This is the 2-part blog version of a talk I've given at DOAG Conference this week. I've also uploaded the slides (no ppt; just pretty R presentation;-)) to the articles section, but if you'd like a little text I'm encouraging you to read on. That is, if you're in the target group for this post/talk. For this post, let me assume you're a SQL girl (or guy). With SQL you're comfortable (an expert, probably), you know how to get and manipulate your data, no nesting of subselects has you scared;-).

Leading funders and researchers this week agreed that all their clinical trials for vaccines and devices would in future be publicly registered and the results published. The pledge -- made by nearly a dozen groups including the Wellcome Trust and the UK Medical Research Council -- is a boost for innovation and safety. Some estimates suggest that half of all trial findings, notably those that do not yield positive results, are not made public. This is a significant waste of research, burying information that could help to better direct future work, reduce dangers to patients and boost efficiency. In an era of big data and partnership between medical research and IT, there is considerable potential to improve number crunching and identify patterns in trial data.

An engineer at IBM once told me that the future of information technology could be summed up in a few key terms: mobility, cloud computing, the internet of things, and automation and artificial intelligence. It is worth bearing in mind that automation and artificial intelligence are becoming more and more prominent topics within the public sphere, especially with the emergence of powerful AI like IBM's Watson and DeepMind's AlphaGo. These forms of artificial intelligence, also referred to as robots or bots for short, don't necessarily take up physical space. Instead, they are programs, stored on a desktop or a cloud, that have the ability to learn and adapt to different situations as opposed to earlier programs that were more rigid. Because of their learning capabilities, these robots can perform tasks that were deemed impossible by earlier programmers: Robots can write stories, they can understand human speech, and they can diagnose a patient better than their own doctor can.

A world renowned pioneer in social robotics, Cynthia Breazeal splits her time as an Associate Professor at MIT, where she received her PhD and founded the Personal Robots Group, and Founder and Chief Scientist of Jibo, a personal robotics company with over $85 million in funding. While Breazeal's work has won numerous academic awards, industry accolades, and media attention, she had to fight early skepticism in the 1990s from other experts in robotics and AI. At the time, robots were seen as physical and industrial tools, not social or emotional companions. Her first social robot, Kismet, was unfairly called out in popular press as "useless". Breazeal bucked the trend with a very different vision: "I wanted to create robots with social and emotional intelligence that could work in collaborative partnership with people. In 2-5 years, I see social robots helping families with things that really matter, like education, health, eldercare, entertainment, and companionship." She hopes her work and influence will inspire others to create robots "not only with smarts, but with heart, too."

Google's Assistant is finally ready to take on Siri on Apple's own turf: the iPhone. Yes, you could already play around with the AI-powered chatbot if you downloaded Allo -- Google's mobile-only messenger app -- but its functionality was limited. Eager to check it out, we downloaded it right away and spent some time commanding our Google-branded phone butler around. After a few hours, I'll say that while I find Google Assistant a lot friendlier and smarter than Siri, it doesn't quite replace it. The first obvious barrier is that while Siri is baked right into iOS, you'll need to download Google Assistant as a separate app.

Democratization of Artificial intelligence, Microsoft's promise to take the AI and Machine learning from the ivory towers and make it accessible for all, is starting to take shape quite effectively. Let's face it; resource constraints around AI/ML is a real problem. Most companies with real-world AI use cases just don't have enough runway to build their own artificial intelligence offerings, and Microsoft cognitive services provide a sophisticated yet easy to use abstraction which fills this gap. Microsoft has also announced AI as an MVP category (http://aka.ms/AIMVP) Being a Microsoft MVP for Data Platforms, I have had the front row seat to see how Cognitive Services, a collection of powerful APIs and toolkits unfold to fulfill the promise of AI democratization.

There are places people leave and places people go. Naples might be Italy's third-biggest city, but it is losing those some of those people all the time. The city was once one of the industrial engines of Italy -- a history still evident from the husks and dirt of factories in parts of its centre -- and its promenades still hold some of the splendid grandeur of a city known for its contribution to the arts, travel, literature, food, football and crime. But in recent years, like many cities built on industry and manufacturing, some of that glory has faded away. And its young people have left, too -- giving Naples that sense of being a place you start, not where you end.

Google's Doodle is celebrating the Antikythera mechanism, which might just be the first computer. The mechanism was found in 1902 – exactly 115 years ago – and the discovery changed the way we saw the ancient Greeks. The man who found it, Valerios Stais, initially thought that the bronze mechanism he could see was a gear or a wheel – but on closer inspection, the metal turned out to be part of the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient and mysterious analogue astronomical computer. The machine could be used to track and predict where the planets were, understand lunar and solar eclipses, and count towards the next Olympic Games. But its uses were various – it might also have been used for unknown forms of mapping and navigation.

Imagine a surgeon asking a Siri-like digital assistant in the operations theater about the options available in a risky operation, based on the patient's medical history matched with a global database of similar cases. The "assistant" comes up with several options in a split second and, the surgeon and his team, choose one that they think is best and proceed. This could be one of the many possibilities that an Artificial Intelligence or A.I. can provide to the healthcare sector. A.I. is poised to become a game changer for the health care sector, according to Steve Leonard, chief executive of SGInnovate, the government entity that supports entrepreneurs leading Singapore's innovation efforts. But convincing doctors, clinicians, nurses, patients and other stakeholders to place their trust in self-thinking machines could be tricky.

In an earnings call with investors Tuesday, Ubisoft confirmed sequels in the Far Cry, The Crew and Assassin's Creed series, along with the long-delayed South Park: The Fractured But Whole will be coming out later this fiscal year. The Assassins will soon step out of the shadows... pic.twitter.com/nUrM4A57J0 Are you ready for a hefty dose of new Far Cry adventures? Beyond the road… Stay with us for more high octane thrills! Through various leaks and rumors, some details are available on what the games will feature.