German multinational software company SAP will participate in DigiTrans -- The Digital Transformation Forum -- scheduled for October 25-26, 2017, in Dubai, as a gold sponsor. The event, presented by MIT Sloan Management Review GCC, will focus on customer-centric experiences and operational efficiency. DigiTrans will offer actionable knowledge for strategy, organisational roadmap, and innovation-based opportunities. "Dubai is a global hub for showing best practices in using digital transformation to transform industry verticals, and the citizen and customer experiences. With digital transformation reaching a tipping point in the Middle East, DigiTrans 2017 Dubai provides the platform for SAP to exchange best practices in digital transformation. Topics such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, machine learning, and the Internet of Things will be vital for the next generation of chief digital officers to lead the digital economy," said Tayfun Topkoc, managing director, SAP UAE and Oman.

Leaders in the fields of AI and robotics, including Elon Musk and Google DeepMind's Mustafa Suleyman, have signed a letter calling on the United Nations to ban lethal autonomous weapons, otherwise known as "killer robots." In their petition, the group states that the development of such technology would usher in a "third revolution in warfare," that could equal the invention of gunpowder and nuclear weapons. "Once developed, [autonomous weapons] will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend," write the signatories. "These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways." The letter is signed by the founders of 116 AI and robotics companies from 26 countries, and was published this weekend ahead of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI).

The world's leading artificial intelligence experts are sounding the alarm on killer robots. Tesla (TSLA) boss Elon Musk is among a group of 116 founders of robotics and artificial intelligence companies who are calling on the United Nations to ban autonomous weapons. "Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare. Once developed, they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend," the experts warn in an open letter released Monday. "These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways," the letter says.

A next revolution in warfare where killer robots, or autonomous weapons systems, are common in battlefields is about to start. Both scientists and industry are worried. The world's top artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics companies have used a conference in Melbourne to collectively urge the United Nations to ban killer robots or lethal autonomous weapons. An open letter by 116 founders of robotics and artificial intelligence companies from 26 countries was launched at the world's biggest artificial intelligence conference, the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), as the UN delays meeting until later this year to discuss the robot arms race. Toby Walsh, Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales, released the letter at the opening of the opening of the conference, the world's pre-eminent gathering of experts in artificial intelligence and robotics.

Today, businesses need to be able to predict demand and trends to stay in line with any sudden market changes and economy swings. This is exactly where forecasting tools, powered by Data Science, come into play, enabling organizations to successfully deal with strategic and capacity planning. Smart forecasting techniques can be used to reduce any possible risks and assist in making well-informed decisions. One of our customers, an enterprise from the Middle East, needed to predict their market demand for the upcoming twelve weeks. They required a market forecast to help them set their short-term objectives, such as production strategy, as well as assist in capacity planning and price control.

The emerging technologies on the Gartner Inc. Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2017 reveal three distinct megatrends that will enable businesses to survive and thrive in the digital economy over the next five to 10 years. Artificial intelligence (AI) everywhere, transparently immersive experiences and digital platforms are the trends that will provide unrivaled intelligence, create profoundly new experiences and offer platforms that allow organizations to connect with new business ecosystems. The Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report is the longest-running annual Gartner Hype Cycle, providing a cross-industry perspective on the technologies and trends that business strategists, chief innovation officers, R&D leaders, entrepreneurs, global market developers and emerging-technology teams should consider in developing emerging-technology portfolios. The Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle is unique among most Gartner Hype Cycles because it garners insights from more than 2,000 technologies into a succinct set of compelling emerging technologies and trends. This Hype Cycle specifically focuses on the set of technologies that is showing promise in delivering a high degree of competitive advantage over the next five to 10 years (see Figure 1).

Deep artificial neural networks require a large corpus of training data in order to effectively learn, where collection of such training data is often expensive and laborious. Data augmentation overcomes this issue by artificially inflating the training set with label preserving transformations. Recently there has been extensive use of generic data augmentation to improve Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) task performance. This study benchmarks various popular data augmentation schemes to allow researchers to make informed decisions as to which training methods are most appropriate for their data sets. Various geometric and photometric schemes are evaluated on a coarse-grained data set using a relatively simple CNN. Experimental results, run using 4-fold cross-validation and reported in terms of Top-1 and Top-5 accuracy, indicate that cropping in geometric augmentation significantly increases CNN task performance.

The course convener Dr Co-Pierre Georg, Senior Lecturer at the African Institute of Financial Markets and Risk Management (AIFMRM) at UCT explains: "We are in constant and close contact with the financial services industry and know that it is facing a shifting demand for skills. "In the past, companies were mainly looking for advanced mathematical- and modelling skills. There still is demand for these skills, but by far the largest demand now is for students who have a thorough understanding of finance combined with a mastery of modern data analytics and software development skills. Our students will be able to develop these skills in the two most exciting areas of fintech: machine learning and blockchain technologies." "We see extraordinary demand for the degree already," continues Georg, "also because Cape Town-based students can do the degree part-time.

When we launched the Alternate Realities grant program in May we had no idea what to expect. We saw a need for funding in the arts happening at just the time when new media like AR and VR were starting to go mainstream. So, with support from our parent company, Oath, we set out to fund five immersive art projects that push the limits of storytelling through emerging technologies. Proposals came from as far away as Iran and Australia and ranged in discipline from theater to fashion, documentary to animation. There were multi-million dollar VR productions, animated shorts and escape rooms.

Crayon has joined forces with Microsoft and over 20 health technology vendors to launch the AI in Health Partners Alliance. Debuting at the Microsoft Health Innovation Summit in Brussels, the Alliance seeks to provide a platform to drive broad public awareness of how AI can empower better clinical and operational effectiveness. Furthermore, partners will help to ensure everyone has the competencies and tools needed to build intelligence into health solutions and bring these to market. As part of this, Alliance members will receive unique training and exclusive access to Microsoft technologies, engineering expertise and data sets. Microsoft believes that technology – specifically cloud, AI, collaboration and business optimisation tools – will be central to health care transformation.