondents in the survey said "changing customer behavior and demands" will have the biggest impact on retail banks in the years till 2020, citing a survey of 400 senior banking executives across the globe.

The need to provide an enhanced customer experience is the primary factor augmenting the growth of the AI in BFSI market. As the competition among the market players is mounting day-by-day, companies have started to focus on providing a better experience to the customers to gain the customer loyalty. This encourages financial institutes to integrate advanced analytics tools and solutions to analyze customer data to fulfil their requirement, understand the customer experience, and to make smarter predictions about their behavior and requirements. Furthermore, companies are also looking forward to connecting with the customers on their choice of channels to provide a more seamless experience. Furthermore, as digitalization is spreading across the globe, customers are becoming more empowered.